40 Facts About Eric Burhop

Eric Burhop produced a non-relativistic theory of the Auger effect in 1935, followed by a relativistic treatment the following year.

Eric Burhop returned to the University of Melbourne as a lecturer in 1936, and helped Professor Thomas Laby build up the physics department there.

Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop was born in Hobart, Tasmania, on 31 January 1911, the third child of two Salvation Army officers, Henry Augustus Burhop and his wife Bertha nee Head.

Eric Burhop's family was not wealthy, and they moved frequently owing to the nature of his parents' evangelical work.

Eric Burhop transferred to Melbourne High School for his final year.

Eric Burhop won a scholarship, and entered the University of Melbourne in 1928.

Eric Burhop initially studied civil engineering, but switched to science after two years, and majored in physics.

Eric Burhop graduated in 1931 with a Bachelor of Science BSc degree with first class honours in physics.

Eric Burhop then earned a Bachelor of Arts, with first class honours, in mathematics in 1932, and a Master of Science in physics in 1933.

The thesis was good enough, though, for Eric Burhop to be awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship to study at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory under Lord Rutherford in 1933.

Eric Burhop was initially assigned a task of investigating the diffusion of positive alkali metal ions on hot metal surfaces, but soon switched to a more interesting subject, the measurement of the excitation function for the pairs of deuterons producing a triton through nuclear fusion:.

Eric Burhop was able to observe the reaction at energies of less than 8 keV.

Eric Burhop continued his investigations of X-rays and the Auger effect.

Eric Burhop conducted investigation of the probabilities of the ionisation of the K and L shells of silver, using the Born approximation.

Eric Burhop returned to Australia in 1936, taking up a position as a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, where Laby was eager to build up the Physics Department by adding expertise in the latest developments in nuclear physics.

Eric Burhop married his fiancee, Winifred Ida Stevens, on 23 December 1936 in a Salvation Army ceremony.

Eric Burhop completed his Cambridge doctor of philosophy degree under Laby's supervision in 1938.

Eric Burhop established the first research program in the field in an Australian university, employing scientific equipment that he brought back from Britain.

Eric Burhop gave lectures on modern physics to the undergraduates, and on quantum mechanics to the postgraduates.

In May 1944, Eric Burhop joined Oliphant's British Mission at the Ernest Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory at the University of California in Berkeley.

Eric Burhop was one of three Australian physicists working on the Manhattan Project, all at Berkeley, the others being Oliphant and Massey.

Eric Burhop worked with David Bohm in Massey's Theoretical Group, studying the characteristics of electric discharges in magnetic fields, today known as Bohm diffusion.

Eric Burhop's work involved the occasional visit to the Manhattan Project's Y-12 electromagnetic faculty at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Eric Burhop had to wait until he was released by the University of Melbourne, and did not reach London until after the war ended in August 1945.

Massey became head of the Physics Department in 1950, and Eric Burhop moved there too.

Eric Burhop became a professor in 1960, and Dean of the Faculty of Science in 1967.

Eric Burhop listed "furtherance of international scientific cooperation" as one of his hobbies.

Eric Burhop worked with the University of Edinburgh and the University of Padua to establish a high-altitude cloud chamber on Marmolada that commenced operation in 1953.

When Eric Burhop took charge of the Bubble Chamber Group at University College in 1967, he was quick to grasp the advantages of heavy liquid bubble chambers for studying neutrino interactions, and steered the group towards participation in joint European ventures, using the Gargamelle.

In 1974 and 1975, with the help of Robert R Wilson, the director of the Fermilab in the United States, an international team from Fermilab and seven European laboratories under Burhop's leadership carried out a search for a new particle, the existence of which Burhop had predicted in 1963.

Eric Burhop had suggested that neutrino interactions could create short-lived particles that could be detected with the use of nuclear emulsion.

Eric Burhop was involved in activities sponsored by the Soviet Union since 1939, according to a file kept on him by the Australian security service.

Eric Burhop had been a founding member of the Australian Association of Scientific Workers in 1939, and after the war became chairman of the Atomic Science Committee of the Association of Scientific Workers, and a member of its Science Policy Committee, in Britain.

Eric Burhop was a founder member of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science in 1969.

Eric Burhop was president of his local branch of the Association of University Teachers from 1970 to 1972, and of the World Federation of Scientific Workers from 1971 to 1980.

Eric Burhop was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1963, and delivered its Rutherford Memorial Lecture in 1979.

Eric Burhop was elected a Foreign Member of the German Democratic Republic's Academy of Sciences in 1971.

Eric Burhop received the Joliot-Curie Medal of Peace in 1965, the Lenin Peace Prize in 1972, and the Bulgarian Order of Saints Cyril and Methodius in 1973.

Eric Burhop died in Camden, London, from empyema as a result of stomach cancer on 22 January 1980.

Eric Burhop's papers are in the University College, London, Special Collections.