Sir William Hunter McCrea
FRS 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 ...
FRAS (13 December 1904 – 25 April 1999) was an English
astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...
and
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
.
Biography
He was born in
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
in
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
on 13 December 1904.
His family moved to
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 ...
in 1906 and then to
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 ...
where he attended
Chesterfield Grammar School. His father was a school master at
Netherthorpe Grammar School in
Staveley Staveley may refer to:
Places
* Staveley, Cumbria, village in the former county of Westmorland and now in Cumbria, England
** Staveley railway station
* Staveley-in-Cartmel, village formerly in Lancashire, now in Cumbria, England
* Staveley, D ...
. He went to
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...
in 1923 where he studied Mathematics, later gaining a PhD in 1929 under
Ralph H. Fowler.
From 1930 he lectured in Mathematics at the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
. During his time in Edinburgh (in 1931) 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 Sir
Edmund Taylor Whittaker
Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker (24 October 1873 – 24 March 1956) was a British mathematician, physicist, and historian of science. Whittaker was a leading mathematical scholar of the early 20th-century who contributed widely to applied mathema ...
, Sir
Charles Galton Darwin
Sir Charles Galton Darwin (19 December 1887 – 31 December 1962) was an English physicist who served as director of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) during the Second World War. He was a son of the mathematician George Howard Darwin an ...
,
Edward Copson and
Charles Glover Barkla
Charles Glover Barkla FRS FRSE (7 June 1877 – 23 October 1944) was a British physicist, and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1917 for his work in X-ray spectroscopy and related areas in the study of X-rays (Roentgen rays).
Life ...
. He won the Society's
Keith Medal
The Keith Medal was a prize awarded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy, for a scientific paper published in the society's scientific journals, preference being given to a paper containing a discovery, either in mathe ...
(jointly with
Edward Copson) for the period 1939–41.
In 1932 he moved to
Imperial College London
Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
as a Reader. In 1936 he became Professor of Mathematics and head of the mathematics department at the
Queen's University of Belfast
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.
In 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 was co-opted onto the Admiralty Operational Research Group. After the war, he joined the mathematics department at
Royal Holloway College
Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic departm ...
in 1944 (the McCrea Building on Royal Holloway's campus is named after him). He was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of London
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 1952.
In 1965, McCrea created the astronomy centre of the physics department at the
University of Sussex
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, budget = £319.6 million (2019–20)
, chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar
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, ...
.
McCrea died on 25 April 1999 at
Lewes
Lewes () is the county town of East Sussex, England. It is the police and judicial centre for all of Sussex and is home to Sussex Police, East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service, Lewes Crown Court and HMP Lewes. The civil parish is the centre of ...
in
Sussex
Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...
.
Family
In 1933 he married Marian Core (d. 1995) and had three children.
Discoveries
In 1928, he studied
Albrecht Unsöld
Albrecht Otto Johannes Unsöld (20 April 1905 – 23 September 1995) was a German astrophysicist known for his contributions to spectroscopic analysis of stellar atmospheres.
Career
Albrecht Unsöld was born in Bolheim, Württemberg, Germany. ...
's hypothesis, and discovered that three-quarters of the Sun is made of
hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...
, and about one quarter is
helium
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. ...
, with 1% being other elements. Previous to this many people thought the Sun consisted mostly of iron. After this, people realised most stars consist of hydrogen.
In 1964 he proposed mass transfer mechanism as an explanation of
blue straggler
A blue straggler is a main-sequence star in an open or globular cluster that is more luminous and bluer than stars at the main sequence turnoff point for the cluster. Blue stragglers were first discovered by Allan Sandage in 1953 while perform ...
stars.
McCrea
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
''Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society'' (MNRAS) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research in astronomy and astrophysics. It has been in continuous existence since 1827 and publishes letters and papers reporting orig ...
, 128:147, 1964 (This paper has over 400 citations.)
Carney, Latham, and Laird
The Astronomical Journal, 129:466–479, 2005
Perets, and Fabrycky
The Astrophysical Journal, 697:1048–1056, 2009
Awards
McCrea was president of the Royal Astronomical Society
(Whatever shines should be observed)
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from 1961 to 1963 and president of Section A of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chie ...
from 1965 to 1966.
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...
in 1985. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society is the highest award given by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The RAS Council have "complete freedom as to the grounds on which it is awarded" and it can be awarded for any reason. Past awar ...
in 1976.
See also
*Accretion (astrophysics)
In astrophysics, accretion is the accumulation of particles into a massive object by gravitationally attracting more matter, typically gaseous matter, in an accretion disk. Most astronomical objects, such as galaxies, stars, and planets, are ...
*History of Solar System formation and evolution hypotheses
The history of scientific thought about the formation and evolution of the Solar System began with the Copernican Revolution. The first recorded use of the term "Solar System" dates from 1704. Since the seventeenth century, philosophers and scien ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:McCrea, William
20th-century British astronomers
People from Chesterfield, Derbyshire
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Academics of the University of Edinburgh
Academics of Imperial College London
Academics of Queen's University Belfast
Academics of Royal Holloway, University of London
1904 births
1999 deaths
People from County Dublin
Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
People educated at Chesterfield Grammar School
Fellows of the Royal Society
Knights Bachelor
20th-century British mathematicians
Presidents of the Royal Astronomical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh