Paul Taunton Matthews

Paul Taunton Matthews ( born November 19, 1919 in Erode, India, † 26 February 1987 in Cambridge ) was a British physicist.

Matthews grew up in Madras, the son of a missionary and English teacher. He studied at Cambridge University, where he earned his doctorate under Nicholas Kemmer. At Cambridge he worked with Abdus Salam end of the 1940s and early 1950s together on renormalization theory. Later he was a professor at Imperial College London and director of the local physics faculty. He was on the board of the Division of Nuclear Physics in the British Science Research Council and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bath. In retirement, he was as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council for the management of radioactive waste in the UK. He died in Cambridge after a bicycle accident.

Matthews was a Fellow of the Royal Society (1963) and was CBE. In 1958 he was awarded the Adams Prize and 1979, the Rutherford Medal.

Writings

• Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, McGraw Hill, 1963, 3rd edition 1974
• The nuclear apple: recent discoveries in fundamental physics, Chatto and Windus 1971