The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named after the British chemist and physicist

Henry Cavendish Henry Cavendish ( ; 10 October 1731 – 24 February 1810) was an English natural philosopher and scientist who was an important experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed "infl ...

. The laboratory has had a huge influence on research in the disciplines of physics and biology. The laboratory moved to its present site in West Cambridge in 1974. , 30 Cavendish researchers have won

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfre ...

s. Notable discoveries to have occurred at the Cavendish Laboratory include the discovery of the

electron The electron (, or in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary partic ...

neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons behav ...

, and structure of DNA.

Founding

The Cavendish Laboratory was initially located on the New Museums Site, Free School Lane, in the centre of Cambridge. It is named after British chemist and physicist

for contributions to science and his relative

William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire, (27 April 1808 – 21 December 1891), styled as Lord Cavendish of Keighley between 1831 and 1834 and known as Earl of Burlington between 1834 and 1858, was a British landowner, benefactor, nobleman, ...

, who served as chancellor of the university and donated funds for the construction of the laboratory. Professor

James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and ligh ...

, the developer of

electromagnetic theory In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions ...

, was a founder of the laboratory and the first

Cavendish Professor of Physics The Cavendish Professorship is one of the senior faculty positions in physics at the University of Cambridge. It was founded on 9 February 1871 alongside the famous Cavendish Laboratory, which was completed three years later. William Cavendish, 7th ...

. The Duke of Devonshire had given to Maxwell, as head of the laboratory, the manuscripts of Henry Cavendish's unpublished ''Electrical Works''. The editing and publishing of these was Maxwell's main scientific work while he was at the laboratory. Cavendish's work aroused Maxwell's intense admiration and he decided to call the Laboratory (formerly known as the Devonshire Laboratory) the Cavendish Laboratory and thus to commemorate both the Duke and Henry Cavendish.

Physics

Several important early physics discoveries were made here, including the discovery of the

by J.J. Thomson (1897) the Townsend discharge by John Sealy Townsend, and the development of the cloud chamber by C.T.R. Wilson.

Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' considers him to be the greatest ...

became Director of the Cavendish Laboratory in 1919. Under his leadership the

was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932, and in the same year the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner was performed by students working under his direction;

John Cockcroft Sir John Douglas Cockcroft, (27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was a British physicist who shared with Ernest Walton the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951 for splitting the atomic nucleus, and was instrumental in the development of nuclea ...

and Ernest Walton.

Physical chemistry

Physical Chemistry (originally the department of Colloid Science led by Eric Rideal) had left the old Cavendish site, subsequently locating as the Department of Physical Chemistry (under RG Norrish) in the then new chemistry building with the Department of Chemistry (led by Lord Todd) in

Lensfield Road Lensfield Road is a road (part of the A603) in southeast central Cambridge, England. It runs between the junction of Trumpington Street and Trumpington Road to the west and the junction of Regent Street and Hills Road to the west. It continue ...

: both chemistry departments merged in the 1980s.

Nuclear physics

In World War II the laboratory carried out research for the MAUD Committee, part of the British Tube Alloys project of research into the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

. Researchers included Nicholas Kemmer, Alan Nunn May, Anthony French, Samuel Curran and the French scientists including Lew Kowarski and Hans von Halban. Several transferred to Canada in 1943; the Montreal Laboratory and some later to the Chalk River Laboratories. The production of

plutonium Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhib ...

and neptunium by bombarding

uranium-238 Uranium-238 (238U or U-238) is the most common isotope of uranium found in nature, with a relative abundance of 99%. Unlike uranium-235, it is non-fissile, which means it cannot sustain a chain reaction in a thermal-neutron reactor. However ...

with neutrons was predicted in 1940 by two teams working independently: Egon Bretscher and Norman Feather at the Cavendish and Edwin M. McMillan and Philip Abelson at Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Biology

The Cavendish Laboratory has had an important influence on

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditar ...

, mainly through the application of

X-ray crystallography X-ray crystallography is the experimental science determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the crystalline structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into many specific directions. By measuring the angle ...

to the study of structures of biological molecules. Francis Crick already worked in the Medical Research Council Unit, headed by Max Perutz and housed in the Cavendish Laboratory, when James Watson came from the United States and they made a breakthrough in discovering the structure of DNA. For their work while in the Cavendish Laboratory, they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962, together with Maurice Wilkins of King's College London, himself a graduate of St. John's College, Cambridge. The discovery was made on 28 February 1953; the first Watson/Crick paper appeared in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...

