45 Facts About John Cockcroft

Sir John Douglas Cockcroft was a British physicist who shared with Ernest Walton the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951 for splitting the atomic nucleus, and was instrumental in the development of nuclear power.

John Cockcroft then won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, where he sat the tripos exam in June 1924, becoming a wrangler.

John Cockcroft was chancellor of the Australian National University in Canberra from 1961 to 1965.

John Cockcroft had four younger brothers; Eric, Philip, Keith and Lionel.

John Cockcroft completed his first year at Manchester in June 1915.

John Cockcroft joined the Officers' Training Corps there, but did not wish to become an officer.

John Cockcroft enlisted in the British Army on 24 November 1915.

John Cockcroft was then posted to B Battery, 92nd Field Artillery Brigade, one of the units of the 20th Division, on the Western Front.

John Cockcroft participated in the Advance to the Hindenburg Line and the Third Battle of Ypres.

John Cockcroft was sent to Brighton in February 1918 to learn about gunnery, and in April 1918, to the Officer Candidate School in Weedon Bec in Northamptonshire, where he was trained as a field artillery officer.

John Cockcroft was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery on 17 October 1918.

John Cockcroft elected not to return to the Victoria University of Manchester, but to study electrical engineering at Manchester Municipal College of Technology.

John Cockcroft obtained a 1851 Exhibition Scholarship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, and submitted his MSc thesis on the "Harmonic Analysis for Alternating Currents" in June 1922.

Walker then suggested Cockcroft sit for a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, Walker's alma mater.

John Cockcroft sat the tripos exam in June 1924, achieved a B* as a wrangler, and was awarded his BA degree.

John Cockcroft married Elizabeth Crabtree on 26 August 1925, in a ceremony at the Bridge Street United Methodist Church in Todmorden.

John Cockcroft was awarded his doctorate on 6 September 1925.

John Cockcroft helped with the design and construction of helium liquefiers.

John Cockcroft assigned Cockcroft, Thomas Allibone and Ernest Walton to the problem.

John Cockcroft realised that as a result of this phenomenon, the desired effect could be achieved with much lower voltages than first thought.

In 1929, Cockcroft was appointed a Supervisor in Mechanical Sciences at St John's College.

John Cockcroft was appointed a Supervisor in Physics in 1931, and in 1933 became the junior bursar, making him responsible for the upkeep of the buildings, many of which were suffering from neglect.

The college gatehouse had to be partly taken down in order to repair damage done by deathwatch beetles, and John Cockcroft supervised rewiring of the electrics.

John Cockcroft supervised the installation of new cryogenic equipment, and supervised low temperature research.

John Cockcroft was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1936, and in 1939 was elected the Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, effective 1 October 1939.

The Cavendish Laboratory was able to keep ahead of the Americans despite having an inferior accelerator with clever physics, but John Cockcroft pressed Rutherford to obtain a cyclotron for the Cavendish laboratory.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, John Cockcroft took up the post of Assistant Director of Scientific Research in the Ministry of Supply, working on radar.

John Cockcroft's focus was on the use of radar for shooting down enemy aircraft.

III radar was developed as a target tracking and predicting radar, but by 1942 the SCR-584 radar developed for the same purpose in the United States became available, and John Cockcroft recommended that it be acquired under Lend-Lease.

John Cockcroft was shocked when he was informed on 10 September 1945 that the British physicist Alan Nunn May, who worked at the Chalk River Laboratories, was a Soviet spy.

John Cockcroft was offered the directorship of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell on 9 November 1945.

John Cockcroft helped negotiate a new, more informal and unsigned agreement with the Americans that was announced on 7 January 1948, known as the Modus Vivendi.

In 1951, John Cockcroft arranged for the Oxford group to be transferred to Harwell.

John Cockcroft approved the construction of ZETA by the Thonemann's Harwell group, and the smaller Sceptre by Allibone's AEI group.

James L Tuck's group at the Los Alamos Laboratory was researching fusion, and Cockcroft struck an agreement with the Americans that they would release their results together, which was done in 1958.

Two days later, the Trustees announced that John Cockcroft would be its first Master.

John Cockcroft nominated the first fellows, and he oversaw the initial construction.

John Cockcroft was president of the Institute of Physics from 1954 to 1956, and of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

John Cockcroft served as chancellor of the Australian National University in Canberra from 1961 to 1965, a largely symbolic post that involved a visit once a year for degree conferring ceremonies.

John Cockcroft was the British delegate on the Council of CERN as well as Chairman of the Nuclear Physics Sub-Committee of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

John Cockcroft received the Royal Medal in 1954, the Faraday Medal in 1955, the American Medal of Freedom in 1947 and Atoms for Peace Award in 1961, John Cockcroft was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur by France in 1952, and was awarded the Knight Commander of the Military Order of Christ by Portugal in 1955, and the Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso X by Spain in 1958.

John Cockcroft died from a heart attack at his home at Churchill College, Cambridge, on 18 September 1967.

John Cockcroft is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, in the same grave as his son Timothy.

The oldest building at the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University, the John Cockcroft building, is named after him.

John Cockcroft's papers are held at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, and are accessible to the public.