Frank Twyman (17 November 1876 – 6 March 1959) was a British designer of

optical instrument An optical instrument (or "optic" for short) is a device that processes light waves (or photons), either to enhance an image for viewing or to analyze and determine their characteristic properties. Common examples include periscopes, microscopes, ...

s and co-inventor of the Twyman–Green interferometer.

Early life

Twyman was born in

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England on 17 November 1876, the seventh child of nine to Jane Lefevre and

ropemaker A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibres, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly c ...

George Edmund Twyman. He attended Simon Langton School before doing an electrical engineering course at Finsbury Technical College, followed by a Siemens scholarship at

Central Technical College The City and Guilds of London Institute is an educational organisation in the United Kingdom. Founded on 11 November 1878 by the City of London and 16 livery companies – to develop a national system of technical education, the institute has ...

in London. In 1897 he co-authored his first scientific paper.

Career

Twyman worked briefly for the Fowler Waring Cables Company testing

telephone cable A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is understandable. It is the physical wire or ot ...

s, before beginning work in 1898 for optical instrument manufacturing firm Adam Hilger as an assistant to Otto Hilger. Following the death of Otto Hilger, Twyman became managing director of the firm. He remained in post until 1946 when he became chairman. Until 1910 he managed the design and construction of all of the firms new equipment. This included a deviation wavelength

spectrometer A spectrometer () is a scientific instrument used to separate and measure spectral components of a physical phenomenon. Spectrometer is a broad term often used to describe instruments that measure a continuous variable of a phenomenon where the ...

and a spectrograph made using

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...

rather than glass to enable the observation of the ultraviolet spectrum. Between 1918 and 1923 with foreman Alfred Green he developed the Twyman–Green interferometer, based on the

Michelson interferometer The Michelson interferometer is a common configuration for optical interferometry and was invented by the 19/20th-century American physicist Albert Abraham Michelson. Using a beam splitter, a light source is split into two arms. Each of those ...

, and used principally for testing optical equipment. In 1924 he was elected a fellow of the

Royal Society 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, re ...

. In 1926 he was awarded both the

Duddell Medal The Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize (previously the Duddell Medal and Prize until 2008) is a prize awarded biannually by the Institute of Physics for distinguished contributions to the application of physics in an industrial, commercial or business ...

of the Physical Society and the

John Price Wetherill Medal The John Price Wetherill Medal was an award of the Franklin Institute. It was established with a bequest given by the family of John Price Wetherill (1844–1906) on April 3, 1917. On June 10, 1925, the Board of Managers voted to create a silver ...

of the

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memori ...

. In 1942 he published the book ''Prism and Lens Making''. In 1956 he won the Gold medal of the

Society for Applied Spectroscopy The Society for Applied Spectroscopy (SAS) is an organization promoting research and education in the fields of spectroscopy, optics, and analytical chemistry. Founded in 1958, it is currently headquartered in Frederick, MD Frederick is a cit ...

. He also advised the firm E. R. Watts and Son until they merged in 1948 with Adam Hilger Ltd. to form Hilger & Watts Ltd. He remained an advisor to Hilger & Watts until his death.

Personal life

In 1906 Twyman married Phillipine Katherine Elisabeth Hilger, daughter of Otto Hilger. They went on to have four children together. In 1956 he authored a book on his family history, ''An East Kent Family''. He also wrote a pamphlet of his views on economics, and a book on apprenticeships. He died at home on 6 March 1959 in St Pancras, London.

Books

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tywman, Frank Optical engineers 1876 births 1959 deaths People from Canterbury Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Institute of Physics