George Malcolm Thomson was the author of Naturalisation of Animals and Plants in New Zealand, a work that has been the reference manual for all those interested in the history of acclimatisation in New Zealand since its publication in 1922.

Thomson was educated in Edinburgh, and came to this country at the age of twenty. He farmed for three or four years, and then settled down to teaching at Otago Boys' High School, until he became an analytical chemist in 1911. Throughout his life he devoted himself to the causes of science and education, becoming a Reform Member of the House of Representatives, and writing many papers for the Royal Society, of which he was an active and keen member.

In 1904, after much effort, he founded the Portobello Marine Station, Dunedin, in the hope that research carried out there would further the fishing industry in New Zealand. It was a matter of much grief to him that this establishment was singularly ill-fated, failing in many of its ventures and eventually having its grant from the Government greatly reduced.