scholarly journals Ezer Griffiths, 1888-1962

1962 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 41-48
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
High Ability ◽  
Intermediate School ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
The Family ◽  
Research Scholarship ◽  
The University

Ezer Griffiths was born on 28 November 1888 at Aberdare in Glamorgan. His father, Abraham Lincoln Griffiths, was a colliery mechanic, and he and his wife Ann had nine children, three daughters and six sons of whom Ezer was the eldest son. There was evidently high ability in the family, since in addition to his own distinguished career two of his brothers have also gained good academic positions, and have published books, and another became a rector of a parish. Ezer himself attributed his success in life to the good fortune that there was an excellent Intermediate School at Aberdare, since otherwise he would have gone directly from the elementary school into coal-mining. As it was, he went as a student to University College, Cardiff, and studied physics there. He got First Class Honours, and was awarded a Research Scholarship, and later a Fellowship of the University of Wales. Still later, he proceeded to the degree of D.Sc. in that University. To give his later career briefly, he researched at Cardiff until 1915 and he was then appointed to the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington. There he remained for the rest of his life. In 1926 he was elected into the Royal Society, and in 1950 he was awarded the O.B.E. He retired from the N.P.L. in 1953.

scholarly journals John Edward Lennard-Jones, 1894-1954

1955 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 174-184 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
Grammar School ◽  
Atoms And Molecules ◽  
Lennard Jones ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester

John Lennard-Jones was born on 27 October 1894 in Leigh, Lancashire and was educated at Leigh Grammar School, where he specialized in classics. In 1912 he entered Manchester University, changed his subject to mathematics in which he took an honours degree and then an M.Sc. under Professor Lamb, carrying out some research on the theory of sound. In 1915 he joined the Royal Flying Corps, obtained his Wings in 1917 and saw service in France; he also took part in some investigations on aerodynamics with Messrs Boulton and Paul and at the National Physical Laboratory. In 1919 he returned to the University of Manchester as lecturer in mathematics, took the degree of D.Sc. of that university and continued to work on vibrations in gases, becoming more and more interested in the gas-kinetic aspects of the subject as his paper of 1922 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society shows. In 1922, on the advice of Professor Sydney Chapman, he applied for and was elected to a Senior 1851 Exhibition to enable him to work in Cambridge, where he became a research student at Trinity College and was awarded the degree of Ph.D. in 1924. At Cambridge under the influence of R. H. Fowler he became more and more interested in the forces between atoms and molecules and in the possibility of deducing them from the behaviour of gases.

scholarly journals George Wallace Kenner, 16 November 1922 - 26 June 1978

1979 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 390-420 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Organic Chemistry ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Biographical Memoir ◽  
College Of Technology ◽  
The Family ◽  
Organic Chemist ◽  
Family Home ◽  
The University

George Wallace Kenner was born on 16 November 1922 at Sheffield, the younger son of a well known organic chemist James Kenner (1885-1974) who was at that time a lecturer in chemistry at the University of Sheffield. Details of the Kenner family’s origins are to be found in the biographical memoir of James Kenner ( Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society , 1975, 21, 389) and need not be repeated here. His mother, herself a chemist, I can recall only as a rather ebullient, talkative woman devoted to her two sons, Donald and George, in a family dominated by an aggressive father and kept very much to itself as a result. Before George was two years old the family left England for Australia where in late 1924 his father became Professor of Organic Chemistry (Pure and Applied) in the University of Sydney. Not surprisingly, we know little of George’s time there since the family returned to England in January 1928 when James Kenner was appointed Professor of Technological Chemistry at the Manchester College of Technology. The Kenners took up residence in the Manchester suburb of Withington where the family home remained (nominally at least) until James Kenner’s death in 1974.

