John Battiscombe Gunn

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Battiscombe Gunn (in the middle).

John Battiscombe "JB" Gunn (born May 13, 1928 in Cairo , Egypt , † December 2, 2008 in Mount Kisco , New York ) was a British physicist . After him u. a. named the Gunn effect and the Gunn diode .

life and work

John Battiscombe Gunn was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1928. His father was the English Egyptologist Battiscombe "Jack" George Gunn , one of the leading scholars of Egyptian hieroglyphics . At that time he was assistant to the curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo . His mother was Lillian Frances (Meena) Meacham Hughes Gunn. After a short stay in Philadelphia (from 1931) the family returned to England in 1934 , where his father Jack Gunn was appointed professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford . He held this position until his death in 1950.

In Oxford he attended King Alfred School and Solebury School (emigrants during World War II). After World War II he studied physics at Trinity College , Cambridge , where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1948 . After graduating, he became a research engineer at Elliott Bros. (London) Ltd, Borehamwood , and from 1953 he was a research fellow at the Royal Radar Establishment in Great Malvern . In 1956 he moved with his family to Canada, where he accepted a position as an assistant professor in the Physics Department at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver . Three years later, he moved to IBM's research department , the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown . He stayed there until his retirement in 1990.

The most important work of Gunn was the discovery of the Gunn effect named after him in 1963 and the Gunn diode based on it. The Gunn diode is considered to be the first cheap source of microwave radiation that managed without vacuum tubes .

J. B. Gunn died December 2, 2008 at home in Mount Kisco , New York , to colon cancer . He left behind three daughters Janet, Gillian and Donna Gray. Gunn's wife Freda Elizabeth Gunn (née Pilcher) died in 1975. His older half-brother , the British jazz artist Patrick "Spike" Hughes , died in 1987.

Awards

For his services in the field of solid-state microwave generators, John B. Gunn received the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award in 1969 . Furthermore, he received the John Scott Award (Engl. John Scott Price ) and Medal of the city of Philadelphia (1971) and Valdemar Paulsen gold medal (Engl. Valdemar Paulsen Gold Medal ) of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences . In 1977 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers: IEEE membership directory . Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1988.
  2. ↑ a b Contributers . In: IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices . tape 23 , no. 7 , 1976, p. 786 .
  3. ^ Death notice. John Battiscombe Gunn. In: Physics Today. American Institute of Physics, February 13, 2009, accessed March 5, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Gunn, John Battiscombe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gunn, JB
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Cairo , Egypt
DATE OF DEATH December 2, 2008
Place of death Mount Kisco , New York