|
|
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| {{About|the Australian born physicist|his father and fellow Nobel Prize winner|William Henry Bragg}}
| | Hi there, I am Adrianne and I totally cannot get enough of that name. Vermont has always been my very home and I find it irresistible every day living here. Gardening is what I do regular. I am a people manager but soon I'll be alone. You can find my net site here: http://circuspartypanama.com<br><br>Take a look at my webpage; clash of clans hack ([http://circuspartypanama.com you can try this out]) |
| {{Use British English|date=February 2012}}
| |
| {{Use dmy dates|date=February 2012}}
| |
| | |
| {{Infobox scientist
| |
| | name = Sir William Lawrence Bragg
| |
| | image = Wl-bragg.jpg
| |
| | image_size = 220px
| |
| | caption = William L. Bragg in 1915
| |
| | birth_date = {{Birth date|1890|03|31|df=y}}
| |
| | birth_place = [[North Adelaide]], South Australia
| |
| | death_date = {{Death date and age|1971|07|01|1890|03|31|df=yes}}
| |
| | death_place = Waldringfield, [[Ipswich]], Suffolk, England
| |
| | nationality = British
| |
| | work_institution = [[University of Manchester]]<br>University of Cambridge
| |
| | alma_mater = [[University of Adelaide]]<br>University of Cambridge
| |
| | doctoral_advisor = [[J. J. Thomson]] <br>[[William Henry Bragg|W.H. Bragg]]
| |
| | doctoral_students = [[John Crank]]<br>[[Ronald Wilfried Gurney]]<br>[[Alex Stokes]]
| |
| | fields = [[Physics]]
| |
| | known_for = [[X-ray]] diffraction<br/>[[Bragg's Law]]
| |
| | prizes = {{nowrap|[[Nobel Prize in Physics]] (1915)}} <br>[[Copley Medal]] (1966)
| |
| | footnotes = At 25, the youngest person ever to receive a Nobel Prize. He was the son of [[William Henry Bragg|W.H. Bragg]]. Note that the PhD did not exist at Cambridge until 1919, and so [[J. J. Thomson]] and [[William Henry Bragg|W.H. Bragg]] were his equivalent mentors.
| |
| }}
| |
| | |
| '''Sir William Lawrence Bragg''' [[Companion of Honour|CH]] [[Officer of the Order of the British Empire|OBE]] [[Military Cross|MC]] [[Fellow of the Royal Society|FRS]]<ref>{{cite doi|10.1098/rsbm.1979.0003}}</ref> (31 March 1890 – 1 July 1971) was an Australian-born British [[physicist]] and X-ray crystallographer, discoverer (1912) of the [[Bragg's law|Bragg law of X-ray diffraction]], which is basic for the determination of [[crystal structure]]. He was joint winner (with his father, [[Sir William Bragg]]) of the [[Nobel Prize for Physics]] in 1915: ''"For their services in the [[X-ray crystallography|analysis]] of [[crystal structure]] by means of [[X-ray]]"''<ref>{{cite web |title=The Nobel Prize in Physics 1915 |publisher=Nobel Foundation |url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1915/index.html |accessdate=2008-10-09}}</ref> an important step in the development of [[X-ray crystallography]]. He was [[knight bachelor|knighted]] in 1941. To date, Lawrence Bragg is the youngest [[Nobel Laureate]], having received the award at the age of 25.<ref>{{cite web |title=Nobel Laureates Facts |publisher=Nobel Foundation |url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/nobelprize_facts.html |accessdate=2013-03-16}}</ref> He was the director of the [[Cavendish Laboratory]], Cambridge, when the epochal discovery of the structure of DNA was reported by [[James D. Watson]] and [[Francis Crick]] in February 1953.
| |
| | |
| ==Biography==
| |
| | |
| ===Early years===
| |
| Bragg was born in [[North Adelaide]], South Australia. He showed an early interest in science and mathematics. His father, [[William Henry Bragg]], was [[Thomas Elder|Elder]] Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the [[University of Adelaide]]. Shortly after starting school aged 5, William Lawrence Bragg fell from his tricycle and broke his arm. His father, who had read about [[Wilhelm Röntgen|Röntgen]]'s experiments in Europe and was performing his own experiments, used the newly discovered X-rays and his experimental equipment to examine the broken arm. This is the first recorded surgical use of X-rays in Australia.
