John Griggs Thompson is a mathematician at the University of Florida noted for his work in the field of finite groups. He was born on October 13, 1932 in Ottawa, Kansas, United States. Thompson earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1955 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1959. After a year at Harvard University (1961–62), he returned to the University of Chicago (1962–68), and he subsequently moved to Churchill College, Cambridge, England. Thompson has received many awards for his outstanding contributions to mathematics. In addition to the Cole Prize from the American Mathematical Society and the Fields Medal in 1970 described above, he was awarded the Senior Berwick Prize from the London Mathematical Society in 1982, the Sylvester Medal from the Royal Society in 1985 and he received the Wolf Prize and the Poincare Prize in 1992. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in the United States in 1971 and the Royal Society of London in 1979. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2000.