Cavendish Professor, 1938–1954
1938 AD hired
Rutherford died and the search committee named Lawrence Bragg as next in the line of the Cavendish Professors who direct the Cavendish Laboratory.
The Laboratory had an eminent history in atomic physics and some members were wary of a cryptographer, which Bragg surmounted by even-handed administration. He worked on improving the interpretation of diffraction patterns. In the small crystallography group was a refugee research student without a mentor: Max Perutz. He showed Bragg X-ray diffraction data from hemoglobin, which suggested that the structure of giant biological molecules might be deciphered. Bragg appointed Perutz as his research assistant and within a few months obtained additional support with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The work was suspended during the Second World War when Perutz was interned as an enemy alien and then worked in military research.
During the war the Cavendish offered a shortened graduate course which emphasised the electronics needed for radar. Bragg worked on the structure of metals and consulted on sonar and sound ranging, for which the Tucker microphone was still used. Bragg was knighted and became Sir Lawrence in 1941.
After his father died in 1942, Bragg served for six months as Scientific Liaison Officer to Canada. He also organized periodic conferences on X-ray analysis, which was widely used in military research.
After the war Bragg led in the formation of the International Union of Crystallography and was elected its first president. He reorganized the Cavendish into units to reflect his conviction that "the ideal research unit is one of six to twelve scientists and a few assistants, helped by one or more first-class instrument mechanics and a workshop in which the general run of apparatus can be constructed." Senior members of staff now had offices, telephones, and secretarial support. The scope of the department was enlarged with a new unit on radio astronomy.
Bragg's own work focused on the structure of metals, using both X-rays and the electron microscope. In 1947 he persuaded the Medical Research Council (MRC) to support what he described as the "gallant attempt" to determine protein structure as the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, initially consisting of Perutz, John Kendrew and two assistants. Bragg worked with them and by 1960 they had resolved the structure of myoglobin to the atomic level.[28] After this Bragg was less involved; their analysis of hemoglobin was easier after they incorporated two mercury atoms as markers in each molecule.
The first monumental triumph of the MRC was decoding the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick. Bragg announced the discovery at a Solvay conference on proteins in Belgium on 8 April 1953, though it went unreported by the press. He then gave a talk at Guy's Hospital Medical School in London on Thursday, 14 May 1953, which resulted in an article by Ritchie Calder in the News Chronicle of London on Friday, 15 May 1953, entitled "Why You Are You. Nearer Secret of Life". Bragg nominated Crick, Watson and Maurice Wilkins for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Wilkins' share recognized the contribution of X-ray cryptographers at King's College London.
Subjects Who or What hired?
-
University of Cambridge School
Objects To Whom or What was hired?
-
Lawrence Bragg Sir William Lawrence Bra...
Events in 1938 MORE
