Sir John Douglas Cockcroft,
OMThe Order of Merit
is an order recognizing distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
,
KCBThe Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the medieval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
,
CBEThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions...
(27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
physicistPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
. He received the
Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is a Sweden-based international monetary prize. The award was established by the 1895 will and estate of Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel. It was first awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace in 1901...
in Physics for splitting the
atomic nucleusThe nucleus is the very dense region consisting of nucleons at the center of an atom. Almost all of the mass in an atom is made up from the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, with a very small contribution from the orbiting electrons....
, and was instrumental in the development of
nuclear powerNuclear power is power produced from controlled nuclear reactions. Commercial plants in use to date use nuclear fission reactions....
.
Cockcroft was born in
TodmordenTodmorden is a market town and civil parish, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale, in West Yorkshire, England. It forms part of the Upper Calder Valley and has a total population of 14,941....
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
the eldest son of a mill owner. He was educated at
Todmorden Secondary SchoolTodmorden High School is a comprehensive school in the West Yorkshire town of Todmorden, in the Calderdale LEA. The school has specialist Arts College status.-Todmorden High School:...
(1909–1914) and studied
mathematicsMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
at the
Victoria University of ManchesterThe Victoria University of Manchester was a university in Manchester, England. On 1 October 2004 it merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to form a new entity, "The University of Manchester".-History:The University was founded in 1851 as Owens College, named...
(1914–1915). He was a
signallerIn the armed forces, a signaller is a soldier or seaman responsible for military communications and related tasks. Most signallers are employed in the operation of radio equipment and antennas , but other signallers may be responsible for the construction and maintenance of telephone lines and...
in the
Royal ArtilleryThe Royal Artillery is the common name for the Royal Regiment of Artillery, an arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
from 1915 to 1918.
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft,
OMThe Order of Merit
is an order recognizing distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
,
KCBThe Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the medieval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
,
CBEThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions...
(27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
physicistPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
. He received the
Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is a Sweden-based international monetary prize. The award was established by the 1895 will and estate of Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel. It was first awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace in 1901...
in Physics for splitting the
atomic nucleusThe nucleus is the very dense region consisting of nucleons at the center of an atom. Almost all of the mass in an atom is made up from the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, with a very small contribution from the orbiting electrons....
, and was instrumental in the development of
nuclear powerNuclear power is power produced from controlled nuclear reactions. Commercial plants in use to date use nuclear fission reactions....
.
Cockcroft was born in
TodmordenTodmorden is a market town and civil parish, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale, in West Yorkshire, England. It forms part of the Upper Calder Valley and has a total population of 14,941....
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
the eldest son of a mill owner. He was educated at
Todmorden Secondary SchoolTodmorden High School is a comprehensive school in the West Yorkshire town of Todmorden, in the Calderdale LEA. The school has specialist Arts College status.-Todmorden High School:...
(1909–1914) and studied
mathematicsMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
at the
Victoria University of ManchesterThe Victoria University of Manchester was a university in Manchester, England. On 1 October 2004 it merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to form a new entity, "The University of Manchester".-History:The University was founded in 1851 as Owens College, named...
(1914–1915). He was a
signallerIn the armed forces, a signaller is a soldier or seaman responsible for military communications and related tasks. Most signallers are employed in the operation of radio equipment and antennas , but other signallers may be responsible for the construction and maintenance of telephone lines and...
in the
Royal ArtilleryThe Royal Artillery is the common name for the Royal Regiment of Artillery, an arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
from 1915 to 1918. After the war ended, he studied electrotechnical engineering at
Manchester College of TechnologyThe University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research...
from 1919 until 1920. Cockcroft received a mathematics degree from St. John's College, Cambridge in 1924 and began research work under
Ernest RutherfordErnest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, FRS was a New Zealand chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics....
. In 1929 he was elected a Fellow of St. John's College.
