David J. Thomson | |
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Nationality | Canadian |
Citizenship | Canadian, American[citation needed] |
Alma mater | Acadia University Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn |
Known for | Multitaper |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Statistics, electrical engineering, physics |
Institutions | Bell Labs (Mathematical Sciences Division) Queen's University at Kingston |
David J. Thomson is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Queen's University in Ontario and a Canada Research Chair in statistics and signal processing, formerly a member of the technical staff at Bell Labs. He is a professional engineer in the province of Ontario, a fellow of the IEEE and a chartered statistician. He holds memberships of the Royal Statistical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Statistical Society of Canada and the American Geophysical Union and, in 2009, received a Killam Research Fellowship (administered through the Canada Council for the Arts). In 2010, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.[1] In 2013, he was awarded the Statistical Society of Canada impact award.[2]
He is best known for creation of the multitaper method of spectral estimation, first published in complete form in 1982 in a special issue of Proceedings of the IEEE.[3] Thomson's 1995 Science paper first conclusively showed the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature.[4] Thomson and Bell Labs colleagues Carol G. Maclennan and Louis J. Lanzerotti authored a 1995 Nature paper in which they showed evidence that the magnetic signatures of the Sun's normal modes permeate the interplanetary magnetic field as far as Jupiter.[5] He has written over 100 other peer-reviewed journal articles in the fields of statistics, space physics, climatology and paleoclimatology, and seismology.