'' on 25 April 1953. Sir Lawrence Bragg, the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, where Watson and Crick worked, gave a talk at Guy's Hospital Medical School in London on Thursday 14 May 1953 which resulted in an article by Ritchie Calder in the '' News Chronicle'' of London, on Friday 15 May 1953, entitled "Why You Are You. Nearer Secret of Life." The news reached readers of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' the next day; Victor K. McElheny, in researching his biography, ''Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution'', found a clipping of a six-paragraph ''New York Times'' article written from London and dated 16 May 1953 with the headline "Form of `Life Unit' in Cell Is Scanned." The article ran in an early edition and was then pulled to make space for news deemed more important. (''The New York Times'' subsequently ran a longer article on 12 June 1953). The Cambridge University undergraduate newspaper ''

Varsity Varsity may refer to: *University, an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in various academic disciplines Places *Varsity, Calgary, a neighbourhood in Calgary, Alberta, Canada * Varsity Lakes ...

'' also ran its own short article on the discovery on Saturday 30 May 1953. Bragg's original announcement of the discovery at a Solvay Conference on proteins in Belgium on 8 April 1953 went unreported by the British press.

Sydney Brenner Sydney Brenner (13 January 1927 – 5 April 2019) was a South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work ...

Jack Dunitz Jack David Dunitz FRS (29 March 1923 – 12 September 2021) was a British chemist and widely known chemical crystallographer. He was Professor of Chemical Crystallography at the ETH Zurich from 1957 until his official retirement in 1990. He h ...

, Dorothy Hodgkin, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton, were some of the first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Crick and Watson; at the time they were working at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

's Chemistry Department. All were impressed by the new DNA model, especially Brenner who subsequently worked with Crick at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

in the Cavendish Laboratory and the new Laboratory of Molecular Biology. According to the late Dr. Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all travelled together in two cars once Dorothy Hodgkin announced to them that they were off to Cambridge to see the model of the structure of DNA. Orgel also later worked with Crick at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Present site

Due to overcrowding in the old buildings, it moved to its present site in West Cambridge in the early 1970s. It is due to move again to a third site currently under construction in West Cambridge.

Nobel Laureates at the Cavendish

# John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (Physics, 1904) # Sir J. J. Thomson (Physics, 1906) #

(Chemistry, 1908) # Sir William Lawrence Bragg (Physics, 1915) # Charles Glover Barkla (Physics, 1917) # Francis William Aston (Chemistry, 1922) # Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (Physics, 1927) # Arthur Compton (Physics, 1927) # Sir Owen Willans Richardson (Physics, 1928) # Sir James Chadwick (Physics, 1935) # Sir George Paget Thomson (Physics, 1937) # Sir Edward Victor Appleton (Physics, 1947) #

Patrick Blackett, Baron Blackett Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett (18 November 1897 – 13 July 1974) was a British experimental physics, experimental physicist known for his work on cloud chambers, cosmic rays, and paleomagnetism, winning the Nobel Priz ...

(Physics, 1948) # Sir

(Physics, 1951) # Ernest Walton (Physics, 1951) # Francis Crick (Physiology or Medicine, 1962) # James Watson (Physiology or Medicine, 1962) # Max Perutz (Chemistry, 1962) # Sir John Kendrew (Chemistry, 1962) # Dorothy Hodgkin (Chemistry, 1964) # Brian Josephson (Physics, 1973) # Sir Martin Ryle (Physics, 1974) # Antony Hewish (Physics, 1974) # Sir Nevill Francis Mott (Physics, 1977) # Philip Warren Anderson (Physics, 1977) # Pyotr Kapitsa (Physics, 1978) #

Allan McLeod Cormack Allan MacLeod Cormack (February 23, 1924 – May 7, 1998) was a South African American physicist who won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (along with Godfrey Hounsfield) for his work on X-ray computed tomography (CT), a significan ...

(Physiology or Medicine, 1979) #

Mohammad Abdus Salam Mohammad Abdus Salam Salam adopted the forename "Mohammad" in 1974 in response to the anti-Ahmadiyya decrees in Pakistan, similarly he grew his beard. (; ; 29 January 192621 November 1996) was a Punjabis, Punjabi Pakistani theoretical physici ...

(Physics, 1979) # Sir Aaron Klug (Chemistry, 1982) # Didier Queloz (Physics, 2019)

Cavendish Professors of Physics

The Cavendish Professors were the heads of the department until the tenure of Sir Brian Pippard, during which period the roles separated. #

FRS FRSE 1871–1879 # John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh 1879–1884 # Sir

Joseph J. Thomson Sir Joseph John Thomson (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics, credited with the discovery of the electron, the first subatomic particle to be discovered. In 1897, Thomson showed that c ...

