William Ennis Thomson (May 24, 1927 – May 17, 2019) was an American music educator at the collegiate level, music theorist, composer, former Music School Dean and professor at the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California from 1980 to 1992. His overarching interest in research centered around the cognitive and perceptual foundation of music, insight for which is found in his 2006 article, "Pitch Frames as Melodic Archetypes", Empirical Musicology Review, 1.2, 1–18.