| |
| | |
| Bragg was a very able student. After beginning his studies at [[St Peter's College, Adelaide]] in 1904 he went to the University of Adelaide at age 14 to study mathematics, chemistry and physics, graduating in 1908. In the same year his father accepted the Cavendish chair of physics at the [[University of Leeds]], and brought the family back to England. Bragg entered [[Trinity College, Cambridge]] in the autumn of 1909 and received a major scholarship in mathematics, despite taking the exam while in bed with pneumonia. After initially excelling in mathematics, he transferred to the physics course in the later years of his studies, and graduated with first class honours in 1911. In 1914 Bragg was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College – a Fellowship at a Cambridge college involves the submission and defence of a thesis.<ref>Cambridge physicists www.cambridgephysics.org</ref><ref>See Fred Hoyle's remarks regarding Hutchinson in 1965 ''Galaxies, Nuclei and Quasars'' p38 London:Heinemann and also R J N Phillips 1987 "Some Words from a Former Student" in ''Tribute to Paul Dirac'', p31 Bristol:Adam Hilger</ref>
| |
| | |
| Among Bragg's other interests was [[shell collecting]]; his personal collection amounted to specimens from some 500 species; all personally collected from South Australia. He discovered a new species of [[cuttlefish]] - ''[[Sepia braggi]]'', named for him by [[Joseph Verco]].<ref>Jenkin, John ''William and Lawrence Bragg; Father and Son''. Oxford University Press 2008 ISBN 978 0 19 923520 9</ref>
| |
| | |
| ===Career===
| |
| | |
| ====Work on X-ray crystallography====
| |
| [[File:X-ray spectrometer, 1912. (9660569929).jpg|thumb|150x150px|The first X-ray spectrometer designed by Sir William Lawrence Bragg]]
| |
| Bragg is most famous for his law on the diffraction of [[X-ray]]s by crystals. [[Bragg's law]] makes it possible to calculate the positions of the atoms within a crystal from the way in which an X-ray beam is diffracted by the crystal lattice. He made this discovery in 1912, during his first year as a research student in Cambridge. He discussed his ideas with his father, who developed the X-ray spectrometer in Leeds. This tool allowed many different types of crystals to be analysed.
| |
| | |
| ====Work on sound ranging====
| |
| Bragg's research work was interrupted by both World War I and World War II. During both wars he worked on sound ranging methods for locating enemy guns. In this work he was aided by [[William Sansome Tucker]], [[Harold Roper Robinson]] and [[Henry Harold Hemming]]. For his work during WWI he was awarded the [[Military Cross]]<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=30450 |supp=yes |startpage=32 |date=1 January 1918 |accessdate=3 September 2010}} ''MC''</ref> and appointed [[Officer of the Order of the British Empire]].<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=30576 |supp=yes |startpage=3289 |date=15 March 1918 |accessdate=2 September 2010}} ''OBE''</ref> He was also [[Mentioned in Despatches]] on 16 June 1916, 4 January 1917 and 7 July 1919.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=29623 |supp=yes |startpage=5930 |date=13 June 1916 |accessdate=2 September 2010}} ''mid''</ref><ref>{{London Gazette |issue=29890 |supp=yes |startpage=207 |date=2 January 1917 |accessdate=2 September 2010}} ''mid''</ref><ref>{{London Gazette |issue=31437 |supp=yes |startpage=8523 |date=4 July 1919 |accessdate=2 September 2010}} ''mid''</ref><ref name=sound>William Van der Kloot, [http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/59/3/273.full Lawrence Bragg's role in the development of sound-ranging in World War I], Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 22 September 2005, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 273–284.</ref>
| |
| | |
| On 2 September 1915 his brother was killed during the [[Gallipoli Campaign]].<ref>{{cwgc |id=680754 |name=Bragg, Robert Charles |accessdate=3 September 2010}}</ref> Shortly afterwards, William Lawrence Bragg received the news that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, aged 25, making him the youngest ever winner of a Nobel Prize.<ref name=sound />
| |
| | |
| Between the wars, from 1919 to 1937, he worked at the [[Victoria University of Manchester]] as Langworthy Professor of Physics. After World War II, he returned to Cambridge, splitting the [[Cavendish Laboratory]] into research groups. He believed that "the ideal research unit is one of six to twelve scientists and a few assistants".
