Charles Alfred Coulson (13 December 1910 – 7 January 1974) was a British
applied mathematician and
theoretical chemist
Theoretical chemistry is the branch of chemistry which develops theoretical generalizations that are part of the theoretical arsenal of modern chemistry: for example, the concepts of chemical bonding, chemical reaction, valence, the surface ...
.
Coulson's major scientific work was as a pioneer of the application of the
quantum theory of valency to problems of
molecular structure,
dynamics and
reactivity. He was also a
Methodist
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...
lay preacher
Lay preacher is a preacher or a religious proclaimer who is not a formally ordained cleric and who does not hold a formal university degree in theology. Lay preaching varies in importance between religions and their sects. Although lay preache ...
, served on the
World Council of Churches
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, most ju ...
from 1962 to 1968, and was chairman of
Oxfam
Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent charitable organizations focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International.
History
Founded at 17 Broad Street, Oxford, as the Oxford Co ...
from 1965 to 1971.
Early life
The parents of Charles Coulson and his younger twin brother
John Metcalfe Coulson were educators who hailed from the Midlands. The twins were born when their father, Alfred, was principal of
Dudley Technical College and superintendent of the Methodist Sunday School, and their mother Annie Sincere Hancock
was Headmistress of
Tipton
Tipton is an industrial town in the West Midlands in England with a population of around 38,777 at the 2011 UK Census. It is located northwest of Birmingham.
Tipton was once one of the most heavily industrialised towns in the Black Country, w ...
Elementary School, close by. Coulson's parents maintained a religious Methodist home.
When the Coulson brothers were 10, their father was appointed Superintendent of Technical Colleges for the South-West of England, and the family moved to
Bristol
Bristol () is a City status in the United Kingdom, city, Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Glouces ...
. When Charles was 13 he was awarded a scholarship to
Clifton College
''The spirit nourishes within''
, established = 160 years ago
, closed =
, type = Public schoolIndependent boarding and day school
, religion = Christian
, president =
, head_label = Head of College
, hea ...
in Bristol, which placed a strong emphasis on science and mathematics.
Coulson's academic success at Clifton earned him an Entrance Scholarship in Mathematics to
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
in 1928.
His brother John also excelled at school, and went on to become Professor of
Chemical Engineering
Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials in ...
at
Newcastle University
Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick unive ...
, and author of a major series of texts on chemical engineering.
[J. F. Richardson, in a preface (page xii) to J. M. Coulson & J. F. Richardson (1996) ''Coulson & Richardson's Chemical Engineering,'' volume 1, 5th edition ]
The Cambridge years
At Cambridge, Coulson first studied the
Mathematics Tripos. He was awarded a College Senior Scholarship during his studies, and received a First Class in the university examinations in 1931. He continued to take the Physics Part II examination a year later, receiving another First. He was awarded several College and University prizes during his undergraduate days.
Lord Rutherford,
J. J. Thomson, A.S.
Besicovitch,
Sir Arthur Eddington
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the lumi ...
,
G.H. Hardy,
J.E. Littlewood
John Edensor Littlewood (9 June 1885 – 6 September 1977) was a British mathematician. He worked on topics relating to analysis, number theory, and differential equations, and had lengthy collaborations with G. H. Hardy, Srinivasa Ramanu ...
,
F.P. Ramsey and
Ebenezer Cunningham were amongst his teachers.
In 1932, Coulson started graduate work with
R. H. Fowler but switched to
Sir John Lennard-Jones, and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1936 for work on the electronic structure of methane. By this time, he had published 11 papers. He continued as a research Fellow at Cambridge for another two years.
Coulson was accredited as a lay preacher in 1929, but he said his religion was perfunctory until a particular event in 1930, which he described in a documented sermon that he gave the following year. His religious beliefs were influenced
by the physicist
Sir Arthur Eddington
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the lumi ...
, the theologian
Charles Raven and, in particular, by Alex(ander) Wood, Fellow of
Emmanuel College, authority on acoustics and pacifist., and
Labour parliamentary candidate.
On the social side, Eileen Florence Burrett was studying in Cambridge to become a school teacher when Charles was an undergraduate. They came together in meetings of the University Methodists.
They married in 1938, and had three children: Christopher, Janet and Wendy.
St. Andrews and Oxford before King's
In 1939, Coulson was appointed as senior lecturer in mathematics at University College, Dundee. Administratively, this was still part of the University of St. Andrews. Coulson was a
conscientious objector
A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objec ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. He carried a very heavy work load, teaching mathematics, physics and chemistry.
