James Chadwick

James Chadwick

Sir James Chadwick, CH, FRS was a British physicist. He was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U.S. government to begin serious atomic bomb research efforts. He died in London in 1998, at the age of 89.

About James Chadwick in brief

Summary James ChadwickSir James Chadwick, CH, FRS was a British physicist. He was awarded the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the neutron in 1932. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired the U.S. government to begin serious atomic bomb research efforts. During the Second World War, Chadwick carried out research as part of the Tube Alloys project to build an atomic bomb. He received a knighthood in the New Year Honours on 1 January 1945. In July 1945, he viewed the Trinity nuclear test. After this, he served as the British scientific advisor to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. In 1948, he became the Master of Gonville and Caius College in 1948, and retired in 1959. He died in London in 1998, at the age of 89. He is buried at St Paul’s Cathedral, Manchester, with his wife and three children. He had two younger brothers, Harry and Hubert; a sister had died in infancy. He also had a sister, Anne Mary Knowles, a domestic servant, who died in 1971. His son, John, was a successful businessman and philanthropist. He and his wife had a son, James, who was also a physicist, and a daughter, Joanne, who is now a professor of physics at the University of Liverpool. Chadwick was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. He elected to study beta radiation under Hans Geiger in Berlin. In 1911, he devised a means of measuring gamma radiation, which he co-authored with Ernest Rutherford, which became known as the curie honours.

In 1912, he graduated with class honours with Rutherford. He spent the next four years in the Ruhleben internment camp. In 1913, he continued to study under Rutherford until he was awarded his MSc in 1913. After the war, he followed Rutherford to the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, where he earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree under Rutherford’s supervision in 1921. In 1935, he overhauled an antiquated laboratory and, by installing a cyclotron, made it an important centre for the study of nuclear physics. He anticipated that neutrons would become a major weapon in the fight against cancer. In 1936, he published the first paper, which, along with Rutherford, became the first to co-author the 1 gram unit of radium, a unit of activity of which they could become known as 1 gram radium. In 1939, he was one of the founders of the Royal Institute of Physics, which is now part of The University of Manchester. In 1940, he worked on the Manhattan Project, and was the head of the British team that worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory and in Washington, D. C. He served as a British scientific adviser to the UN atomic energy commission from 1948 to 1959. In 1959, he retired from the university after becoming the Master in Physics.