J. Eric S. Thompson
Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson ( born December 31, 1898 in London, † September 9, 1975 in Cambridge ) was a British anthropologist and is considered one of the pioneers of Maya research. According to him, the so-called Thompson correlation is named - a correlation between the Mayan calendar the classical era and the Gregorian calendar.
On the subject of ' decipherment of Maya writing ' Thompson was a long time as an opponent of Tatiana Proskouriakoff and Yuri Knorosow that laid the foundations for dating or questions to the decipherment of Maya writing. As he described Knorosows research results as Marxist propaganda, Thompson Knorosows discredited work by weaknesses exploited in this work to reprimand the entire work to be incorrect. This led to the discoveries Knorosows were hardly accepted in the West. After Thompson's death, Knorosows assumptions translated but by gradually and formed the basis for further deciphering the Mayan writing system.