Sir Charles William Oatley OBE, FRS

FREng Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK a ...

(14 February 1904 – 11 March 1996) was Professor of Electrical Engineering,

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

, 1960–1971, and developer of one of the first commercial scanning electron microscopes. He was also a founder member of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Biography

He was born in

Frome Frome ( ) is a town and civil parish in eastern Somerset, England. The town is built on uneven high ground at the eastern end of the Mendip Hills, and centres on the River Frome. The town, about south of Bath, is the largest in the Mendip d ...

Valentine's Day Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, thr ...

, 14 February 1904. A plaque has been placed on the house at the junction of Badcox Parade and Catherine Hill. He was educated at

Bedford Modern School Bedford Modern School (often called BMS) is a Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference independent school in Bedford, England. The school has its origins in The Harpur Trust, born from the endowments left by Sir William Harpur in the six ...

and

St. John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corporation established by a charter dated 9 April 1511. The ...

. He lectured at King's College London for 12 years, until the war. He was a director of the

English Electric Valve Company English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national i ...

from 1966 to 1985. In 1969 he was elected to 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 ...

. Oatley also received an

Honorary Doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

from Heriot-Watt University in 1974. In that same year, he was

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...

ed. He received an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) from the

University of Bath (Virgil, Georgics II) , mottoeng = Learn the culture proper to each after its kind , established = 1886 (Merchant Venturers Technical College) 1960 (Bristol College of Science and Technology) 1966 (Bath University of Technology) 1971 (univ ...

in 1977. He retired from the

in 1985. He was awarded the

Howard N. Potts Medal The Howard N. Potts Medal was one of The Franklin Institute Awards for science and engineering award presented by the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named for Howard N. Potts. The first Howard N. Potts Medal was awarded in ...

in 1989. He died on 11 March 1996.

Graduate students

Oatley and the graduate students he supervised made substantial contributions, particularly to the development of the scanning electron microscope (SEM). His students included: * Thomas Everhart, former President of

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

Alec Broers Alec Nigel Broers, Baron Broers, (born 17 September 1938) is a British electrical engineering, electrical engineer. In 1994 Broers was elected an international member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to electronic beam ...

, former Vice-Chancellor of the

and former president of the Royal Academy of Engineering. *

Haroon Ahmed Haroon Ahmed FREng (born 2 March 1936), is a British Pakistanis, British Pakistani scientist in specialising the fields of microelectronics and electrical engineering. He is Emeritus Professor of Microelectronics at the Cavendish Laboratory, the ...

, former Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Professor of

Microelectronics Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture (or microfabrication) of very small electronic designs and components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-s ...

References

External links

Charles Oatley: Pioneer of Scanning Electron MicroscopyThe Papers of Sir Charles Oatley
held at

Churchill Archives Centre The Churchill Archives Centre (CAC) at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge is one of the largest repositories in the United Kingdom for the preservation and study of modern personal papers. It is best known for housing the papers of ...

accessed 2 July 2008 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Oatley, Charles 1904 births 1996 deaths People educated at Bedford Modern School Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Academics of King's College London British physicists British electronics engineers Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Royal Society Knights Bachelor Officers of the Order of the British Empire Royal Medal winners People from Frome Howard N. Potts Medal recipients Engineering professors at the University of Cambridge