Walter Thompson Welford

Walter Thompson Welford (born August 31, 1916 in London - † September 18, 1990 ) was a British physicist, known as an optics expert.

Life

Until 1957 his name was Walter Weinstein.

Welford attended the Hackney Technical Institute until 1932 and was then a technician at London Hospital and later in the Biochemistry Department at Oxford University. He also studied autodidactically and received an external degree in mathematics at the University of London in 1942 (with top grades). He then worked at Adam Hilger Ltd. in London, became Research Assistant at Imperial College London in 1947 , Lecturer in 1951 , Senior Lecturer in 1959, Reader in 1964 and Professor of Physics in 1973. Even after his retirement, he continued to be scientifically active at Imperial College and the University of Chicago. He died of throat cancer.

He was a leading international expert in optics, from design and construction to testing a wide range of optical instruments. He conducted research on lens aberrations, optical microscopy, bubble chamber optics, diffraction gratings and at lenses, Laser - speckle , non-imaging optics, for example for solar panels.

In 1974 he received the Young Medal . In 1980 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society .

Fonts

• Optics . 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 1990 (first 1976)
• Useful optics . University of Chicago Press, 1991
• with Louis Claude Martin: Technical Optics . 2nd Edition. Pitman, London 1966
• Aberrations of optical systems . Adam Hilger, 1989
• Aberrations of the symmetric optical system . Academic Press, 1974
• with Roland Winston: The optics of nonimaging concentrators: light and solar energy . Academic Press, 1978
• with R. Winston: High collection nonimaging optics . Academic Press, 1989
• with R. Winston, Juan C. Miñano, Pablo Benítez: Nonimaging optics , Elsevier / Academic Press 2005
• Optical calculations and optical instruments: an introduction . In: Siegfried Flügge : Handbuch der Physik , Volume 29, 1967.

literature

• Michael Barnett, Robin Smith: Walter Thompson Welford 31 August 1916 - 18 September 1990 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. Royal Society (Great Britain) . tape 50 , 2004, ISSN  0080-4606 , p. 315-331 , PMID 15770767 .