|
William Lawrence Bragg was born in Adelaide, Australia, on 31st March 1890. He was
an impressionable boy and showed an early interest in science. His father, William
Henry Bragg, was Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the
University of Adelaide.
Shortly after starting school aged 5, William Lawrence Bragg fell from his tricycle and
broke his arm. His father had recently read about Röntgen's experiments in Europe
and used the newly discovered X-rays to examine the broken arm. This is the first
recorded surgical use of X-rays in Australia.
William Lawrence Bragg was a very able student. In 1904, aged 15, he went to the
University of Adelaide to study mathematics, chemistry and physics. He graduated
in 1908, aged 18. In the same year his father accepted a job at Leeds University,
and brought the family back to England. He entered
Trinity College, Cambridge in
the autumn of 1909. He received a major scholarship in mathematics, despite taking
the exam while in bed with pneumonia. After initially excelling in mathematics, he
transferred to the physics course in the later years of his studies, and graduated
in 1911.
William Lawrence Bragg is most famous for his law on the diffraction of X-rays by
crystals. Bragg's law makes it possible to calculate the positions of the atoms
within a crystal from the way in which an X-ray beam is diffracted by the crystal
lattice. He made this discovery in 1912, during his first year as a research student
in Cambridge. He discussed his ideas with his father, who developed the X-ray
spectrometer in Leeds. This tool allowed many different types of crystals to be
analysed. The collaboration between father and son led many people to believe that
the father had initiated the research, a fact that upset the son.
William Lawrence Bragg's research work was interrupted by both World War I and World War
II. During both wars he worked on sound ranging methods for locating enemy guns.
In autumn 1915, his brother Robert was killed. At about the same time William Lawrence
Bragg received the news that he had become the youngest person ever to receive the
, aged 25. He was knighted in 1941. After World War II, he
returned to Cambridge, splitting the Cavendish Laboratory into research groups.
He believed that 'the ideal research unit is one of six to twelve scientists and a
few assistants'. In 1948 William Lawrence Bragg became interested in the structure of
proteins. Although he played no direct part in the 1953 discovery of the structure
of DNA, James Watson admits that the X-ray method that Bragg developed forty years
before was at the heart of this profound insight into the nature of life itself.
In April 1953 William Lawrence Bragg accepted the job of Resident Professor at the
Royal Institution
in London. He proposed that the
Royal Institution should perform
some form of public service, and suggested series of lectures to show experiments
to schoolchildren. This idea was met with an enthusiastic response, and by 1965
20,000 schoolchildren were attending these lectures each year. He worked at the
Royal Institution until his retirement in September 1966.
William Lawrence Bragg's hobbies included painting, literature and a life-long interest
in gardening. He received both the Copley Medal and the Royal Medal of the Royal
Society, and in 1967 was made a Companion of Honour by the Queen. He died at a
hospital near his home at Waldringfield on 1st July 1971.
|
