Dr. L.E. Kirk, dean of Agriculture, and Leonard B. Thompson standing beside a car in a field.

Bio/Historical Note: Leonard Baden Thomson was born in Blenheim, New Zealand, and received his primary and high school education in that country. He came to Canada in 1920 and settled in Alberta, enrolling in a diploma course at Olds Agricultural College. He graduated from the University of Alberta with a BSc in Agriculture in 1925. In 1949 Thomson received an honourary Doctor of Laws degree from that institution. Thomson served as field husbandman at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa from 1926 to 1928, when he was appointed to the superintendency of the Dominion Range Experiment Station at Manyberries, Alberta. In 1935 he became superintendent of the Dominion Experimental Station at Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and remained in that post until 1948, when he was appointed director of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, originally set up to attempt to deal with the results of wind erosion and drought on Prairie soils in the 1930s. In 1948 Thomson also became chairman of the Prairie Provinces Water Board. Thomson was a member of the original group of agrologists who in the mid-30s set out to develop tillage methods that would halt wind erosion. Leonard Thomson died in 1956.