Karl George Emeléus (4 August 1901 in London–18 June 1989 in Belfast)Karl George Emeléus obituary

Physics Today ''Physics Today'' is the membership magazine of the American Institute of Physics. First published in May 1948, it is issued on a monthly schedule, and is provided to the members of ten physics societies, including the American Physical Society. ...

43, 11, 106 (1990) was an English experimental physicist who spent half a century on the staff at Queen's University Belfast. His early research in detection of nuclear radiation led on to a lifetime of research into the conduction of electricity through gases.

Biography

Emeléus was the son of Karl Henry Emeléus and Ellen Briggs, the brother of inorganic chemist Harry Julius Emeléus and the father of petrologist Henry Emeleus. In 1928 he married Florence Mary Chambers, daughter of one of the founders of Chambers Motors, and they had four children – three sons and one daughter. As a direct consequence of the marriage Florence was forced to give up her job as Junior Lecturer in physics at

Queen's University Belfast The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast (; abbreviated Queen's or QUB), is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The university received its charter in 1845 as part of ...

.Mark McCartney
Karl George Emeleus and Physics in Belfast 1927-66
''Physics in Perspective'' 2024 He was known professionally as K. G. Emeléus or simply KGE, and by family and friends as George.

Education

Emeléus was educated at

Hastings Grammar School Hastings ( ) is a seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west at Senlac Hill in 1066. ...

and at

St John's College, Cambridge St John's College, formally the College of St John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge, is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge, founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch L ...

and was awarded BA in 1922.Emeléus, Karl George
Dictionary of Irish Biography Upon graduation, he joined the

Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, 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 ...

where he worked as a research student under

Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both Atomic physics, atomic and nuclear physics. He has been described as "the father of nu ...

James Chadwick Sir James Chadwick (20 October 1891 – 24 July 1974) was an English nuclear physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935 for his discovery of the neutron. In 1941, he wrote the final draft of the MAUD Report, which inspired t ...

and Edward Appleton,though Rutherford's involvement was very limited. Working with Chadwick he built a large Wilson cloud chamber this led to his lifelong interest in gaseous electronics. Working with Appleton and another PhD student Miles Barnett, Emeléus investigated the maximum count rate of the

Geiger counter A Geiger counter (, ; also known as a Geiger–Müller counter or G-M counter) is an electronic instrument for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation with the use of a Geiger–Müller tube. It is widely used in applications such as radiat ...

. He followed Appleton to King's College London at the beginning of 1925 to take up a role as a demonstrator in physics and completed his thesis on "Methods for detecting single ionizing particles", for which Cambridge awarded him a PhD in1926.

Career

In 1927 he joined Queen's University Belfast (QUB) as a lecturer in Physics and later became Professor of Physics (1933–66). Physics in the Queen's University Belfast: Prof. K. G. Emeleus
''Nature'' April 30, 1966 Vol, 210, p. 466 Early in his career he wrote the book ''The Conduction of Electricity Through Gases''. Electronics grew out of this sort of work in the early 20th century. During his long tenure at QUB he researched extensively into the conduction of electricity through gases, publishing more than 170 papers, with his last paper being submitted less than three weeks before his death. After the Second World War he advised local government in Northern Ireland on nuclear policy, both with respect to the possibility of a nuclear attack on the province and the possibility of a nuclear power station.

Books

* ''The Conduction of Electricity Through Gases'' (Methuen, 1929, second edition 1936, third edition 1951) * ''Discharges in Electronegative Gases'',Taylor & Francis Ltd (Jan 01, 1970),

Awards

He was awarded the title

Commander of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

in 1965 and was a member of the

Royal Irish Academy The Royal Irish Academy (RIA; ), based in Dublin, is an academic body that promotes study in the natural sciences, arts, literature, and social sciences. It is Ireland's premier List of Irish learned societies, learned society and one of its le ...

.R.A. Bertlmann & A. Zeilinger (editors)
Quantum (Un)speakables: From Bell to Quantum Information
Springer Science & Business Media, Nov 11, 2013, p. 10 The Karl George Emeléus physics prize was established in 1984 by former students and friends for physics students at QUB.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Emeléus, Karl George People educated at Hastings Grammar School Alumni of King's College London Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge 20th-century British physicists English physicists British experimental physicists Plasma physicists Academics of Queen's University Belfast 1901 births 1989 deaths