[1] During World War I, Thompson served in the United States Army in the Ordnance and Chemical Warfare Branch, rising to the rank of captain.
[2] Thompson — the first American chemist to devote his major efforts to investigating the chemistry of sea water — founded the University of Washington's oceanographic laboratories in 1930.
Two years later, as a result of Thompson's guidance, the university placed a small research vessel, Catalyst, in service to perform inshore oceanographic work in the Pacific Northwest.
[1] Over the ensuing years, Thompson developed methods for the quantitative determination of many elements and ions in sea water e.g. aluminum, boron, copper, iron, manganese, nickel, strontium, silicon, bromine, iodine, phosphates, and nitrates.
His main interest lay in determining the relationship between the chemical and physical properties of sea water — notably the specific gravity, refractivity and electrical conductivity.