“ Ten Years' Testing of Model Seaplanes ”

1923 ◽  
Vol 27 (149) ◽  
pp. 224-243
Author(s):  
G. S. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Work ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Experimental Tank ◽  
Know How ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
Hull Design

An Ordinary General Meeting- of the Society was held at the Royal Society of Arts, on Thursday, February ist, 1923, Professor L. Bairstow in the chair.The Chairman, in opening- the proceedings, said that Mr. G. S. Baker, O.B.E., of the National Physical Laboratory, would deal with flying boats and seaplanes. He would deal with the hull and its design, that part of the seaplane which differentiates it from the aeroplane. That subject had been touched on very lightly by Major Rennie at the previous meeting of the Society, in view of the present paper by Mr. Baker.Mr. Baker had begun work in 1912 on the problems of hull design, at a time when nothing of a definite nature was known; a few individual experiments had been carried out, but there was no systematised knowledge at all at that time. From that state of ignorance a great deal of experimental work had now rescued us. He did not know how far Mr. Baker would stress the point, but it was quite clear, from the investigation of certain accidents to seacraft, that there were fundamental differences in the behaviour of seaplane hulls on the water, differences which had a great deal of effect on the risk of flying-. For instance, if one type of hull was such that when the plane rose in the air it stalled, then all the aerodynamical consequences of stalling- followed, and there was difficulty. On the other hand, it appeared that we had a type of flying- boat which did not make the plane stall on getting into the air, and consequently if it came back to the water it was still controlled. For this type of development, which he believed really dated back to the C.E.i, we were mainly indebted to Mr. Baker and his associates at the National Physical Laboratory, and to the generosity of Sir Alfred Yarrow in placing such a magnificent piece of apparatus as the experimental tank at the disposal of the nation.Mr. Baker then read his paper on “ Ten Years’ Testing of Model Seaplanes.”

scholarly journals Arthur Mannering Tyndall, 1881-1961

1962 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 159-165 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Private School ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
University College ◽  
The Subject ◽  
University Of Bristol ◽  
The University ◽  
The City ◽  
Outstanding Teacher

Arthur Mannering Tyndall was a man who played a leading part in the establishment of research and teaching in physics in one of the newer universities of this country. His whole career was spent in the University of Bristol, where he was Lecturer, Professor and for a while Acting ViceChancellor, and his part in guiding the development of Bristol from a small university college to a great university was clear to all who knew him. He presided over the building and development of the H. H. Wills Physical Laboratory, and his leadership brought it from its small beginnings to its subsequent achievements. His own work, for which he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, was on the mobility of gaseous ions. Arthur Tyndall was born in Bristol on 18 September 1881. He was educated at a private school in Bristol where no science was taught, except a smattering of chemistry in the last two terms. Nonetheless he entered University College, obtaining the only scholarship offered annually by the City of Bristol for study in that college and intending to make his career in chemistry. However, when brought into contact with Professor Arthur Chattock, an outstanding teacher on the subject, he decided to switch to physics; he always expressed the warmest gratitude for the inspiration that he had received from him. He graduated with second class honours in the external London examination in 1903. In that year he was appointed Assistant Lecturer, was promoted to Lecturer in 1907, and became Lecturer in the University when the University College became a university in 1909. During this time he served under Professor A. P. Chattock, but Chattock retired in 1910 at the age of 50 and Tyndall became acting head of the department. Then, with the outbreak of war, he left the University to run an army radiological department in Hampshire.

Sir Granville Beynon, C. B. E.. 24 May 1914–11 March 1996

1998 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 53-62
Author(s):  
L. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
University Education ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Radio Waves ◽  
Free Electrons ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
Science And Education ◽  
The Many ◽  
The University ◽  
Happy Family

From his appointment as a Scientific Officer at the Radio Division of the National Physical Laboratory in 1938, which marked the start of his active collaboration with Sir Edward Appleton, to his death in 1996, Granville Beynon's chosen field of scientific endeavour was the study of the ionosphere, the atmosphere at heights where the concentration of free electrons is sufficient to influence the propagation of radio waves. Through his establishment of research groups at Swansea and Aberystwyth Colleges of the University of Wales, and his tenure of senior offices in appropriate national and international committees, he had a major influence in this area of science. His involvement in university education included a period as Vice–Principal at Aberystwyth, but his interest in education extended beyond the university sector and this was marked by his service as Chairman of the Schools Council Committee for Wales. For his services to science and education he received several honours at both national and international levels. In spite of the many demands on his time, he enjoyed a very happy family life in which music played a central part.