E. T. Copson was head of department, on the main St. Andrews campus. Coulson collaborated with C. E. Duncanson at University College, London, brought
George Stanley Rushbrooke from Cambridge and acted technically as his Ph.D. supervisor, and wrote the first edition of ''Waves''.
[C. A. Coulson, ''Waves, a mathematical account of the common types of wave motion'', 7th edition, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1961; originally published 1941.]
In 1941 he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...
, and in 1950 as a Fellow of the
Royal Society of London
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...
.
In 1945, Coulson became a lecturer in physical chemistry at
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
, attached to
University College
In a number of countries, a university college is a college institution that provides tertiary education but does not have full or independent university status. A university college is often part of a larger university. The precise usage varies ...
and, concurrently, held a Fellowship awarded by
Imperial Chemical Industries
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company. It was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain.
It was formed by the merger of four leading British chemical companies in 1926.
Its headquarters were at ...
. Coulson's students at Oxford included:
*
H. Christopher Longuet-Higgins, later a professor at Cambridge, then Edinburgh.
*
John Maddox, who went with Coulson to King's College, London, turned to publishing and was knighted.
*
Roy McWeeny, later, a professor at Sheffield and then Pisa.
*
William E. (Bill) Moffitt, later on the Chemistry faculty at Harvard.
King's College, London
In 1947, Coulson accepted a university chair in theoretical physics at
King's College, London
King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King G ...
. A news item in ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'' described him as "among the foremost workers in Great Britain on the wave-mechanical side of quantum theory". It extolled his breadth of interests that took in the action of radiation on bacteria and the theory of liquids and solutions, besides the molecular orbital treatment of small molecules and ions, the approximation methods needed for large organic molecules for studies of bond lengths in
coronene and conductivity of graphite, chemical reactivity, the treatment of momentum distribution functions and Compton-line profiles and his "well deserved reputation for his kindly and helpful encouragement of younger research workers."
Initially, Coulson's group were assigned offices on the top floor of a building (reached by a rickety wooden staircase) that overlooked the Strand, with considerable benefit when cavalcades paraded by on Lord Mayor's Day and Royal occasions. In 1952, the group moved down to offices in the new Physics Department, interspersed with Biophysics and other experimental groups. With developments in computing opening new vistas for the theoreticians, along with the developments in laboratory methods, the entire department enjoyed the intellectual ferment of the 1950s.
In his account of the official opening of the new Physics Department,
Maurice Wilkins
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (15 December 1916 – 5 October 2004) was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist and Nobel laureate whose research spanned multiple areas of physics and biophysics, contributing to the scientific understanding ...
wrote: "the theoretical group deals with applications of wave mechanics and statistical mechanics ... the theory of the chemical bond ... questions of chemical reactivity ... stability of crystal structures, biological properties of cancer-producing compounds and other molecules, electrical and magnetic properties of metals, ... properties of electrolytes and colloidal solutions, including ... electrophoresis ... more than one hundred papers have been published during the past five years."
Coulson's group consisted of (1) graduate students who conducted research on electronic structure and valence theory, for a Ph.D. degree directly under Coulson's supervision, (2) students working for a Ph.D. in statistical thermodynamics under the supervision of Fred Booth and, later, in nuclear physics supervised by Louis Elton and then Dr. Percy, (3) students working for an M.Sc. on topics in applied mathematics to be followed by a Ph.D. with another supervisor in the Mathematics Department, and (4) visitors, some of whom held senior academic and industrial appointments. The valence theory Ph.D. students included Simon J. Altmann,
Michael P Barnett, Aagje Bozeman, Peter J. Davies, Harry H. Greenwood,
Peter Higgs
Peter Ware Higgs (born 29 May 1929) is a British theoretical physicist, Emeritus Professor in the University of Edinburgh,Griggs, Jessica (Summer 2008The Missing Piece ''Edit'' the University of Edinburgh Alumni Magazine, p. 17 and Nobel Prize ...
, Julianne Jacobs, Roland Lefebvre, George Lester,
John Maddox, Norman H. March, and Robert Taylor. Statistical mechanics was pursued by Geoffrey V. Chester,
John Enderby
Sir John Edwin Enderby One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (16 January 1931 – 3 August 2021) was a British physicist, and was Professor of Physics at University of Bristol from 19 ...
