Appleton, Sir Edward Victor, 1892-1965 (physicist and principal of the University of Edinburgh)
Dates
- Existence: 1892 - 1965
Biography
Appleton was born in Bradford and educated at local schools and St John's College, Cambridge where he was awarded first class honours and several prizes in both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos (1913, 1914). He began research at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge with W.L. Bragg, but during his service in the Army Signals in the First World War he developed the interest in valves and 'wireless' signals which informed his subsequent research career. He returned to the Cavendish Laboratory in 1919, continuing to work on valves and, with B. van der Pol, on non-linearity, and on atmospherics. In 1924, in collaboration with M.F. Barnett, he performed a crucial experiment which enabled a reflecting layer in the atmosphere to be identified and measured; subsequent research indicated the existence of more than one reflecting layer. From 1924 to 1936 Appleton was Wheatstone Professor of Physics at King's College, London, directing research teams and, in 1932, heading an expedition to Tromsö in northern Norway as part of the programme of observations scheduled for the Second International Polar Year
He was President of the International Union of Scientific Radio (URSI), 1934-1952. In 1936 he succeeded C.T.R. Wilson in the Jacksonian Chair of Natural Philosophy at Cambridge, where he continued collaborative research on many ionospheric problems, including solar and lunar tides in the E-layer. From September 1936 he served on the re-constituted Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence (the 'Tizard Committee'), and in October 1938 was appointed successor to Sir Frank Smith as Secretary to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). He remained at the DSIR throughout the Second World War and until 1948 when he was appointed Principal of Edinburgh University. He took up the appointment in May 1949 and remained in office until his death in 1965. Appleton was elected FRS in 1927 (Bakerian Lecture 1937, Hughes Medal 1933, Royal Medal 1950) and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1947 for his investigations into the ionosphere. He was knighted in 1941.
Found in 6 Collections and/or Records:
11 pages of notes on integrals, November 1935
11 pages of notes on integrals. These were sent with a covering note November 1935 by G. Cook, and originally tucked into notebook Coll-37/B.27.
Correspondence between E. Cunningham and Edward Appleton, c. 1927
Correspondence between E. Cunningham and Edward Appleton. The material consists of letters on mathematical aspects of Appleton's work, and especially on the positive and negative signs. Also included is the last page of a letter from Appleton on the problem and asking for assistance. Only some of the letters are dated May 1927.
Correspondence between Mary L. Cartwright and Edward Appleton, c. 1943
Correspondence between Mary L. Cartwright and Edward Appleton, c. 1943. The material consists of letters and calculations and it includes two letters from J.E. Littlewood (only one dated, 1943), and 1 page of calculations in another hand.
Correspondence between Mary L. Cartwright and Edward Appleton, c. 1946
Correspondence between Mary L. Cartwright and Edward Appleton, c. 1946. The material consists of letters, graphs and it includes draft of Cartwright's paper, 'Forced oscillations in nearly sinusoidal systems' and miscellaneous offprints on the subject by Cartwright, Littlewood, Van der Pol, etc., not all dated.
Correspondence between Mary Taylor and Edward Appleton, 1931-1933
Correspondence between Mary Taylor and Edward Appleton, dated 1931-1933. The material includes a translation by Taylor of a Russian paper by L. Schekulin on the subject of propagation of electromagnetic waves in ionized gas under the influence of a constant magnetic field H.
Large ledger-type notebook, c. 1936
Large ledger-type notebook. The notebook contains notes on mathematics, some labelled 'Lecture II', etc., perhaps for lectures at Cambridge, c. 1936.
Additional filters:
- Subject
- Oscillations 2
- Calculus Integral 1