D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson was born at sea on board his father's barque Georgiana, off Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), on April 18, 1829.

He was an educator and author. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1852; M.A., 1855) and became a Classical Master at the Edinburgh Academy. In 1863, he was appointed the chair of Greek and a librarian at Queen's College, Galway, Ireland, positions he held until his death in 1902. In 1867, he delivered the Lowell lectures in Boston. In his major work “Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster” (1864), partly autobiographical, he argued for sensitive teaching of Latin and Greek, broader female education, and the dignity of the teaching profession.

In 1859, he married Fanny Elizabeth Gamgee (1839–1860), and in 1866, he remarried Amy Eileen Drury (–1908). He died on January 25, 1902, in Galway, Ireland.