High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson (31 December 1898 – 9 September 1975) was an English Mesoamerican archeologist, ethnohistorian, and epigrapher. His contributions to the understanding of Maya hieroglyphs lead him to be one of the foremost mid-20th century anthropological scholars. He was generally known as J. Eric S. Thompson in print and Eric Thompson to his colleagues.