Eric Thomson was a professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery and director of the school of dentistry at the University of the West Indies. He was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire on 27 January 1938, the son of Eric F Thomson, a civil servant, and Mary Thomson née McCaughan. He studied dentistry at the University of Bristol and qualified with a BDS in 1961. He went on to study medicine at Bristol and gained his MB ChB in 1972. In 1979 he became a fellow of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. In 1961 he married Bertina F Quail. Thomson died on 9 June 2008. He was 70. His last known address was in Stroud, Gloucestershire.