The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1959, Side 29

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
27
John Lawrence Thompson
Awarded A $10,000
Fellowship
A very special honor and privilege
came to John Lawrence Thomp-
son of Rockville Centre, New York,
last spring when he was awarded a Ford
Foundation Foreign Area Training-
Fellowship of $10,000. He left in Sept
for India where he will devote his time
to the changing scene as that vast
country is ibeing transformed from a
mainly agricultural economy to one of
industry and commerce.
Mr. Thompson, who was born in
1930 in 'the State of New York and re-
ceived his early education in Rockville
Centre, entered Princeton University
in 1948. He majored in the Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and Inter-
national Affairs and four years later
graduated Cum Laude. During his
undergraduate years Mr. Thompson
was prominent in debating and par-
ticipated in many other extra-curric-
ular activities.
After graduation John Lawrence
served for three years in the U.S.
Navy, at first on the U.S. destroyer
McCord, the last year on an ice break-
er. While in the navy he visited many
places including Thule and Iceland.
On completion of his navy service
he entered the University of Pennsyl-
vania for graduate studies in sociology,
specializing in South Asia studies. In
John Lawrence Thompson
his third year he held an Albert M.
Field Fellowship in Human Relations.
In 1957 he obtained a Master of Arts
degree in Sociology.
From the days of his undergraduate
work Mr. Thompson has been keenly
interested in India. In that land of
teeming population, with its deeply
entrenched caste system and its prim-
itive agricultural methods, he could
see an enormous amount of most con-
structive work to be done in blending
an ancient Asiatic civilization with
Western economic and labour relations
methods. Do the Indian workers, lv
asks, want to participate in manage-
ment-labour relations or will they pre-
fer to remain in a subordinate pos-
ition? First hand knowledge of the
social structure in India, he feels, is
necessary if the transformation is to be
successful; the understanding has to
be mutual, only then can a system be
evolved to produce a maximum of the
material necessities of life combined
with a maximum of human happiness.
For one who feels thus the Fellow-
ship must have been much more than