University of Oxford

Early life in London during World War I; developing interests in mathematics; training at University of Oxford under John Nicholson, I. O. Griffith and Edward A. Milne; contact with Sydney Chapman and research on solar magnetic field and stellar structure; position at Imperial College with Chapman; comments on stellar structure studies of James Jeans, Edward Milne, and Arthur Eddington; work on Kinetic Theory of Gases and Magnetohydrodynamics and continued work in stellar structure; work during World War II and later contact with Hannes Alfvén; later positions and move to University of Leeds; growth and progress of astronomy in Britain. Also prominently mentioned are: Victor Amazaspovich Ambartsumian, Ludwig Franz Benedikt Biermann, Walter M. Elsasser, Bertil Lindblad, Alla Genrikhova Massevitch, H. S. Ruse, Erwin Schrödinger, Andréi Borísovich Sevérnyi, H. H. Turner; Baptist Church, Royal Astronomical Society, Royal Society (Great Britain), University College of North Wales, University College of Swansea, and University of Oxford.

Three years of preparation which led up to achievement, with Ernest T. S. Walton in 1932, of the first artificial transmutation of elements by accelerated protons, and the joyous reactions of his colleagues at the Cavendish Laboratory. With a three month grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, in 1933 visits with Robert Van de Graaff in Boston, Merle Tuve in Washington, Charles Lauritsen in Pasadena and Ernest O. Lawrence in Berkeley. In 1937, on his second American trip, noticed that the "sealing wax and string" at University of California at Berkeley had been replaced by engineering. Effect of influx of German refugee physicists. Rutherford's attitude toward a cyclotron at Cavendish because of Marcus Oliphant's low voltage ion source. Need for higher voltages and benefaction of a quarter million pounds from Lord Austin. Rutherford's complete control of Laboratory, the changing role of Cavendish over time; impact of the discovery of fission in England; effects of the war on nuclear physics and the differences in postwar planning and funding of research. Also prominently mentioned are: Niels Henrik David Bohr, James Chadwick, Ralph Howard Fowler, Petr Kapitsa; Cavendish Laboratory, European Council of Nuclear Research, Dept. of Physics at University of California Berkeley, and University of Oxford.

Early life and education in Manchester; World War I; spectroscopy work at Oxford under Frederick A. Lindemann; visits to Gottingen and Berlin in 1920s; ideas on stellar energy source and stellar structure; work and teaching at Rutgers (1929-1937); World War II research on de-Gaussing, ballistics; moves to Greenwich, then Herstmonceaux observatories; their administration and instruments; solar eclipse work; general relativity theory; return to U.S. Also prominently mentioned are: Herbert Jefcoate Atkinson, Irmin von Holton Atkinson, Mary Kathleen Jane Ashe Atkinson, Niels Henrik David Bohr, John Edward Campbell, Arthur Stanley Eddington, George Gamow, I. O. Griffith, Fritz G. Houtermans, Edwin Powell Hubble, James Hopwood Jeans, H. Spencer Jones, Walther Nernst, Henry Norris Russell, Frederick Soddy, Richard van der Riet Woolley; Aberdeen Proving Ground, Balliol College of University of Oxford, Great Britain Admiralty, Indiana University, Royal Astronomical Society, Royal Greenwich Observatory, United States Proving Ground at Aberdeen, MD Ballistics Research Laboratory, and Universitat Gottingen Observatory.