Prof William Harold Joseph Childs

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 ...

(19 January 1905 – 26 April 1983) was a British physicist and academic author.

Life

He was born in

Bromley-by-Bow Bromley, commonly known as Bromley-by- Bow, is a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London, located on the western banks of the River Lea, in the Lower Lea Valley in East London. The area is distinct from Bow, which li ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

on 19 January 1905, the son of William and Elizabeth Jane Childs. He was educated at East Ham Grammar School and then attended the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

, graduating with a BSc in 1924. He continued as a postgraduate, being awarded a PhD in 1928. He then received a position on the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory (forming part of the

Royal Institution The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, inc ...

where he worked from 1931 to 1940. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he worked in the Armaments Research Department at the

Ministry of Supply The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. A separate ministry, however, was responsible for aircr ...

and stayed in this role until demobbed in 1947. In 1947, he received a professorship from

Heriot-Watt University Heriot-Watt University ( gd, Oilthigh Heriot-Watt) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was established in 1821 as the School of Arts of Edinburgh, the world's first mechanics' institute, and subsequently granted univ ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

and lectured in physics there until retirement in 1969. 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 ...

in 1949, his proposers including

Norman Feather Norman Feather FRS FRSE PRSE (16 November 1904 – 14 August 1978), was an English nuclear physicist. Feather and Egon Bretscher were working at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in 1940, when they proposed that the 239 isotope of element 9 ...

and C T R Wilson. He died on 26 April 1983.

Publications

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Family

In 1934, he married Helen Simpson Gilchrist (d. 1984).

References

1905 births 1983 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Alumni of the University of London {{UK-physicist-stub