Henry Edgar Hall FRS (1928 – 4 December 2015) was a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

low temperature physics In physics, cryogenics is the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures. The 13th IIR International Congress of Refrigeration (held in Washington DC in 1971) endorsed a universal definition of “cryogenics” and “cr ...

at the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

. He was the 2004 recipient of the

Guthrie Medal and Prize The Michael Faraday Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and appl ...

. Hall was awarded a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in 1957 from

Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican mon ...

with thesis title ''The rotation of liquid

helium II Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. It ...

''. He worked at the University of Manchester from 1958 to 1995, when he retired. He died on 4 December 2015.Golov, A. I.; Vinen W. F. (2018). "Henry Edgar Hall. 28 September 1928—4 December 2015". ''

Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society The ''Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society'' is an academic journal on the history of science published annually by the Royal Society. It publishes obituaries of Fellows of the Royal Society. It was established in 1932 as ''Obitu ...

''. do
10.1098/rsbm.2018.0020

Biography

Hall was born in London on 28 September 1928, the son of John Ainger Hall and Elsie (née Chatterton). He attended Lowther Primary School in

Barnes Barnes may refer to: People * Barnes (name), a family name and a given name (includes lists of people with that name) Places United Kingdom *Barnes, London, England **Barnes railway station ** Barnes Bridge railway station ** Barnes Railway Bri ...

until he was nine, when he moved to the preparatory department at

Latymer Upper School (Slowly Therefore Surely) , established = , closed = , sister_school = Godolphin and Latymer School , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , head_label = H ...

Hammersmith Hammersmith is a district of West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. ...

. He remained there until he was called up for National Service with the Royal Air Force, serving in Egypt as an electrician. In his last year at school, Hall won an Open Major Scholarship to

. He went up to Emmanuel in 1949 to read natural sciences, and graduated with first class honours. He was then accepted as a research student in the Royal Society Mond Laboratory, an offshoot of 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 ...

where he chose to work on liquid helium, under the supervision, initially, of Donald Osborne and later,

David Shoenberg David Shoenberg, MBE FRS, (4 January 1911 – 10 March 2004) was a British physicist who worked in condensed matter physics. Shoenberg is known for having developed experimental and theoretical principles to study the De Haas–Van Alphen effe ...

. While waiting for equipment to be built, he wrote a paper explaining some apparently puzzling observations by Kapitsa of the force acting on a source of heat in superfluid helium. The initial experimental results were published in 1955. The background to this complex field is fully described in the Royal Society biographical memoir. In 1958 Hall was appointed to a lectureship at the

, where he remained for the rest of his career. He collaborated with A J F Boyle, D St P Bunbury and others in studies of the newly discovered

Mössbauer effect The Mössbauer effect, or recoilless nuclear resonance fluorescence, is a physical phenomenon discovered by Rudolf Mössbauer in 1958. It involves the resonant and recoil-free emission and absorption of gamma radiation by atomic nuclei bound in a ...

. In 1961 Hall was promoted directly to a professorship. He went on to play an important role in the development of

dilution refrigerator A 3He/4He dilution refrigerator is a cryogenics, cryogenic device that provides continuous cooling to temperatures as low as 2 Kelvin, mK, with no moving parts in the low-temperature region. The cooling power is provided by the heat o ...

s. His growing expertise in experiments at very low temperatures led him to studies of the liquid phase of the light isotope of helium, ³He, especially in its superfluid state. Hall retired in 1995, but continued his research full time until 2000. He ran experiments on non-linear mass currents in ³He-B at near-critical velocities—calling that period ‘my second graduate studies’. He summarized the results in his paper of 2001.

Family

Hall married physics student Patricia Broadbent in 1962. They had two sons, Stephan and Ian, and a daughter, Daphne. Henry Edgar Hall died on 4 December 2015 in Millview Care Home,

Bolton Bolton (, locally ) is a large town in Greater Manchester in North West England, formerly a part of Lancashire. A former mill town, Bolton has been a production centre for textiles since Flemish people, Flemish weavers settled in the area i ...

Awards

1963

Simon Memorial Prize The Simon Memorial Prize is an award that honors 'distinguished work in experimental or theoretical low temperature physics'. The prize is awarded by the Institute of Physics and is presented at the International Conference on Low Temperature ...

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide membership of over 20,000. The IOP is the Physica ...

(with W. F. Vinen)
2004

, Institute of Physics

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Henry 20th-century British physicists 21st-century British physicists Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Manchester 1928 births 2015 deaths Scientists from London