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Atomic Energy Research Establishment
The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), also known as Harwell Laboratory, was the main Headquarters, centre for nuclear power, atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from 1946 to the 1990s. It was created, owned and funded by the British Government. A number of early research reactors were built here starting with GLEEP in 1947 to provide the underlying science and technology behind the design and building of Britain's nuclear reactors such as the Windscale Piles and Calder Hall nuclear power station. To support this an extensive array of research and design laboratories were built to enable research into all aspects of nuclear reactor and fuel design, and the development of pilot plants for fuel reprocessing. The site became a major employer in the Oxford area. In the 1990s demand for government-led research had significantly decreased and the site was subsequently gradually diversified to allow private investment, and was known from 2006 as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harwell, Oxfordshire
Harwell is a village and civil parish in the Vale of White Horse about west of Didcot, east of Wantage and south of Oxford, England. The parish measures about north – south, and almost east – west at its widest point. In 1923, its area was . Historic counties of England, Historically in Berkshire, it has been administered as part of Oxfordshire since the Local Government Act 1972, 1974 boundary changes. The parish includes part of Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in the southwest. The 2011 United Kingdom census, 2011 census recorded the parish's population as 2,349. Toponymy The earliest known surviving records of Harwell's name are 10th-century Saxon charters now reproduced in the ''Cartularium Saxonicum''. One from 956 records Horn Down, a nearby hill, as ''Harandúne'', which is derived from the Old English for "grey hill". The same charter records the Manorialism, manor as ''Haranwylle'', which comes from the Old English for "stream by or coming from Horn Hill" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term ''Cold war (term), cold war'' is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and Nuclear arms race, nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, Economic sanctions, embargoes, and sports diplomacy. After the end of World War II in 1945, during which the US and USSR had been allies, the USSR installed satellite state, satellite governments in its occupied territories in Eastern Europe and N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basil Schonland
Sir Basil Ferdinand Jamieson Schonland OMG CBE FRS (2 February 1896 – 24 November 1972) was noted for his research on lightning, his involvement in the development of radar during World War II and for being the first president of the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Birth and parentage He was born in Grahamstown, Cape Colony to Selmar Schonland (botanist and a founder of Rhodes University) and Flora MacOwan, daughter of Peter MacOwan. Education In 1910, Schonland matriculated at the age of 14 from St. Andrew's College as the top pupil in the Cape Province. He later studied at Rhodes University and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in the years 1914-15 and 1919-20. World War I service During World War I, Schonland volunteered for service and served with the Signal Service of the Royal Engineers in France 1915-18. He was wounded at Arras, mentioned in despatches and was awarded the OBE. Early research After the war he becam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monty Finniston
Sir Harold Montague "Monty" Finniston FRS FRSE (15 August 1912 – 2 February 1991) was a Scottish industrialist. Life He was born at 26 Aikenhead Road in Govanhill, Glasgow the son of Robert Finniston. His family were of Russian Jewish origin, and their surname had originally been Feinstein before settling in Scotland. He attended Allan Glen's School. Monty Finniston read metallurgical chemistry at the University of Glasgow, where he gained his PhD and then lectured in metallurgy. He spent the years of the Second World War in the Royal Naval Scientific Service, seconded to the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada working on the application of nuclear power to submarines. After the war he worked in Canada, and then was appointed Chief Metallurgist at the Atomic Energy Authority, Harwell. The years 1948–1958 which he spent there were a time of rapid development of nuclear power. Finniston initiated and oversaw a wide-ranging research programme into the many metallurgica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall Of Goring
Walter Charles Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring (5 March 1932 – 20 February 1996) was a noted theoretical physicist and leader in the UK's energy sector. Early life The son of Frank Marshall and Amy Pearson, he attended the grammar school St Illtyd's Boys College (now St Illtyd's Catholic High School). He studied mathematical physics at Birmingham University and gained a PhD there under Rudolf Peierls. Career He joined the Theoretical Physics Division at AERE Harwell in 1954, succeeding Brian Flowers as Head of that Division in 1960 and becoming Director of AERE in 1968; he eventually was appointed Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority in 1981. CEGB As a champion of nuclear power, he was appointed, in 1983, to be chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board. He was also highly sceptical of fusion power, famously noting that "fusion is an idea with infinite possibility and zero chance of success." In 1989, with the government's plan to reorga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian Flowers
