Sir William Henry Bragg (2 July 1862 – 10 March 1942) was a British physicist and one of the founders of modern solid-state physics. William Henry Bragg was the father of William Lawrence Bragg
William Bragg was born in Wigton, England in 1862. He completed his pre-university education at Market Harborough Grammar School and then King William College in the Isle of Man.
In 1881 he was awarded a scholarship to trinity college, Cambridge, to study mathematics under the guidance of the renowned teacher Edward John Rouse.
In June 1884 he was ranked third in the first part of the mathematics examination for honors students, entered the second part in early 1885, and studied physics at the Cavendish Laboratory for a time in the same year.
University of Adelaide
In 1885, William Bragg was hired as Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia, where he officially took office in early 1886. He didn't know much about physics before, and he only studied a lot of physics in Adelaide, but it was after the age of 40 that it really involved important research.
William Henry Bragg
In 1904, at a meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science in Dunedin, he chaired his group and published some recent Advances in the Theory of the Ionization of Gases. He continued his research on the basis of this paper, publishing his first book, Studies in Radioactivity, in 1912.
Shortly after that conference in 1904, he got some radium bromide and conducted research on it, and at the end of that year he published a research paper on radium rays in the Philosophical Magazine.
In 1907, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
At the end of 1908 he resigned from the University of Adelaide. During his 23 years at the university, he has witnessed several times the growth of its student population and contributed the greatest to the development of its faculty of science.
Leeds University years
In 1909 , William Bragg moved to leeds university as a Cavendish Professor of Physics. He continued his X-ray research here with great success. He invented the X-ray spectrometer and, together with his son William Lawrence Bragg, founded a new academic field for the analysis of crystal structure with X-rays. The application of this technique laid the foundation for the later discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
It was for this achievement in 1915 that both father and son were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
During the University College London period
William Henry Bragg (right) and his son
In 1915, William Bragg was hired by University College London as a professor of physics at Quinn, but due to the influence of the First World War, he did not begin work until after the war was over. During the war, he served mainly for the British government, conducting submarine detection research.
In 1918 he returned to London as an adviser to the Naval Command. After resuming his work at the university, his main research continued to be crystal structure analysis.
Royal Institute period
From 1923 he became Fullerrian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institute and Director of the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory. Under his leadership, the laboratory published a large number of valuable papers.
In 1935, he was elected President of the Royal Society. [1]
Research institutes: University of Adelaide (1886-1908), University of Leeds (1909-1915), University College London (1915-1923), Royal Institute
PhD students: William Lawrence Bragg, Catherine Lonsdale, William Asteberry
Major achievements
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William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg proposed the crystal diffraction theory through the study of X-ray spectra, established the Bragg formula (Bragg's law), and improved the X-ray spectrometer.
The 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Henry Prague of the University of London and his son Lawrence Bragg of The Victoria University in Manchester, England, for their contributions to the analysis of crystal structures using X-rays. The name Prague is almost synonymous with modern crystallography. [1]
Awards
Medal of Mateuchi (1915).
Rumford Medal (1916).
Copley Medal (1930).
He was also awarded the Order of Commander (C.B.E., 1917), the Knight's Order (K.B.E., 1920) and the Order of Merit (O.M. 1931).
Character evaluation
Sir William Henry Bragg (1862-1942) was a British physicist and one of the founders of modern solid state physics. He studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, and the University of London, and became president of the Royal Society in 1940. He was also a prominent social activist and a prominent figure in British public affairs in the 1920s and 1930s.
Posthumous commemoration
Both the grammar school he attended and King William's College have buildings named after him as a tribute to this distinguished graduate.
Since 1992, the Australian Physical Society has established a national annual Doctoral Dissertation in Physics Award, awarding the author of the best paper "The Bragg Gold Medal for Excellence in Physics", a medal named in honor of the Prague father and son.
In June 2012, the biography of Prague was published, and "Biography of Prague: One of the Winners of the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics" tells the ordinary and great life of William Henry Bragg.