Denys Wilkinson

Denys Haigh Wilkinson ( born September 5, 1922 in Leeds ) is a British nuclear physicist.

Wilkinson studied at Cambridge, where until 1959 he was a Fellow of Jesus College in 1944 ( and since 1961 Honorary Fellow ). In 1943, he earned his bachelor's degree there in 1947 a Master's degree. In the same year he received his doctorate there as well. In between, he worked in British and Canadian nuclear energy projects. In 1947 he was Demonstrator, Lecturer in 1951 and 1956 Reader in Nuclear Physics at Cambridge. In 1957 he became a professor of nuclear physics ( from 1959 for experimental physics) in Oxford, where he was Chairman of the Division of Nuclear Physics from 1962 to 1976. In 1976 he left Oxford. From 1976 to 1983 he was Director of the International School of Nuclear Physics in Erice. From 1976 he was professor at the University of Sussex, where he was in 1987 Vice-Chancellor from 1976 until his retirement.

In 2001, the Laboratory of Nuclear Physics, University of Oxford, he co-founded in 1957, was named after him. In 1974 he was awarded the Tom W. Bonner Prize for nuclear physics.

Wilkinson since 1956 Fellow of the Royal Society, whose Hughes Medal in 1965 he and the Royal Medal he received in 1980. In 1974 he was knighted. In 1961 he was D.Sc. in Cambridge. 1985 to 1993 he was Vice President of IUPAP and from 1980 to 1982 he was president of the Institute of Physics. He was a member of numerous committees and bodies at the national level, but also, for example, at CERN. In addition to experimental nuclear physics, he also dealt with the navigation of birds.

1978 to 1984 he was editor of Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics.

He was married twice and has three daughters from his first marriage.

Writings

• Ionization chambers and counters, Cambridge University Press 1950
• As editor: isospin in nuclear physics, North Holland 1969
• As editor with Mannque Rho meson in nuclei, North Holland, 3 volumes, 1979
• Our Universes, Columbia University Press 1991