Education
Thompson graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in both physics and astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1969. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in astronomy from the University of Arizona in 1974.
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Laird Thompson
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From 1974 to 1987, Thompson worked in extragalactic astronomy and he concentrated on clusters of galaxy, galaxy morphology, and galaxy redshift surveys. In 1978, along with Stephen Gregory, he discovered voids. In the early 1980s, he began to work on projects aimed at improving the image quality at ground-based telescopes.
His first instrument was a microprocessor controlled tip-tilt system called ISIS which was built at the Institute for Astronomy for use at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii.
From 1990 to present, Thompson has worked in adaptive optics.
Membership
He is professionally associated with the International Astronomical Union, the American Astronomical Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the International Society for Optical Engineering, and has served as an adjunct member of the Center for Adaptive Optics.
