SIR WILLIAM BRAGG, O.M., K. B. E., F. R. S

Abstract

BRAGG 'S first research paper was published in 1904, when he was forty-two years old. This fact is not without significance for an understanding of his work and character. He had gone out to Australia as a young man of twenty-four, without any experimental experience and without, indeed, any real training in physics—he was fond of telling how he learnt the elements of the subject on the boat as he travelled to take up his appointment as professor of mathematics and physics at Adelaide. He soon showed a liking for experiment and set up the first X-ray tube to operate in Adelaide, possibly the first in Australia. He made a name as a teacher and as a man of great social gifts, and might have spent a pleasant and useful life without ever carrying out any original investigations, for in those days 'research' was not a professional necessity. It was not until he had had long experience in expounding the fundamentals of his subject, and in so doing had developed a keen critical sense for what was important and what was trivial, that he set out to discover something about radioactivity, a subject that had stirred his active curiosity when he was preparing an account of what had been done in this field. So well, however, had he taught himself in those years of preparation that his first paper, on the range and ionization of alpha particles, is a classic. Within three years he had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society.