Some recent developments at the National Physical Laboratory

1962 ◽  
Vol 265 (1321) ◽  
pp. 141-160
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
Industrial Research ◽  
Scientific Policy ◽  
Governing Body ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Creation

When the National Physical Laboratory was founded in 1900, the Royal Society was ‘invited to control the proposed institution and to nominate a governing body’. Since the Royal Society had agitated strongly for the creation of such a laboratory, this invitation was accepted, and although the National Physical Laboratory was incorporated into the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research when that body was created in 1917, the connexion between the Royal Society and the National Physical Laboratory is still very close on all matters of scientific policy.

Centenary of the NPL

2001 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
A. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
Royal Observatory ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Grant

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) attained its centenary in 2000 and that was the occasion for a meeting in The Royal Society on 7 November 2000. The centenary is part of the record of The Royal Society because Fellows of the Society actively promoted the formation of the laboratory, and the programme of the Laboratory in its early years was guided by a committee of the Society. In addition, some of the researches of the Laboratory were supported by grants from the government grant administered by the Society. The relations between the early Laboratory and the Society are not unlike those between the Society and the early Royal Observatory more than 200 years earlier. The centenary of the NPL was indeed an event of the last year of the Second Millennium, and so we include this account of the meeting of 7 November, which includes Lord Sainsbury's and the President's Addresses and abstracts of the presentations from other speakers.

scholarly journals VIII.—The Electrical Resistance of Nickel at High Temperatures

1887 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-198
Author(s):  
Cargill G. Knott
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Expansion ◽  
High Temperature ◽  
Electrical Resistance ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Thermal Capacity ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
Electric Conductor ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University

In the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1874–75 there is a short paper on the “Electrical Resistance of Iron at a High Temperature.” It is the record of certain experiments made by three of us, then students in the Physical Laboratory of the University of Edinburgh; and its conclusion is that there is a peculiarity in the behaviour of iron as an electric conductor at the temperature of a dull red heat. At this temperature other physical peculiarities are known to exist, particularly as regards its thermal expansion, its thermal capacity, and its specific heat for electricity. The discovery of these striking properties we owe respectively to Dr Gore, Professor Barrett, and Professor Tait.

scholarly journals Thomas Lydwell Eckersley, 1886-1959

1960 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 69-74
Keyword(s):  
Transmission Lines ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
Radio Waves ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
University College London ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University ◽  
Alternating Magnetic Fields

Thomas Lydwell Eckersley was born on 27 December 1886 in London. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Henry Huxley who was at one time President of the Royal Society. From the age of 2 1/2 to 6 Eckersley lived in Mexico where his father, who was a civil engineer, was engaged in building a railway. In his early life Eckersley was interested in engineering and in scientific devices and he had a desire to emulate his father and to build bridges. At the age of 11 he went to Bedales School where he came under the influence of an able teacher of mathematics who laid the foundations of his life-long interest in the subject. He left school at the early age of 15 and went to University College London, to read engineering, but he found he was not really as interested in the practical aspects of the work as he had at one time supposed, and he achieved only a Second Class degree. On leaving the University he went to the National Physical Laboratory where he found himself working under Albert Campbell on the behaviour of iron under the influence of alternating magnetic fields. Through this work he became interested in magnetic detectors for radio waves, and he did a good deal of experimenting with radio apparatus at his own house. His first paper was published, jointly with Campbell, on the effect of Pupin loading coils on waves travelling along transmission lines.

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