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 laureate.
Life
John Cockcroft, was born on 27 May 1897 as the son of a factory owner in Todmorden, a small town near Manchester in England. There he completed his primary education and the Secondary School. Then he 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, then then continue his studies in mathematics, which he successfully completed in 1924. He then moved to the Cavendish Laboratory, which was directed by Ernest Rutherford. In 1934 he took over the management of the Royal Society moon Laboratory in Cambridge. He was appointed in 1939 as professor of natural philosophy and became deputy in September 1939, Director of Scientific Research in the Ministry of Supply. In this position, he began the study of radar for coastal and air defense. He was involved in the fall of 1940 at the Tizardmission that brought, among others, the magnetron in the radar technology, and was subsequently appointed Head of the Air Defence Research and Development Establishment. In 1944 he became a member of the Canadian Atomic Energy project and directed the Montreal and Chalk River Laboratories. He returned in 1946 in exchange for Wilfrid Bennett Lewis as Director of the Research Institute of Atomic Energy at Harwell back to England. It was in 1954 a scientific member of UK Atomic Energy Authority in 1959, he performed this task only on a part- time basis continuously since 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.
Work
Cockcroft worked at the Cavendish Laboratory Pyotr Kapitsa at first with the generation of strong magnetic fields and low temperatures.
From 1928, he conducted research together with his Irish physicist Ernest Walton colleagues in the field of acceleration of protons. The first particle accelerator developed by them (see Cockcroft -Walton accelerator) they were able to demonstrate the induction of nuclear reactions of light, bombarded with accelerated proton nuclei the first. So perhaps the most important experimental method of nuclear physics had been created.
1951 were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for their pioneering work in the field of atomic nuclear transformation by artificially accelerated atomic particles " Cockcroft and Walton.
Awards
In 1936 he was elected as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society, in 1938, the Hughes Medal, and in 1954, the Royal Medal awarded him. In 1948 he was knighted. In 1951 he was awarded (along with Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton ) the Nobel Prize for physics. In 1953 he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath ( KCB ), 1957 finally a member of the prestigious Order of Merit. On April 6, 1961 him the Atoms for Peace Award, and was awarded in Vienna Wilhelm Exner Medal.