Thomas Royds

Thomas Royds (* April 11, 1884 in Moorside in Oldham, Lancashire, England; † May 1, 1955 in England ) was an English physicist. He is known for having 1909 along with Ernest Rutherford and Hans Geiger demonstrated that alpha particles are doubly positively charged helium nuclei. In addition, Royds was sun researchers.

Life and work

Thomas Royds studied at the University of Manchester physics and thereafter remained there to make spectroscopic research. From 1907 to 1909 he worked with Rutherford. They published four times together, the most important was the identification of the alpha particles. Formulated in 1902, Ernest Rutherford and his student Frederick Soddy, a decay theory to explain the radioactivity. This theory have confirmed in 1909, when they were able to demonstrate that it is in alpha order doubly positively charged helium ions Rutherford and Royds.

From 1909 to 1911 worked at Royds Friedrich Paschen in Tübingen and Heinrich Rubens in Berlin infrared rays. In 1911 he got his PhD degree in Manchester. In 1911 he went to India as Deputy Director of the Kodaikanal Solar Physics Observatory in Madras and conducted research there on the shift of the spectral lines in the solar spectrum. Between 1913 and 1937 he moved there 49 publications and more in magazines, for example, in Nature. When the director Evershed 1922 went into retirement, Royds became his successor. In 1929, he co-chaired with Professor Stratton of Cambridge an expedition to Thailand to observe a solar eclipse, but because of clouds hardly succeeded. In 1936 he took a year the heads of all monitoring stations in India, which also included the Meteorological Service of India. He then traveled with Stratton to a successful solar observation after Hokkaidō, Japan.

1937 Royds returned back to England and went into retirement two years later. A year later the post of an astronomer and director of the observatory of Istanbul University was free. Royds competed at the insistence of the British and got the job. The trip there in 1942 because of the war led to the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo and from there to Istanbul. In the fall of 1947 he returned to his contract expiry finally returned to England, where he died in 1955. He had two daughters and a son.

Works

  • With E. Rutherford: The Nature of the Alpha Particle from Radioactive Substances. In: Philosophical Magazine. ser 6, Volume 17, 1909, pp. 281-286 ( digitized )

Sources and links

  • Obituary - Times of London. May 4, 1955, page 15d.
  • Obituary - Indian Journal of Meteorology and Geophysics. Quarterly Volume 6, July 1955, No. 3, page 280
  • Indian Institute of Astrophysics Repository - Search by Royds!
  • Ernest Marsden, quoted on page 328 of the Rutherford Scientist Supreme by John Campbell, AAS Publications 1999
  • Physicist ( 20th century)
  • Briton
  • Born in 1884
  • Died in 1955
  • Man
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