Basil Schonland

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Sir Basil Ferdinand Jamieson Schonland (born February 2, 1896 in Grahamstown , South Africa , † November 24, 1972 in Winchester ) was a South African physicist and meteorologist .

Life

His parents were the botanist Selmar Schönland and Flora (nee MacOwan), the daughter of the botanist Peter MacOwan . From 1910 Basil Schonland attended St. Andrew's College in Grahamstown . He later studied at Rhodes University . From 1914 to 1915 he was enrolled at Gonville and Caius College , Cambridge. During the First World War , Schönland served in France in the Signal Service of the Royal Engineers . From 1919 to 1920 he was back at Gonville and Caius College.

At the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University , he studied the scattering of beta particles . In 1922 he returned to South Africa and became a lecturer and later professor of physics at the University of Cape Town . In 1931 he had received a camera from Charles Boys to record lightning. In 1937 he became the founding director of the Bernard Price Institute for Geophysics at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. There he studied atmospheric electricity and the electric fields of thunderclouds. In 1938 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the Royal Society .

When the Second World War broke out, he commanded the South African Special Signals Services and led the development of a South African radar system. When he traveled to England in 1941 to procure more equipment, at the request of John Cockcroft , he remained in Richmond, Surrey, until 1944 as head of the Army Operational Research Group of the Air Defense Research and Development Establishment (AORG) .

In 1945 Jan Christiaan Smuts insisted on his return to set up the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria . He also resumed his post as director of the Bernard Price Institute. From 1951 to 1962 he was Chancellor of Rhodes University . He resigned from this representative function, however, in 1962 when the then South African President Charles Robberts Swart received an honorary doctorate from the university, as he, as a former member of the government, had played a key role in the Extension of University Education Act ( Act 45/1959 ), which was racially motivated The division of the country's university landscape had been fixed by law.

In 1954 he became an assistant director and later director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell , Oxfordshire . After the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority was founded around 1960, he became director of the research group.

In 1945 Schonland was awarded the Hughes Medal .

Publications

  • Atmospheric Electricity . 1932
  • The Flight of Thunderbolts . 1950
  • The Atomists 1805-1933 . 1968

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry on Schonland, Sir, Basil Ferdinand Jamieson (1896 - 1972) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
  2. ^ Nelson Mandela Center of Memory: 1959. Extension of University Education Act No. 45 . on www.nelsonmandela.org (English)
  3. ^ Roger Southall, Julian Cobbing, Center for Civil Society ( UKNZ ): From racial liberalism to corporate authoritarianism: the shell affair and the assault on academic freedom in South Africa . P. 7 (PDF document p. 7) online at www.ccs.ukzn.ac.za (English)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schonland, Basil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schonland, Sir Basil Ferdinand Jamieson (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African physicist and meteorologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Grahamstown , South Africa
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1972
Place of death Winchester