Lonnie Thompson (born July 1, 1948), is an American paleoclimatologist and Distinguished University Professor in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University. He has achieved global recognition for his drilling and analysis of ice cores from mountain glaciers and ice caps in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. He and his wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, run the ice core paleoclimatology research group at the Byrd Polar Research Center.In 2012, Lonnie Thompson and Mosley-Thompson  were jointly awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science from the Franklin Institute.