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 ...
,
FInstP
Fellowship of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) is "the highest level of membership attainable" by physicists who are members of the Institute of Physics (IoP), "for those with a degree in physics or related subject (or equivalent knowledge gained ...
(24 February 1939 – 27 January 2015) was an English
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
who specialised in the excitations of
solids
Solid is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being liquid, gas, and plasma). The molecules in a solid are closely packed together and contain the least amount of kinetic energy. A solid is characterized by structural ...
.
Biography
Cowley was born in
Woodford Green
Woodford Green is an area of Woodford in north-east London, England, within the London Borough of Redbridge. It adjoins Buckhurst Hill to the north, Woodford Bridge to the east, South Woodford to the south, and Chingford to the west. Epping F ...
, Essex, on 24 February 1939. His father, Cecil Arthur Cowley, was a chartered surveyor, and his mother Mildred Sarah Nash was from a farming family. During
World War II
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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, the family evacuated to
Leighton Buzzard
Leighton Buzzard ( ) is a market town in Bedfordshire, England, in the southwest of the county and close to the Buckinghamshire border. It lies between Aylesbury, Tring, Luton/Dunstable and Milton Keynes, near the Chiltern Hills. It is northwe ...
,
Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire (; abbreviated Beds) is a ceremonial county in the East of England. The county has been administered by three unitary authorities, Borough of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Borough of Luton, since Bedfordshire County Council ...
, later moving to
Shenfield
Shenfield is a commuter suburb of Brentwood, in the borough of Brentwood, Essex, England. In 2020, the suburb was estimated to have a population of 5,396.
History
The old village (now town), by the church and Green Dragon pub, lies along the ...
and on to
Gidea Park
Gidea Park () is a neighbourhood in the east of Romford in the London Borough of Havering, south-east England.
Predominantly affluent and residential, it was historically within the county of Essex and saw significant expansion in the early 20t ...
, Essex. He was educated at Brentwood School, where he had won a scholarship, and afterwards he entered
Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall (formally The College or Hall of the Holy Trinity in the University of Cambridge) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
It is the fifth-oldest surviving college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by ...
, where he read
natural sciences
Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeat ...
. Cowley would remain at Cambridge to study for a PhD.
He married Sheila Joyce Wells, a teacher of mathematics, on 4 April 1964 and they had two children. On 27 January 2015 Cowley died at a care home in Oxford as a result of a head injury sustained in a bicycle accident a year earlier.
Career and research
He was appointed professor of physics 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 1 ...
in 1970 and
Dr Lee's Professor of Experimental Philosophy The Dr Lee's Professorships are three named statutory professorships of the University of Oxford. They were created in 1919, and are named after Matthew Lee (1695–1755) who had endowed three readerships at Christ Church, Oxford, in the 19th cent ...
at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
in 1988 (a post that carried with it a
fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
ship at
Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road.
Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy ...
). Cowley made his name in the field of
neutron scattering
Neutron scattering, the irregular dispersal of free neutrons by matter, can refer to either the naturally occurring physical process itself or to the man-made experimental techniques that use the natural process for investigating materials. Th ...
. This work led to the study of
phase transition
In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states ...
s.
Awards and honours
In 1972 Cowley was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the following year he was awarded the inaugural
Max Born Prize
The Max Born Medal and Prize is a scientific prize awarded yearly by the German Physical Society (DPG) and the British Institute of Physics (IOP) in memory of the German physicist Max Born, who was a German-Jewish physicist, instrumental in the ...
Faraday Medal and Prize
The Michael Faraday Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics in experimental physics. The award is made "for outstanding and sustained contributions to experimental physics." The medal is accompanied by a pri ...
from 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 application.
It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide membership of over 20,000. The IOP is the Physic ...