Ronald Wilfred (or Wilfrid) Gurney (1898, in
Cheltenham
Cheltenham (), also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort, following the discovery of mineral s ...
,
[''Proc. R. Soc. Lond.'' A 371, 56-66 (1980) "Memories of early days in solid state physics", N F Mott FRS, Accessed 7 April 2010](_blank)
/ref> England – 14 April 1953, in New York, New York)[Bristol (University) Physics in the 1930s, Sir Neville Mott, Melville Wills Chair of Theoretical Physics, Bristol University 1933-ca.1953](_blank)
/ref> was a British theoretical physicist and research pupil of William Lawrence Bragg at the Victoria University of Manchester during the 1920s and 1930s, Bristol University
, mottoeng = earningpromotes one's innate power (from Horace, ''Ode 4.4'')
, established = 1595 – Merchant Venturers School1876 – University College, Bristol1909 – received royal charter
, type ...
during the 1930s and later in the US,
Radioactive decay processes
Whilst at the Palmer Physical Laboratory at Princeton University from 1926 to 1928,quantum tunnelling
Quantum tunnelling, also known as tunneling ( US) is a quantum mechanical phenomenon whereby a wavefunction can propagate through a potential barrier.
The transmission through the barrier can be finite and depends exponentially on the barrier h ...
, together with Edward Condon and independently of George Gamow. In the early 1900s, radioactive materials were known to have characteristic exponential decay
A quantity is subject to exponential decay if it decreases at a rate proportional to its current value. Symbolically, this process can be expressed by the following differential equation, where is the quantity and (lambda) is a positive rate ...
rates or half lives. At the same time, radiation emissions were known to have certain characteristic energies. By 1928, Gamow had solved the theory of the alpha decay of a nucleus via quantum tunnelling and the problem was also solved independently by Gurney and Condon.
Books
*''Elementary quantum mechanics'', Cambridge ng.The University Press, 1934.
''Introduction to statistical mechanics''
New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1949.
*''Electronic Processes in Ionic Crystals'' (1940, physics; with N.F. Mott)
See also
* Mott–Gurney law
Space charge is an interpretation of a collection of electric charges in which excess electric charge is treated as a continuum of charge distributed over a region of space (either a volume or an area) rather than distinct point-like charges. This ...
* Gurney equations
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gurney, Ronald Wilfried
1898 births
1953 deaths
Academics of the University of Bristol
Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester
British nuclear physicists
British physicists