Douglas Edward Lea (February 2, 1910 – June 16, 1947) was an experimental physicist working primarily in the field of radiobiology. He started working at the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...

at University of Cambridge in the 1930s, and in time moved from nuclear physics to focus on biology. After obtaining his PhD from Cambridge, he worked at

Strangeways Laboratory Strangeways Research Laboratory is a research institution in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It was founded by Thomas Strangeways in 1905 as the Cambridge Research Hospital and acquired its current name in 1928. Organised as an independent charity, i ...

, then at the Royal College of Surgeons between 1942 and 1946. Lea published his influential book, ''The Actions of Radiation of Living Cells'', in 1946, the year before he died in an accident. Lea was a major contributor to the target theory of cell death caused by

ionising radiation Ionizing radiation (or ionising radiation), including nuclear radiation, consists of subatomic particles or electromagnetic waves that have sufficient energy to ionize atoms or molecules by detaching electrons from them. Some particles can travel ...

. A memorial lecture in his name has been given biennially since 1948. He was a close friend of fellow radiobiology pioneer,

Louis Harold Gray Louis Harold Gray FRS (10 November 1905 – 9 July 1965) was an English physicist who worked mainly on the effects of radiation on biological systems. He was one of the earliest contributors of the field of radiobiology. A summary of his work ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lea, Douglas Radiobiologists Cavendish Laboratory British physicists 1910 births 1947 deaths