 His publications are many and varied, and include such seminal works as the "Gaelic Sources of Macpherson's Ossian", "An Introduction to Gaelic Poetry", "The Companion to Gaelic Scotland" (edited by him) and "Gaelic Poetry in the Eighteenth Century"; his contributions to Welsh studies are also noteworthy.No less important has been Professor Thomson's work for the promotion of Scottish Gaelic literature, not only, to take one example, as founder, editor and publisher of the quarterly Gairm since 1953.He was elected Fellow of the Academy in 1992 and gave last year's Rhys Lecture on Scottish Gaelic Traditional Songs from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century.