In 1928, he began to work on the acceleration of
protonThe proton is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of +1 elementary charge. It is found in the nucleus of each atom but is also stable by itself and has a second identity as the hydrogen ion, H
+...
s with
Ernest WaltonErnest Thomas Sinton Walton was an Irish physicist and Nobel laureate for his work with John Cockcroft with "atom-smashing" experiments done at Cambridge University in the early 1930s. Walton is the only Irishman to have won a Nobel Prize in science.- Early years :Ernest Walton was born in...
. In 1932, they bombarded
lithiumLithium is a soft, silver-white metal that belongs to the alkali metal group of chemical elements. It is represented by the symbol Li, and it has the atomic number three. Under standard conditions it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly...
with high energy protons and succeeded in transmuting it into
heliumHelium is the chemical element with atomic number 2, and is represented by the symbol He. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert monatomic gas that heads the noble gas group in the periodic table...
and other
chemical elementA chemical element is a pure chemical substance consisting of one type of atom distinguished by its atomic number, which is the number of protons in its nucleus. The term is also used to refer to a pure chemical substance composed of atoms with the same number of protons.Common examples of elements...
s. This was one of the earliest experiments to change the
atomic nucleusThe nucleus is the very dense region consisting of nucleons at the center of an atom. Almost all of the mass in an atom is made up from the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, with a very small contribution from the orbiting electrons....
of one element to a different nucleus by artificial means. This feat was popularly – if somewhat inaccurately – known as
splitting the atom.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, he took up the post of Assistant Director of Scientific Research in the
Ministry of SupplyThe Ministry of Supply was a department of the UK Government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. There was, however, a separate ministry responsible for aircraft production and the Admiralty retained...
, working on
radarRadar is an object detection system that uses electromagnetic waves to identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The term RADAR was coined in 1941 as an acronym for RAdio Detection And...
. In 1944, he took charge of the Canadian Atomic Energy project and became Director of the
Montreal LaboratoryThe Montreal Laboratory in Montreal, Quebec, Canada was established by the National Research Council of Canada to undertake nuclear research, and to take over some of the scientists and projects from the Tube Alloys nuclear project in Britain...
and
Chalk River LaboratoriesThe Chalk River Laboratories is a Canadian nuclear research facility located near Chalk River, Ontario, about 180 km north-west of Ottawa....
, replacing
Hans von HalbanHans von Halban was a French physicist, of Austrian-Jewish descent.- Family :He was descended on his father's side from Polish Jews, who left Kraków for Vienna in the 1850s...
, who was considered a security risk. In 1946, he returned to Britain to set up the
Atomic Energy Research EstablishmentThe Atomic Energy Research Establishment near Harwell, Oxfordshire was the main centre for atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from the 1940s to the 1990s.-Founding:...
(AERE) at Harwell, charged with developing Britain's atomic power programme. He became the first director of AERE. Even when leaving the post, he continued to be involved with Harwell. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1944,
knightedThe British honours system is a means of rewarding individuals' personal bravery, achievement, or service to the United Kingdom. The system consists of three types of award: honours, decorations and medals:...
in 1948, and created Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1953.
As director of the AERE, he famously insisted that the
coolantA coolant is a fluid which flows through a device to prevent its overheating, transferring the heat produced by the device to other devices that use or dissipate it. An ideal coolant has high thermal capacity, low viscosity, is low-cost, non-toxic, and chemically inert, neither causing nor...
discharge chimney stacks of the Windscale
plutoniumPlutonium is a rare transuranic radioactive element. It is an actinide metal of silvery-white appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, forming a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states. It reacts with carbon, halogens, nitrogen and...
production reactors be fitted, at great expense, with high performance filters. Since this was decided after the stacks had been designed, they produced iconic lumps in the shape of the structures. The reactors were designed to remain clean and uncorroded during use, so it was not considered that there would be any particulate present for the filters to catch. These filters therefore were known as
Cockcroft's Folly right up until the
Windscale fireOn 10 October, 1957, the graphite core of a British nuclear reactor at Windscale, Cumberland , caught fire, releasing substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding area. The event, known as the Windscale fire, was considered the world's worst reactor accident until Three...
, when the core of one of the two reactors caught fire in 1957, at which point the nickname fell out of favour. The filters prevented a disaster from becoming a catastrophe.
