Harrie Massey

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Sir Harrie Stewart Wilson Massey (born May 16, 1908 in St Kilda , near Melbourne , † November 27, 1983 in Cambridge ) was an Australian theoretical physicist who worked in the field of atomic physics and atmospheric physics and played an important role in the early days of British space exploration played.

Massey grew up in Hoddles Creek and won a government scholarship at sixteen to study at the University of Melbourne , where he studied physics and chemistry with a bachelor's degree in 1927 and then mathematics with a bachelor's degree in 1929. Since the university had no doctoral program at the time, closed He graduated with a master’s degree in physics in 1930, with Ralph Fowler as supervisor for the theoretical part in the then new wave mechanics and an experimental part about the scattering of soft X-rays on metal surfaces. In 1929 he went on a scholarship to the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University under the direction of Ernest Rutherford . In 1932 he received his doctorate there under Fowler ( The Collision of material particles ). It was there that he wrote his famous book on atomic scattering processes with Nevill Mott . In the early 1930s he was the first to observe electron diffraction in gases with Edward Bullard . In 1933 he was lecturer for mathematical physics at the Queen's University of Belfast and in 1938 professor for mathematics and from 1950 for physics at University College London . During the Second World War he worked for the British Admiralty doing research on mine warfare. From 1950 he headed the Department of Physics at University College. From 1973 he was professor of astrophysics at University College. In 1975 he retired there.

He was knighted as a Knight Bachelor in 1960 and was a Fellow of the Royal Society , whose Hughes Medal he received in 1955 and whose Royal Medal he received in 1958. He also received the Royal Astronomical Society gold medal in 1982 . In 1975 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society . Massey was first chairman of the British National Committee for Space Research (1958-1976) and the European Space Sciences Committee. He co-founded the European Space Research Organization and the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London. An award from the Royal Society and the Australian Institute of Physics is named after him. The latter has been awarding the Massey Medal with the British Institute of Physics since 1988.

Fonts

  • with Mott Theory of atomic collisions , Clarendon Press, Oxford 1933, 1949, 1966, 1987
  • with Hyman Kestelman Ancillary Mathem, atics , 1958, 2nd edition, Pitman and Sons, 1964
  • Applied Atomic Physics Processes , Academic Press, 1982
  • Atoms and Energy , London, Elek Books, 1956
  • with Robert LF Boyd The upper atmosphere , New York, Philosophical Library, 1958
  • with Arthur Robert Quinton Basic Laws of Matter , Bronxville (New York), Herald Books 1961
  • Space Travel and Exploration , London, Taylor and Francis 1966
  • Space Physics , Cambridge University Press 1964
  • The new age in physics , New York, Harper 1966
  • Negative Ions , Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 1950, 3rd edition, 1976
  • Atomic and Molecular Collisions , Wiley / Taylor and Francis 1979
  • with Malcolm Owen Roberts History of British Space Science , Cambridge University Press 1986
  • with EHS Burhop Electronic and Ionic Impact Phenomena , Oxford, Clarendon Press 1952, 2nd edition with HB Gilbody 1969

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Harrie SW Massey. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 29, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Massey, Harrie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Massey, Harrie Stewart Wilson (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian theoretical physicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH St Kilda , near Melbourne
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1983
Place of death Cambridge