BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Professor of law.
George Jarvis Thompson received a B.S. in economics from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1909, an LL.B. from Harvard University in 1912 and an S.J.D. in
1918. From 1914-1917 he taught Anglo-American Law at Peiyang University, now Tianjin University in Tianjin China. While there he was admitted to the bar of the United States
extraterritorial court for China. In 1917 Thompson served as one of the blind-folded
drawers of draft numbers for the first draft in World War I. He was appointed Thayer
Teaching Fellow at Harvard, 1918-1919, also practicing in Boston with public utility
law firms. From 1919-1926, he held a professorship at the University of Pittsburgh,
and then went to Cornell University where he taught courses in Procedure, and later
in Contracts and Business Regulation. Thompson made his chief contribution to the
field as associate editor of the eight-volume REVISED EDITION OF WILLISTON ON
CONTRACTS, 1936-1938. At Cornell, he was also active in the American Association of
University Professors, Phi Kappa Phi, and the Cornell-in-China program. Thompson's
wife Ruth served as the Secretary of the American Red Cross Committee in China
during their stay in China.