, Alec Gaines and Alan B. Lidiard. The students who went on to the Mathematics Department included Godfrey Lance,
Eric Milner and Geoffrey Sewell. Collectively, these wrote nearly 30 books in later years. Visitors who stayed for months included Professor
Inga Fischer-Hjalmars of the University of Stockholm, Dr. John van der Waals of Shell Oil, and Dr. Joop der Heer from the University of Amsterdam.
Oxford after King's
In 1952, Coulson was appointed
Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics and Fellow of
Wadham College at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
. The chair was held previously by
E. A. Milne, the mathematician and astrophysicist, and
Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus f ...
succeeded Coulson. His inaugural lecture expressed the following view of applied mathematics: "an intellectual adventure in which are combined creative imagination and authentic canons of beauty and fitness; they combine to give us insight into the nature of that world of which we ourselves, and our minds, are part."
Coulson was active in the formation of the
Mathematical Institute, and soon became its director. On the institute website Coulson is described as "a man who packed into his life twice as much as any normal academic person ... he had a gift for lucid exposition and was ... indefatigable in his work, not only for science and mathematics, but also on behalf of people, whether black or white, young or old."
In 1972, Coulson was appointed to the newly created chair of theoretical chemistry.
Books and journals
Coulson wrote several books. ''Valence'',
[C. A. Coulson, ''Valence'', Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1952; 3rd edition posthumously edited: Roy McWeeny, ''Coulson’s Valence'', Oxford University Press, 1979.] first published in 1952, and also reissued posthumously, was the most influential. Coulson also wrote popular works on atomic and molecular structure:
* ''Waves'' (1941)
* ''Electricity'' (1948)
* ''The Place of Science as a Cohesive Force in Modern Society'' (1951)
* ''Christianity in an Age of science'' (1953)
Coulson was a founder member of the board of the journal
''Molecular Physics'' and its first editor.
Religious and social activities
Beside his scientific works, Coulson was a committed Christian, and served as a
Methodist local preacher. He wrote ''Science, Technology and the Christian'' (1953) and ''Science and Christian Belief'' (1955), integrating his scientific and religious views. Coulson apparently coined the phrase
God of the gaps
"God of the gaps" is a theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence.
Origins of the term
From the 1880s, Friedrich Nietzsche's ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'', Part Two, "On Pri ...
. Coulson believed religious faith was essential for the responsible use of science. He was a
pacifist
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campai ...
and
conscientious objector
A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objec ...
, but championed the development of nuclear energy. He encouraged scientists to help improve Third World food production. He was chairman of
Oxfam
Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent charitable organizations focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International.
History
Founded at 17 Broad Street, Oxford, as the Oxford Co ...
from 1965 to 1971.
Charles' widest religious impact on the general public was in his BBC broadcasts. In these, and in general interaction with people, he conveyed his religiosity in a gentle and sometimes humorous manner, for example, when he claimed in his inaugural lecture at King's College, that he had received mail addressed to him as Professor of Theological Physics.
See also
*
Bent's rule
In chemistry, Bent's rule describes and explains the relationship between the orbital hybridization of central atoms in molecules and the electronegativities of substituents. The rule was stated by Henry A. Bent as follows:
The chemical struct ...
*
Valence bond theory
In chemistry, valence bond (VB) theory is one of the two basic theories, along with molecular orbital (MO) theory, that were developed to use the methods of quantum mechanics to explain chemical bonding. It focuses on how the atomic orbitals of ...
*
Molecular orbital
In chemistry, a molecular orbital is a mathematical function describing the location and wave-like behavior of an electron in a molecule. This function can be used to calculate chemical and physical properties such as the probability of find ...
*
List of science and religion scholars
*
List of chemists
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
*
*
Videoof a talk by Ana Simões titled "Textbooks as Manifestos: C. A. Coulson after
Linus Pauling
Linus Carl Pauling (; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topi ...
and
Robert S. Mulliken"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coulson, Charles
1910 births
1974 deaths
People from Dudley
People educated at Clifton College
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Academics of King's College London
Academics of the University of Dundee
Academics of the University of St Andrews
English chemists
Theoretical chemists
English Methodists
English Christian pacifists
Fellows of University College, Oxford
Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford
Fellows of the Royal Society
Members of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science
British conscientious objectors
Faraday Lecturers
Rouse Ball Professors of Mathematics (University of Oxford)
Methodist pacifists
Methodist local preachers