FRS 1884–1919 #

FRS, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson 1919–1937 # Sir William Lawrence Bragg CH OBE MC FRS 1938–1953 # Sir Nevill Francis Mott CH FRS 1954–1971 # Sir Brian Pippard FRS 1971–1984 # Sir Sam Edwards FRS 1984–1995 # Sir Richard Friend FRS FREng 1995–present

Heads of department

# Professor Sir

Alan Cook Sir Alan Hugh Cook FRS (2 December 1922 – 23 July 2004) was an English physicist who specialised in geophysics, astrophysics and particularly precision measurement. Early life and family Cook was born in Felsted, Essex in 1922. He was the ...

FRS FRSE 1979-1984 # Professor Archie Howie CBE FRS 1989-1997 # Professor Malcolm Longair† CBE FRS FRSE 1997-2005 # Professor Peter Littlewood FRS 2005-2011 # Professor James Stirling† CBE FRS 2011-2013 # Professor

Michael Andrew Parker Michael Andrew Parker is a British physicist and is professor of high energy physics at the University of Cambridge. Parker attended Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, Bristol and in 1978 graduated with a Class II degree in Natural Sciences from the Un ...

2013 - † ''Jacksonian Professors of Natural Philosophy''

Cavendish Groups

Areas in which the Laboratory has been influential include:- * Shoenberg Laboratory for Quantum Matter, led by

Gil Lonzarich Gilbert "Gil" George Lonzarich (born 1945) is a solid-state physicist who works at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. He is particularly noted for his work on superconducting and magnetic materials. Life Lonzarich receive ...

* Superconductivity Josephson junction, led by Brian Pippard * Theory of Condensed Matter, which is the dominant theoretical group. * Electron Microscopy Group led by Archie Howie *

Radio Astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The first detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation comi ...

(led by Martin Ryle and Antony Hewish), with the Cavendish Astrophysics Groups telescopes being based at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. *Semiconductor Physics * Atomic, Mesoscopic and Optical Physics (AMOP) Group led by Zoran Hadzibabic * Nanophotonics group led by

Jeremy Baumberg Jeremy John Baumberg, (born 14 March 1967) is Professor of Nanoscience in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge,Jeremy Baumberg's a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge and Director of the NanoPhotonics Centre. Education Baumb ...

* Structure and Dynamics Group, led by Jacqui Cole * Laboratory for Scientific Computing led by Nikos Nikiforakis * Biological and Soft Systems Group led by Pietro Cicuta

Cavendish staff

the laboratory is headed by Andy Parker and the

is Sir Richard Friend.

Notable senior academic staff

senior academic staff (

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

s or Readers) include: #

FRS, Professor of Nanoscience and Fellow of

Jesus College, Cambridge Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes f ...

# Jacqui Cole, Professor of Molecular Engineering # Athene Donald FRS, Professor of Experimental Physics, Master of

Churchill College, Cambridge Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities. In 1958, a trust was establis ...

# Sir Richard Friend FRS, FREng,

and Fellow of

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. Th ...

Stephen Gull Stephen Gull is a British physicist based at St John's College, Cambridge credited, together with Anthony N. Lasenby, Joan Lasenby and Chris J. L. Doran, with raising the interest of the physics community to the mathematical language and method ...

, University Professor of Physics # Sir Michael Pepper FRS, Kt, Honorary Professor of Pharmaceutical Science in the University of Otago, New Zealand # Didier Queloz FRS, professor at the Battcock Centre for Experimental Astrophysics # James Floyd Scott FRS, professor and director of research # Ben Simons FRS,

Herchel Smith Herchel Smith (May 6, 1925 – December 20, 2001) was an Anglo-American organic chemist. His discoveries include the key inventions underlying oral and injectable contraceptives. In later life, he was a major benefactor to university science. In ...

Professor of Physics #

Henning Sirringhaus Henning Sirringhaus is Hitachi Professor of Semiconductor device, Electron Device Physics, Head of the Microelectronics Group and a member of the Optoelectronics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory. He is also a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambr ...

FRS, Hitachi Professor of Electron Device Physics and head of Microelectronics and Optoelectronics Group # Sarah Teichmann FRS, principal research associate and Fellow of

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

Notable emeritus professors

The Cavendish is home to a number of emeritus scientists, pursuing their research interests in the laboratory after their formal retirement. # Mick Brown FRS, emeritus professor # Volker Heine, FRS, emeritus professor # Brian Josephson, FRS, emeritus professor # Archibald Howie, FRS, emeritus professor # Malcolm Longair, CBE, FRS, FRSE, Emeritus Jacksonian Professor of Natural Ph