| |
| | |
| ====Work on proteins====
| |
| In 1948 he became interested in the structure of proteins and was partly responsible for creating a group that used physics to solve biological problems. He played a part in the 1953 discovery of the structure of [[DNA]], in that he provided support to [[Francis Crick]] and [[James D. Watson]] who worked under his aegis at the Cavendish.
| |
| | |
| Bragg's original announcement of the discovery of the structure of DNA was made at a Solvay conference on proteins in Belgium on 8 April 1953, but went unreported by the press. He then gave a talk at Guys Hospital Medical School in London on Thursday 14 May 1953, which resulted in an article by Ritchie Calder in The News Chronicle of London on Friday 15 May 1953, entitled "Why You Are You. Nearer Secret of Life."
| |
| | |
| Bragg was gratified to see that the X-ray method that he developed forty years before was at the heart of this profound insight to the nature of life itself. At the same time at the Cavendish, [[Max Perutz]] was also doing his Nobel Prize winning work on the structure of [[haemoglobin]]. Bragg subsequently successfully lobbied for, and nominated, Crick, Watson and [[Maurice Wilkins]] for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Wilkins' share recognised the contribution made by researchers (using X-ray crystallography) at [[King's College London]] to the determination of the structure of DNA. Among those researchers was [[Rosalind Franklin]], whose "[[Photo 51|photograph 51]]" showed that DNA was a double [[helix]], not a triple helix as [[Linus Pauling]] had proposed. Franklin died before the prize (which only goes to living people) was awarded.
| |
| | |
| The crystal structure of hen egg white lysozyme, which was solved by D C Phillips et al. in 1965<ref name=lysozyme>CCF Blake, DF Keonig, GA Mair, ACT North, DC Phillips & VR Sarma, Structure of Hen Egg-White Lysozyme: A Three-dimensional Fourier Synthesis at 2 Å Resolution. (1965) Nature '''206''':757-761</ref> under the directorship of Lawrence Bragg at the [[Royal Institution]], London, led to the discovery of the <math>3_{10}</math> helix. The lysozyme structure was determined from crystals of hen egg white lysozyme chloride, which belong to the tetragonal space group P<math>4_3</math><math>2_1</math>2 with the unit cell dimensions a = b = 79.1 Å, c = 37.9 Å and have one lysozyme molecule in the [[asymmetric unit]].<ref name=lysozyme/> The existence of the <math>3_{10}</math> helix, as opposed to Pauling's alpha helix, was predicted by W L Bragg, J C Kendrew & M F Perutz in 1950.<ref>1950 "Polypeptide chain configurations in crystalline proteins" Proc Roy A 203, p321</ref> Apparently, many workers failed to mention the discovery of the <math>3_{10}</math> helix, and failed to acknowledge the part it plays in the lysozyme structure. Pauling never acknowledged that at least part of the above mentioned 1950 paper made sense.
| |
| | |
| Unlike myoglobin, in which nearly 80 per cent of the amino-acid residues are in the alpha-helix conformation, in the lysozyme protein the alpha-helix content is only about 40 per cent of the amino-acid residues in four main stretches. The <math>3_{10}</math> helix is an earlier proposal for the structure of polypeptides made by Bragg W L, Kendrew J C & Perutz M F in 1950. It is based on the crystallographic idea of an integral number of residues per turn of the helix. In this conformation, every third peptide is hydrogen-bonded back to the first peptide, thus forming a ring containing ten atoms.<ref>L N Johnson (1966) “The structure and function of lyszoyme” Sci Prog 54, p367</ref>
| |
| | |
| ====Royal Institution====
| |
| He had a long association with the [[Royal Institution]] including:
| |
| | |
| Professor of Natural Philosophy, 1938-1953
| |
| Fullerian Professor of Chemistry, 1954-1966
| |
| Superintendent of the House, 1954-1966
| |
| Director of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory, 1954-1966
| |
| Director, 1965-1966
| |
| Emeritus Professor, 1966-1971
| |
| | |
