Thomas Royds was a British solar physicist who worked with Ernest Rutherford on the identification of alpha radiation as the nucleus of the helium atom, and who was Director of the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory, India.
10 Facts About Thomas Royds
1.
2.
Thomas Royds was born April 11,1884, in Moorside, near Oldham, Lancashire, UK.
3.
Thomas Royds was the third son of Edmund Royds and Mary Butterworth.
4.
Thomas Royds's father was a cotton spinner and his mother had been a cotton weaver.
5.
Thomas Royds was appointed Director of Kodaikanal when Evershed retired in 1922.
6.
Thomas Royds photographed the brightest and largest solar hydrogen eruption up to that date.
7.
In 1936 Dr Royds acted as the Director General of Observatories in India for one year, while the DG was on leave.
Related searches
Ernest Rutherford 8.
Dr Thomas Royds came home to England on well-earned leave in 1937 and two years later officially retired.
9.
Thomas Royds was now 58, and the voyage out was long and arduous in wartime conditions; he had to sail round the Cape of South Africa to Cairo, and from there by small boat to Istanbul.
10.
Thomas Royds died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 1 May 1955, leaving his widow, two daughters and a son.