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19 Facts About Norman Feather

1.

Norman Feather FRS FRSE PRSE, was an English nuclear physicist.

2.

Norman Feather was the author of a series of noted introductory texts on the history, fundamental concepts, and meaning of physics.

3.

Norman Feather was born in 1904 to Samson and Lucy Norman Feather in Pecket Well, West Yorkshire, Northern England.

4.

When Norman Feather was still an infant, his father became headmaster of Holme Primary School in Yorkshire, which Norman Feather later attended.

5.

Norman Feather was educated at Bridlington Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, before taking a year in the University of London and gaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1926.

6.

Norman Feather was a Fellow of Trinity College from 1929 to 1933 then Fellow and Lecturer in Natural Sciences there from 1936 to 1945.

7.

Norman Feather received his doctorate at Cambridge in 1931 under James Chadwick and Ernest Rutherford.

8.

Norman Feather's research employed a Wilson cloud chamber and focused on the problem of the long-range alpha particles.

9.

In 1929, Norman Feather took a year-long visit to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA.

10.

Since polonium was difficult to obtain and expensive at the time, Norman Feather acquired a large number of the discarded radon tubes.

11.

Norman Feather assisted Chadwick with his investigations leading to the discovery of the neutron.

12.

Norman Feather then conducted some of the earliest investigations with the neutron.

13.

Norman Feather obtained the first evidence that neutrons can produce nuclear disintegrations.

14.

Bretscher and Norman Feather showed theoretically feasible grounds that element 94 would be readily 'fissionable' by both slow and fast neutrons, and had the added advantage of being chemically different from uranium and therefore could easily be separated from it.

15.

Norman Feather was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1945 to 1975, then emeritus Professor.

16.

Norman Feather was active in nuclear physics research throughout his career, preferring small-scale, modest experiments, rather than the large experiments that became common after the war.

17.

Norman Feather was noted for his active service to the University of Edinburgh and the city of Edinburgh.

18.

Norman Feather was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945.

19.

Norman Feather died on 14 August 1978 at Christie Hospital in Manchester.