| In 1931, 1934 and 1961 Bragg was invited to deliver the [[Royal Institution Christmas Lectures|Royal Institution Christmas Lecture]] on ''The Universe of Light'', ''Electricity'' and ''Electricity''. He also introduced the Schools' Lectures Program during his time at the Royal Institution.<ref>http://www.rigb.org/our-history/people/b/william-lawrence-bragg</ref>
| |
| | |
| ===Personal life===
| |
| He married Alice Hopkinson (1899-1989) in 1921; she was a cousin of Bragg's friend [[Rudolph Cecil Hopkinson]], killed in WWI. They had four children, Stephen Lawrence (born 1923), David William (born 1926), Margaret Alice, born 1931, (who married [[Mark Heath]]) and Patience Mary, born 1935. Bragg's hobbies included painting, literature and a lifelong interest in gardening.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Thomson|first=Patience|title=A tribute to W. L. Bragg by his younger daughter|journal=Acta Crystallographica Section A|year=2013|volume=A69|pages=5–7|accessdate=24 December 2012|url=http://journals.iucr.org/a/issues/2013/01/00/wl0018/wl0018.pdf}}</ref> When he moved to London, he missed having a garden and so worked as a part-time gardener, unrecognised by his employer, until a guest at the house expressed surprise at seeing him there.<ref>{{cite book
| |
| |title=What Mad Pursuit
| |
| |first=Francis
| |
| |last=Crick
| |
| |page=53
| |
| |isbn=0140119736
| |
| |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicholson
| |
| |year=1989
| |
| }}</ref> He died at a hospital near his home at [[Waldringfield]], [[Ipswich]], Suffolk. He was buried in [[Trinity College, Cambridge]]; his son David is buried in the [[Ascension Parish Burial Ground, Cambridge|Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground]] in Cambridge, where Bragg's friend Rudolph Cecil Hopkinson is also buried.
| |
| | |
| ==Honours and awards==
| |
| He was elected an [[Royal Society#Fellows|FRS]] in 1921—"a qualification that makes other ones irrelevant".<ref>G K Hunter 2004 ''Light is a Messenger'' Oxford:OUP</ref> He was [[Knight Bachelor|knighted]] by [[King George VI]] in the 1941 [[New Year Honours]],<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=35029 |supp=yes |startpage=1 |date=31 December 1940 |accessdate=2 September 2010}} ''Knight bachelor''</ref> and received both the [[Copley Medal]] and the [[Royal Medal]] of the [[Royal Society]]. Although Hunter, in his book on Bragg ''Light is a Messenger'', argued that he was more a crystallographer than a physicist, Bragg's lifelong activity showed otherwise—he was more of a physicist than anything else. Thus, from 1939 to 1943, he served as President of the [[Institute of Physics]], London.<ref>http://www.cambridgephysics.org</ref> In the 1967 New Year Honours he was appointed [[Companion of Honour]] by Queen Elizabeth II.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=44210 |supp=yes |startpage=26 |date=30 December 1966 |accessdate=2 September 2010}} ''CH''</ref>
| |
| | |
| Since 1992, the [[Australian Institute of Physics]] has awarded the Bragg Gold Medal for Excellence in Physics<ref>[http://www.aip.org.au/content/bragg Bragg Gold Medal for Excellence in Physics]</ref> to commemorate Sir Lawrence Bragg (in front on the medal) and his father, Sir William Bragg, for the best PhD thesis by a student at an [[List of universities in Australia|Australian university]].
| |
| | |
| * Nobel Prize (1915)
| |
| * [[Matteucci Medal]] (1915)
| |
| * [[Hughes Medal]] (1931)
| |
| * [[Royal Medal]] (1946)
| |
| * [[Guthrie Medal and Prize|Guthrie Lecture]] (1952)
| |
| * [[Copley Medal]] (1966)
| |
| | |
| ==Quotations==
| |
| “The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.”<ref>[[Ernest Gowers|Gowers, E.]], ''The Complete Plain Words'', Godine, 1988. ISBN 1-56792-203-1.</ref>
| |
| | |
| "The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them."<ref>http://quotationsbook.com/quote/20045/</ref>
| |
| | |
| ==See also==
| |
| *[[Artillery in World War I|Tactical Artillery Terms from World War I]]
| |
| * [[List of Nobel laureates in Physics]]
| |
| | |
| ==References==
| |
| {{reflist|colwidth=30em}}
| |
| | |
| ==Further reading==
| |
| *Biography: Hunter, Graeme. ''Light Is A Messenger, the Life and Science of William Lawrence Bragg'', ISBN 0-19-852921-X; Oxford University Press, 2004.
