Cavendish Laboratory

The Cavendish Laboratory a few years after completion

The Cavendish Laboratory (English Cavendish Laboratory ) was founded in 1873. It is the Department of Physics at the English elite University of Cambridge . The University's Registrar, William Cavendish, the seventh Duke of Devonshire (April 27, 1808 - December 21, 1891), paid £ 6,300 to build a physics laboratory on condition that the colleges have the funds to set up one Make available the chair for experimental physics.

The laboratory was initially in the center of Cambridge on Free School Lane, but moved to West Cambridge in the early 1970s due to limited space. Physical chemistry moved earlier.

It is named after William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire , the former Chancellor of the University (hence the name Devonshire Laboratory) and in memory of his famous relative, the experimental physicist Henry Cavendish . The first Cavendish professor James Clerk Maxwell was responsible for the naming .

history

Maxwell as the first Cavendish Professor in Cambridge from 1871 to 1879

Due to the rapid development of the natural sciences in the course of industrialization, there was an increasing need for university research and training institutions in this area in the second half of the 19th century. One of the first universities in Britain to have a physics laboratory was Glasgow University (established by Lord Kelvin in the 1840s).

In the 1860s, the two great elite universities of Oxford and Cambridge saw themselves compelled to take their own steps and so the Clarendon Laboratory was established in Oxford in 1872 and the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge a year later. Founder and financier was the then Chancellor of the university, William Cavendish.

The Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell was appointed first professor for experimental physics even before the laboratory was built. He visited the existing laboratories in Glasgow and Oxford and made suggestions for the execution to the architect WM Fawcett. Loveday of Kibworth's offer for £ 8,450 was finally accepted and construction began on Free School Lane on March 12, 1872. At the end of 1873, classes could begin in the completed lecture hall and laboratories for the students. The official opening was on June 6, 1874.

Cavendish Professors in Physics

Ernest Rutherford's laboratory in the Cavendish Laboratory, 1926

Cavendish Professors:

• 1871-1879 James Clerk Maxwell
• 1879–1884 John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (Nobel Prize in Physics 1904)
• 1884–1919 Joseph John Thomson (Nobel Prize in Physics 1906), discoverer of the electron
• 1919–1937 Ernest Rutherford (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908), "Father of Atomic Physics"
• 1938–1953 William Lawrence Bragg (Nobel Prize in Physics 1915), the departments of molecular biology and astrophysics were established during his tenure
• 1954–1971 Nevill Francis Mott (Nobel Prize in Physics 1977)
• 1971-1984 Brian Pippard
• 1984-1995 Samuel Edwards
• since 1995 Richard Henry Friend

Up to Pippard, the Cavendish professors were also the heads of the laboratory, after which the functions were separated.

Andy Parker is currently the head of the laboratory.

Other well-known scientists who worked in the laboratory were the Nobel Prize winners Charles Barkla , Francis Aston , CTR Wilson , Arthur Holly Compton , Owen Richardson , James Chadwick , George Paget Thomson , Patrick Blackett , Edward Victor Appleton , John Cockcroft , Ernest Walton , Max Perutz , James Watson , Francis Crick , John Kendrew , Dorothy Hodgkin , Brian Josephson , Martin Ryle , Antony Hewish , Pjotr ​​Kapiza , Philip Warren Anderson , Allan Cormack , Malcolm Longair .

research

Entrance to the historic Cavendish Building in downtown, Free School Lane

So far, 28 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to researchers who have worked in the Cavendish Laboratory. The most important research fields were nuclear physics (prominently represented by Lord Rutherford and his school), atomic physics , molecular physics and crystallography , solid-state physics ( e.g. superconductivity ), electron microscopy and radio astronomy .

Among other things, the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid by James Watson and Francis Crick succeeded here in 1953 .

literature

• A Hundred Years and More of Cambridge Physics . First Edition 1974-Second Edition 1980-Third Edition 1995
• A history of the Cavendish laboratory, 1871-1910 Publisher: Longmans, Green & Co., London 1910

Web links

Commons : Cavendish Laboratory  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Website of the Institute for Physics
• The History of the Cavendish Laboratory
• Cavendish Laboratory - Department of Physics
• Cambridge West Site and Cavendish Laboratory

Individual evidence

1. ↑ History of the Laboratory ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Professor and Laboratory ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Coordinates: 52 ° 12 '33.3 "  N , 0 ° 5' 31.2"  E