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Location: the Parkinson Building of the University of Leeds OS Grid Ref: ? Unveiled: 18 March 1996 by Sir Arnold Wolfendale (President of the IOP) IOP Branch: Welsh Other links from 'Crystallography News':
Photograph by Malcolm Cooper. |
Having been brought up in his uncle's house after the death of his
mother, Bragg went on to study mathematics at Cambridge. He was an assiduous
worker, and graduated with first class honours. Soon after, he became
professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Adelaide, where he
published very little, but was very involved with the public understanding
of science, science education and university administration. He married an
astronomer's daughter, had a family, and took up golf. As part of his 1904
presidential address to a section of the Australian Association for the
Advancement of Science, however, he gave a highly critical talk on current
work in the field of the ionisation of gases, especially the scattering of
a, b and g rays by matter. Later on that year, at the age of 41, he began
the work that was to bring him wider recognition. He did experiments into
the absorption of a-particles, leading to the development of a method of
identifying radioactive substances. His next field of research was into the
nature of X-rays and g-rays, advocating a "quantised" view of X-rays. His
controversial view that ionisation of matter by these rays is a secondary
process involving a high speed electron was eventually confirmed by C.T.R.
Wilson's cloud chamber (see below). He became Cavendish professor of physics
at the University of Leeds in 1908, and together with his son (who was
working at the Cavendish) worked on the recently-discovered von-Laue
phenomenon. They became convinced that a theory of X-rays should take
account of both waves and corpuscles. The Braggs then became interested in
the inversion of the relation they had earlier discovered, nl =
2dsinq, to obtain the distances between atomic planes in a crystal
using a ray of known wavelength, thus transforming the analysis of crystal
structures into a straightforward procedure. During the First World War, he
did some research into crystals, but most of his time was spent in positions
of management and as an advisor. He worked on submarine detection, and was
knighted in 1920. During the war, Britain fell behind in X-ray spectroscopy,
but in 1923, Bragg became head of the Royal Institution, and set up a
research group to work on the analysis of organic crystals, a field in which
Britain was then able to excel. Bragg was President of the Royal Society
from 1935-1940. He had been a member of the Deutsche Physikalische
Gesellschaft since before the First World War, and at the outbreak of the
Second, tried unsuccessfully to further understanding between British and
German scientists. The last two years of his life were taken up with
scientific administration in the war effort.
Page last updated 22 October 2012