John Cockcroft
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft (born May 27, 1897 in Todmorden , England, † September 18, 1967 in Cambridge ) was an English nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner.
Life
John Cockcroft was born on May 27, 1897 to a factory owner in Todmorden, a small town near Manchester , England. There he also completed his primary school education and secondary school . He then began in 1914 to study mathematics at the University of Manchester ; from 1915 he served in the Royal Field Artillery . After his service, he returned to Manchester and studied electrical engineering . After his training, he completed a two-year apprenticeship at the Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company and then continued his mathematics studies, which he successfully completed in 1924. He then moved to the Cavendish Laboratory , which was headed by Ernest Rutherford . In 1934 he took over the management of the Royal Society Moon Laboratory in Cambridge. He was appointed professor of natural philosophy in 1939 and became deputy director of scientific research in the Ministry of Supply in September 1939 . In this position he began researching radar for coastal and air defense. In the autumn of 1940 he was involved in the tizard mission , which among other things introduced the magnetron into radar technology, and was then appointed head of the Air Defense Research and Development Establishment . In 1944 he became a member of the Canadian Atomic Energy Project and headed the Montreal and Chalk River Laboratories . He returned to England in 1946 in exchange for Wilfrid Bennett Lewis as director of the Research Institute for Atomic Energy at Harwell . He became a scientific member of the British Atomic Energy Agency in 1954, and in 1959 he only continued this role on a part-time basis as he was appointed chairman of Churchill College , Cambridge.
He married Eunice Elizabeth Crabtree in 1925 , with whom he had five children. John Douglas Cockcroft died in 1967.
plant
Cockcroft initially worked with Pjotr Kapiza at the Cavendish Laboratory on the generation of strong magnetic fields and low temperatures.
From 1928 he researched together with his Irish physicist Ernest Walton in the field of the acceleration of protons . With the first particle accelerator they developed (see Cockcroft-Walton accelerator ) they were the first to be able to demonstrate the initiation of nuclear reactions on light atomic nuclei bombarded with accelerated protons. With this, perhaps the most important experimental method in nuclear physics had been created.
In 1951 Cockcroft and Walton were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for their pioneering work in the field of atomic nucleus conversion by artificially accelerated atomic particles”.
Cockcroft was at the nuclear reactor at Windscale on the installation of filters at the top of the chimney, which looked at many engineers as superfluous (they spoke of Cockcroft`s Follies , so Cockcrofts follies ). In the 1957 Windscale fire , the filters prevented worse things from happening, as they held back 95 percent of the radioactive material in the exhaust gases from the fire.
Awards
In 1936 he was elected as a member (" Fellow ") in the Royal Society , which in 1938 awarded him the Hughes Medal and in 1954 the Royal Medal . In 1948 he was promoted to Knight Bachelor . In 1950 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1951 he received (together with Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton ) the Nobel Prize in Physics . In 1953 he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB), and in 1957 he was made a member of the prestigious Order of Merit . On April 6, 1961 he was awarded the Atoms for Peace Award , as well as the Wilhelm Exner Medal in Vienna . 1970 was Mondkrater Cockcroft named after him.
Web links
- Literature by and about John Cockcroft in the catalog of the German National Library
- Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1951 award ceremony for John Cockcroft
- Entry about Sir John Douglas Cockcroft in the database of the Wilhelm Exner Medal Foundation .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Duncan Leatherdale: Windscale Piles: Cockcroft's Follies Avoided Nuclear Disaster , BBC News, Dec. 4, 2014
- ↑ Cockcroft (moon crater) in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cockcroft, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cockcroft, Sir John Douglas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English nuclear physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 27, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Todmorden , England |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 18, 1967 |
| Place of death | Cambridge |