Helen Cargill Thompson
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Born in Burma where her father worked as a merchant trader, in 1939, Thompson, her parents and two brothers returned to Glasgow to live with her grandparents in Mirrlees Drive, close to Glasgow Botanic Gardens. Her great-granduncle David Sime Cargill was the founder of Burmah Oil.,[1] the Cargills having started as East India merchants in Glasgow and merchant traders in Ceylon (today's Sri Lanka), where the business was known as the 'Harrods of Colombo'. Her older brother, William David James Cargill Thompson, was a professor of ecclesiastical history at King's College, London, and her younger brother, John Cargill Thompson, was a playwright.
Education
Thompson attended Cheltenham Ladies College, then studied physiology and pharmacology at St Andrews University, and went on to do a PhD presenting the thesis "The assay of growth hormone and gonadotrophins in relation to clinical problems" [2] at Edinburgh University involving research into the contraceptive pill.[3]
Career
Thompson worked for ten years as a research scientist, then changed career in response to a campaign to recruit scientists to work in libraries as information officers. In 1970 she started her librarianship training in the Andersonian Library at Strathclyde University. On August 5, 1982, she became head of the Andersonian Library's new Reference and Information Division, a post she held until her retirement in 1999.[3]