Thompson's paper, Lost at Sea: Where is All the Plastic?,[4] published in the journal Science in 2004, was the first to use the term microplastics, which has since become common parlance.
[8] He also leads the University's International Marine Litter Research Unit.
[9][10] He is a co-coordinator of The Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty,[11] and in September 2024 led a further study - also published in Science [12] - which stated that after two decades of research into microplastics, the world had sufficient evidence to agree global action to tackle them.
In 2016, Professor Thompson was referred to by Mary Creagh as "The Godfather of Microplastics" during a public inquiry into the Environmental Impact of Microplastics by the Environmental Audit Select Committee.
[21] This moniker has since been repeated extensively by media outlets across the world.