John Cockcroft

It’s the birthday of John Cockcroft, who was born in 1897 in Todmorden, England. Cockcroft studied mathematics at the University of Manchester, served in the Royal Artillery during World War I, studied engineering at UMIST and apprenticed at Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Co -- all before taking up a scholarship in 1920 to Cambridge University. There, he went on to work in Ernest Rutherford’s lab. In 1932 Cockcroft and another Rutherford protégé, Ernest Walton, bombarded lithium atoms with protons whose energy was high enough to transmute lithium into helium. For that feat the pair was awarded the 1951 physics Nobel. During World War II Cockcroft worked on radar and on Canada’s atomic energy project, which he directed. He returned to Britain in 1945 to become the founding director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. At his insistence high-performance filters were retro-fitted at great expense into the coolant towers at the Windscale nuclear power station. Mocked as “Cockcroft’s follies,” the filters were deployed in 1957 when the core of one of Windscale’s reactors caught fire. Widespread contamination was averted. “The word folly did not seem appropriate after the accident,” was one official’s assessment.

Date in History: 27 May 1897