Today (September 18, 1967) is the memorial day of Nobel laureate Sir John Douglas Cockrooft, who created nuclear fission energy.
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft was born on 27 May 1897 in Yorkshire, England. He served in the British Army in the Western Front during World War I. Cockcroft studied electrical engineering at Manchester College of Technology. He later received a scholarship and studied at St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1924, Ernest Rutherford enrolled Kokroft as a research student in his County Laboratory. In 1928, under Rutherford's supervision, Cockcroft completed his doctoral dissertation. During this time he worked as an assistant to the Russian physicist Peter Kapitsa. Capitza was studying the physics of magnetic fields at very low temperatures. Cockcroft helped develop helium lubricants.
Cockcroft discovered that protons
were capable of penetrating the boron nucleus with a force of 300,000 electron
volts. Cockcroft and Walton worked to build their accelerator for the next two
years. For this they were given a transformer. In 1932 the two used their
accelerators to collide lithium and beryllium with high-energy protons. They
expected gamma rays as a result. But not available. But what they observed was
visualized by James Chadwick as nodules. Cockroach and Walton then thought of
getting the alpha particles. On April 14, 1932, they discovered alpha
particles. They first announced artificial nuclear fission in the journal
Nature.
3Li + p → 24
2He + 17.2 MeV
Cockroach – Walton co-developed the
accelerator with Ernest Walton and Mark Olibond. Cockroach and Walton invented
a method of artificial fission of the nucleus with this device. This is called
nuclear fission. The discovery, known as the atomic fission, won the IUSU Prize
in 1938 and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951. He co-won the 1951 Nobel Prize
in Physics with Ernest Walton for his research on nuclear fission. He is
considered a pioneer in the development of nuclear energy.
During World War II he was appointed Assistant Director of the Cockroft Scientific Research Center and studied radar. Explored the technical possibilities of nuclear weapons. In 1940, he shared British technology with his American counterparts under the Desert program. As a result of this plan, in the latter part of the war, equipment needed to attack V-1 flying bombs was brought from the United States to Britain. In May 1944 he was appointed director of the laboratory by Montreal. After the war, Kokroft was appointed director of the Atomic Energy Research Institute (AERE). The first nuclear reactor in Western Europe, the GLEEP, was commissioned here on August 15, 1947. From 1959 to 1967 he was the first lecturer at Cambridge Churchill College and from 1961 to 1965 the Chancellor of the Australian National University of Canberra.
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft, the
inventor of nuclear fission, died of a heart attack on September 18, 1967, at
his home in Churchill College, Cambridge, in his 70s. He was buried in the same
tomb of his son Timothy, in the parish of the Ascension Funeral Home in
Cambridge. A memorial service was held on October 17, 1967 in Westminster
Abbey.
Source By: Wikipedia
Information: Ramesh, Assistant Professor of Physics, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti, Trichy.
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