Edward Eisner

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

FIP (1929-1987) was a Hungarian-born physicist who was Professor of Applied Physics at the

University of Strathclyde The University of Strathclyde ( gd, Oilthigh Shrath Chluaidh) is a public research university located in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as the Andersonian Institute, it is Glasgow's second-oldest university, having received its royal chart ...

1968-1987. He specialised in the physics of sound. The "Edward Eisner Memorial Fund Award" is named in his honour.

Life

He was born in

Sárvár Sárvár (german: Kotenburg or ; la, Bassiana; sl, Mala Sela) is a town in Vas County, Hungary. Sárvár lies on the banks of the River Rába at Kemeneshát. The population is nearly 16,000. The town has become a tourist centre of internatio ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

on 20 December 1929. He came to Britain with his family in the 1930s and attended the

George Herbert Strutt George Herbert Strutt (21 April 1854– 17 May 1928), was a cotton mill owner and philanthropist from Belper in Derbyshire. Strutt became a High Sheriff. He was a descendant of Jedediah Strutt. The Strutt family made themselves, and Britain, ric ...

School in

Belper Belper is a town and civil parish in the local government district of Amber Valley in Derbyshire, England, located about north of Derby on the River Derwent. As well as Belper itself, the parish also includes the village of Milford and the ha ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

from 1939. He won a place at

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

studying Physics and graduated BA in 1950, gaining a doctorate (PhD) in 1954. From 1954 he worked with the Ministry of Power at Buxton. In 1960 he went to America to work with the Bell Telephone Laboratory in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, working on the improvement of handsets. In 1968 he returned to Britain to take the chair in Applied Physics at

Strathclyde University The University of Strathclyde ( gd, Oilthigh Shrath Chluaidh) is a public research university located in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as the Andersonian Institute, it is Glasgow's second-oldest university, having received its royal chart ...

retaining this role until death. He was replaced by Prof Gordon Donaldson. In 1969 he infamously wrote an open letter to NASA suggesting how to improve their television broadcasts from the moon. In 1977 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 ...

. His proposers were Kenneth Jack Standley,

Nicholas Kemmer Nicholas Kemmer (7 December 1911 – 21 October 1998) was a Russian-born nuclear physicist working in Britain, who played an integral and leading edge role in United Kingdom's nuclear programme, and was known as a mentor of Abdus Salam – a N ...

, Simon G G MacDonald, and William Cochran. He died on Christmas Day 1987.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eisner, Edward 1929 births 1987 deaths 20th-century British physicists Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Alumni of the University of Cambridge Academics of the University of Strathclyde Hungarian emigrants to the United Kingdom