| |
| * John Finch; ''A Nobel Fellow On Every Floor'', Medical Research Council 2008, 381 pp, ISBN 978-1-84046-940-0; (This book is about the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge.)
| |
| *Ridley, Matt; ''Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code (Eminent Lives)'', first published in July 2006 in the United States, and then in the UK in September 2006, by HarperCollins Publishers; 192 pp, ISBN 0-06-082333-X (This short book is in the publisher's "Eminent Lives" series).
| |
| *John Jenkin: "William and Lawrence Bragg, Father and Son: The Most Extraordinary Collaboration in Science", Oxford University Press, 2008.
| |
| | |
| ==External links==
| |
| * [http://www.packer34.freeserve.co.uk/selectedTATAwebsites.htm First press stories on DNA]
| |
| * [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1915/index.html Nobelprize.org – The Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915]
| |
| * [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1915/wl-bragg-bio.html Nobel Biography]
| |
| * [http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/bond/people/bragg.html A collection] of digitised materials related to Bragg's and [[Linus Pauling]]'s structural chemistry research.
| |
| * [http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/people/bragg.html Key Participants: Sir William Lawrence Bragg] – ''Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary History''
| |
| * [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/ NOVA Episode on Photograph 51]
| |
| * [http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/28531.html Oral History interview transcript with William Lawrence Bragg 20 June 1969, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives]
| |
| * [http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-458785 Bragg, Lawrence (Sir) (1890–1971)] National Library of Australia, ''Trove, People and Organisation'' record for William Lawrence Bragg
| |
| *[http://richannel.org/the-nature-of-things--oil-soap-and-detergent The Nature of Things: Oil, Soap and Detergent], Ri Channel video, November 1959
| |
| *[http://www.richannel.org/the-nature-of-things--atoms-and-molecules The Nature of Things: Atoms and Molecules], Ri Channel video, October 1959
| |
| *[http://www.richannel.org/the-nature-of-things--solids-liquids-and-gases The Nature of Things: Solids, Liquids and Gases], Ri Channel video, November 1959
| |
| | |
| {{Copley Medallists 1951-2000}}
| |
| {{Nobel Prize in Physics Laureates 1901-1925}}
| |
| | |
| {{Authority control |VIAF=49306596 |LCCN=n/79/109781 |GND=119560275 }}
| |
| | |
| {{Persondata
| |
| |NAME=Bragg, William Lawrence
| |
| |ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
| |
| |SHORT DESCRIPTION=English[[physicist]], Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
| |
| |DATE OF BIRTH=31 March 1890
| |
| |PLACE OF BIRTH=[[North Adelaide]], South Australia
| |
| |DATE OF DEATH=1 July 1971
| |
| |PLACE OF DEATH=[[Waldringfield]], Suffolk, England}}
| |
| {{DEFAULTSORT:Bragg, William Lawrence}}
| |
| [[Category:1890 births]]
| |
| [[Category:1971 deaths]]
| |
| [[Category:Academics of the Victoria University of Manchester]]
| |
| [[Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge]]
| |
| [[Category:Australian Nobel laureates]]
| |
| [[Category:Nobel laureates in Physics]]
| |
| [[Category:Australian people of English descent]]
| |
| [[Category:Australian physicists]]
| |
| [[Category:English physicists]]
| |
| [[Category:Experimental physicists]]
| |
| [[Category:Optical physicists]]
| |
| [[Category:Fellows of the Royal Society]]
| |
| [[Category:Knights Bachelor]]
| |
| [[Category:Australian knights]]
| |
| [[Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour]]
| |
| [[Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire]]
| |
| [[Category:People from Adelaide]]
| |
| [[Category:People from Ipswich]]
| |
| [[Category:Recipients of the Copley Medal]]
| |
| [[Category:Recipients of the Military Cross]]
| |
| [[Category:Royal Medal winners]]
| |
| [[Category:University of Adelaide alumni]]
| |
| [[Category:Jubilee 150 Walkway]]
| |
| [[Category:People educated at St Peter's College, Adelaide]]
| |
| [[Category:Presidents of the Institute of Physics]]
| |
| [[Category:X-ray crystallography]]
| |
| [[Category:Crystallographers]]
| |
| [[Category:English Nobel laureates]]
| |
| [[Category:Honorary Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh]]
| |
| | |
| {{Link FA|he}}
| |