For the politician, see John Cockcroft (politician). For the cardiologist, see John R. Cockcroft.
Sir
John Cockcroft
OM KCB CBE FRS
Cockcroft in 1951
Born
(1897-05-27)27 May 1897
Todmorden, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Died
18 September 1967(1967-09-18) (aged 70)
Cambridge, England
Education
Victoria University of Manchester Manchester Municipal College of Technology (BSc, MSc) St. John's College, Cambridge (BA, PhD)
Known for
Splitting the atom
Awards
Hughes Medal (1938)
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1944)
Knight Bachelor (1948)
Nobel Prize in Physics (1951)
Royal Medal (1954)
Faraday Medal (1955)
Order of Merit (1957)
Atoms for Peace Award (1961)
Wilhelm Exner Medal (1961)
Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (1963)
Medal of Freedom with golden palms (United States, 1947)
Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (France, 1950)
Knight Commander of the Military Order of Christ (Portugal, 1955)
Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso X (Spain, 1958)
Scientific career
Fields
Physics
Institutions
Atomic Energy Research Establishment
Thesis
On phenomena occurring in the condensation of molecular streams on surfaces (1928)
Academic advisors
Ernest Rutherford
1st Master of Churchill College, Cambridge
In office 1959–1967
Succeeded by
Sir William Hawthorne
Sir John Douglas CockcroftOM KCB CBE FRS (27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was a British physicist who shared with Ernest Walton the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951 for splitting the atomic nucleus, and was instrumental in the development of nuclear power.
After service on the Western Front with the Royal Field Artillery during the Great War, Cockcroft studied electrical engineering at Manchester Municipal College of Technology whilst he was an apprentice at Metropolitan Vickers Trafford Park and was also a member of their research staff. He then won a scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he sat the tripos exam in June 1924, becoming a wrangler. Ernest Rutherford accepted Cockcroft as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory, and Cockcroft completed his doctorate under Rutherford's supervision in 1928. With Ernest Walton and Mark Oliphant he built what became known as a Cockcroft–Walton generator. Cockcroft and Walton used this to perform the first artificial disintegration of an atomic nucleus, a feat popularly known as splitting the atom.
During the Second World War Cockcroft became Assistant Director of Scientific Research in the Ministry of Supply, working on radar. He was also a member of the committee formed to handle issues arising from the Frisch–Peierls memorandum, which calculated that an atomic bomb could be technically feasible, and of the MAUD Committee which succeeded it. In 1940, as part of the Tizard Mission, he shared British technology with his counterparts in the United States. Later in the war, the fruits of the Tizard Mission came back to Britain in the form of the SCR-584 radar set and the proximity fuze, which were used to help defeat the V-1 flying bomb. In May 1944, he became director of the Montreal Laboratory, and oversaw the development of the ZEEP and NRX reactors, and the creation of the Chalk River Laboratories.
After the war Cockcroft became the director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at Harwell, where the low-powered, graphite-moderated GLEEP became the first nuclear reactor to operate in western Europe when it was started on 15 August 1947. This was followed by the British Experimental Pile 0 (BEPO) in 1948. Harwell was involved in the design of the reactors and the chemical separation plant at Windscale. Under his direction it took part in frontier fusion research, including the ZETA program. His insistence that the chimney stacks of the Windscale reactors be fitted with filters was mocked as Cockcroft's Folly until the core of one of the reactors ignited and released radionuclides during the Windscale fire of 1957.
From 1959 to 1967, he was the first Master of Churchill College, Cambridge. He was also chancellor of the Australian National University in Canberra from 1961 to 1965.
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft OM KCB CBE FRS (27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was a British physicist who shared with Ernest Walton the Nobel Prize in Physics...
best known for his work with JohnCockcroft to construct one of the earliest types of particle accelerator, the Cockcroft–Walton generator. In experiments...
the first controlled experiment to split the nucleus was performed by JohnCockcroft and Ernest Walton, working under his direction. In honour of his scientific...
accelerator physics named after Sir John D. CockcroftCockcroft, lunar crater named after Sir John D. CockcroftJohn Hoyle Cockcroft (born 1934), British Conservative...
foremost centres for the study of physics, attracting students like JohnCockcroft, Norman Feather, and Mark Oliphant. Chadwick followed his discovery...
Cambridge in February 1932. In April 1932, his Cavendish colleagues JohnCockcroft and Ernest Walton split lithium atoms with accelerated protons. Enrico...
established at RAF Harwell, south of Oxford, under the directorship of JohnCockcroft. Christopher Hinton agreed to oversee the design, construction and operation...
the United States access to its research, and the Tizard Mission's JohnCockcroft briefed American scientists on British developments. He discovered that...
reaction and nuclear transmutation was achieved by Rutherford's colleagues JohnCockcroft and Ernest Walton, who used artificially accelerated protons against...
pioneering work in neutron spectroscopy while at CRL from 1950 to 1962. Sir JohnCockcroft was an early director of CRL and also a Nobel laureate. Until the shutdown...
Nobel Peace Prize twice. Also the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Bardeen twice, as was the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Frederick Sanger and...
reaction and nuclear transmutation was achieved by Rutherford's colleagues JohnCockcroft and Ernest Walton, who used artificially accelerated protons against...
Institute is named after the Nobel prizewinner Sir JohnCockcroft FRS. The present director of the Cockcroft Institute is Stewart Boogert, who replaced the...
reaction involving high-energy protons bombarding lithium, demonstrated by JohnCockcroft and Ernest Walton, in 1932. Now, Szilárd proposed to use neutrons theoretically...
Simple Things). Himangshu Mohan Choudhury, 83, Indian civil servant. JohnCockcroft, 88, English journalist (Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph) and politician...
with the name The Institute of Physics and the Physical Society, with JohnCockcroft elected at its first president. The new society combined the learned...
occasion been awarded to multiple people at a time; in 1938 it was won by JohnCockcroft and Ernest Walton "for their discovery that nuclei could be disintegrated...
1935) James Chadwick (Physics – 1935) Patrick Blackett (Physics – 1948) JohnCockcroft (Physics – 1951) Ernest Hemingway (Literature – 1954) Alexander R. Todd...
calculations. Nuclear experiments began using a particle accelerator built by JohnCockcroft and Ernest Walton at Ernest Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory at the...
but this did not translate into scientific discovery. In April 1932, JohnCockcroft and Ernest Walton at the Cavendish Laboratory in England announced that...
transmutation was achieved by Rutherford's colleagues Ernest Walton and JohnCockcroft, who used artificially accelerated protons against lithium-7, to split...
invented by Robert Van de Graaff in 1929, and the Cockcroft-Walton accelerator invented by JohnCockcroft and Ernest Walton in 1932. The maximum particle...
that this did not meet AERE's computing needs, and AERE director Sir JohnCockcroft encouraged them to design and build a computer using transistors throughout...
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