In 1951, Cockcroft, along with Walton, was awarded the
Nobel Prize in PhysicsThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nobel Prize in literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
for his work in the use of accelerated particles to study the atomic nucleus. In 1959, he became the first Master of
Churchill College, CambridgeChurchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The College Motto is "Forward". It was taken from the final phrase of Winston Churchill's first speech to the House of Commons as Prime Minister - his famous "Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat" speech - in which he said...
. He was president of the
Institute of PhysicsThe Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics,and is the UK and Ireland's main professional body for physicists...
, the Physics Society, and the
British Association for the Advancement of ScienceThe British Association for the Advancement of Science or the British Science Association, formerly known as the BA, is a learned society with the object of promoting science, directing general attention to scientific matters, and facilitating interaction between scientific workers...
. Cockcroft served as chancellor of the
Australian National UniversityThe Australian National University, commonly abbreviated to ANU, is a public teaching and research university located in Canberra, Australia, the federal capital city...
from 1961 to 1965.
Cockcroft married Eunice Elizabeth Crabtree in 1925 and had four daughters and one son. He died at Churchill College, Cambridge, 18 September 1967; he is buried at the
Parish of the Ascension Burial GroundThe Ascension Parish Burial Ground, formerly St Giles and St Peter's Parish, is a cemetery just off Huntingdon Road near the junction with Storey's Way in the northwest of Cambridge, England. It includes the graves of many Cambridge academics and non-conformists of the 19th and early 20th century...
in Cambridge.
Today, five buildings in the United Kingdom are named after him: the Cockcroft building at the
New Museums SiteThe New Museums Site is a major site of the University of Cambridge, located in the centre of the city, on Pembroke Street and Free School Lane, sandwiched between Corpus Christi College, Pembroke College and the Lion Yard...
of the
University of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge , located in the City of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, is the second oldest university in the English-speaking world and the fourth oldest in Europe...
, comprising a lecture theatre and several hardware laboratories; the
Cockcroft InstituteThe Cockcroft Institute is an international centre for Accelerator Science and Technology in the UK. It was proposed in September 2003 and officially opened in September 2006. It is a joint venture of Lancaster University, the University of Liverpool, the University of Manchester, the Science and...
at Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire; the Cockroft Hall lecture theatre at the Harwell Science and Innovation Centre; the Cockcroft building of the
University of BrightonThe University of Brighton is a multi-site university based in the city of Brighton & Hove founded in 1859. The university occupies three sites in Brighton — at Grand Parade, Moulsecoomb, and Falmer, near the village of Falmer — and several smaller sites in Eastbourne...
; and the Cockcroft building of the
University of SalfordThe University of Salford is a plate glass university based in Salford, Greater Manchester, England with approximately 20,000 registered students...
. The oldest building at the
Research School of Physical Sciences and EngineeringThe Research School of Physics and Engineering was established with the creation of the Australian National University in 1947. Located at the ANU's main campus in Canberra, the school is one of the four founding research schools in the ANU's Institute of Advanced Studies.As part of the Institute...
, Australian National University, the Cockcroft building, is named after him.
In the 1950s, the AERE commissioned a number of homes to be built in the nearby town of
DidcotDidcot is a town in Oxfordshire about south of Oxford. It was transferred from Berkshire to Oxfordshire in 1974.-History and economy:Didcot dates back to the Iron Age The settlement was situated on the ridge in the town, and the remainder of the surrounding area was marshland.The Romans attempted...
for the many Harwell workers who lived there. The "focal" road of this development in the south of the town (the one with the shops, school and public house) is named Cockcroft Road.
Further reading
- Cathcart, Brian, The Fly in the Cathedral
The Fly in the Cathedral is a 2004 book by Brian Cathcart, telling the story of how physicists around the world, but particularly in the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, split the atom in the 1930s....
, Penguin, 2005. ISBN 0-14-027906-7
- The Papers of Sir John Cockcroft are held at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, and are accessible to the public. They include Cockcroft's lab books, correspondence, photographs (with dozens depicting the construction of Chalk River, CKFT 26/4), theses and political papers.
External links