Brian Hilton Flowers, Baron Flowers FRS (13 September 1924 – 25 June 2010) was a British physicist, academician, and public servant. Early life and studies The son of the Rev. Harold Joseph Flowers and Mrs Marian Flowers, Brian Hilton Flowers was born in Blackburn, Lancashire. He was educated in Swansea at Bishop Gore School, where a teacher, Mr Foukes, encouraged his interest in physics. He went on to study at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated in physics and electronics. Career Flowers worked on the Anglo-Canadian Atomic Energy Project Tube Alloys at Chalk River, Ontario from 1944 to 1946, then joined the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at Harwell, Oxfordshire until 1950 when he moved to the department of mathematical physics at the University of Birmingham. In 1952, he became the head of the Theoretical physics division at AERE, holding this post until 1958. At the University of Manchester, he was Professor of theoretical physics from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom, then migrated to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader. The son of a Lutheran pastor, Fuchs attended the University of Leipzig, where his father was a professor of theology, and became involved in student politics, joining the student branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and the '' Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold'', an SPD-allied paramilitary organisation. He was expelled from the SPD in 1932, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Frisch
Otto Robert Frisch (1 October 1904 – 22 September 1979) was an Austrian-born British physicist who worked on nuclear physics. With Otto Stern and Immanuel Estermann, he first measured the magnetic moment of the proton. With his aunt, Lise Meitner, he advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fission (coining the term) and first experimentally detected the fission by-products. Later, with his collaborator, Rudolf Peierls, he designed the first theoretical mechanism for the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1940. Leading the Los Alamos Critical Assemblies experiments in 1945, he oversaw the world's first prompt criticality in the Dragon device. Early life Otto Robert Frisch was born in Vienna in 1904 to a Jewish family, the son of Justinian Frisch, a painter, and Auguste Meitner Frisch, a concert pianist. He himself was talented at both but also shared his maternal aunt Lise Meitner's love of physics and commenced a period of study at the University of Vienna, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Wakefield Banks Skinner
Herbert Wakefield Banks Skinner (7 October 1900 – 20 January 1960) was a British physicist. Biography Skinner was born on 7 October 1900 at 15 Woodville Road, Ealing, London, the only son of George Herbert, director of the shoe firm Lilley & Skinner, and Mabel Elizabeth (née Knight). He was taught at home before starting school, age 9, at Durston House, from where he won a mathematical scholarship to Rugby in 1914. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1919 to read natural sciences and mathematics; he graduated in 1922. Skinner's research career started in the Cavendish Laboratory where, under the supervision of Charles D Ellis, he worked on the β-ray spectrum of radium B and C. Five years later, in 1927, he moved to the physics department of the University of Bristol, which was headed by Arthur M Tyndall and very well equipped. He investigated the excitation potentials of lithium and beryllium, and published the results several years later. This research “pre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Spence (chemist)
Robert Spence may refer to: * Robert Spence (bishop) (1860–1934), Archbishop of Adelaide * Robert Spence (chemist) (1905–1976), British chemist * Robert Spence (British politician) (1879–1966), MP for Berwick and Haddington * Robert Spence (Canadian politician) (1811–1868), political figure in Canada West * Robert Spence (engineer) (born 1933), British engineer and information visualization expert * Bob Spence (born 1946), former Major League Baseball player * Rob Spence (American football) (born 1958), American football coach See also * William Robert Spence (1875–1954), Scottish trade union leader * * Spence (surname) {{hndis, Spence, Robert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egon Bretscher
Egon Bretscher (23 May 1901 – 16 April 1973) was a Swiss-born British chemist and nuclear physicist and Head of the Nuclear Physics Division from 1948 to 1966 at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, also known as Harwell Laboratory, in Harwell, United Kingdom. He was one of the pioneers in nuclear fission research and one of the first to foresee that plutonium could be used as an energy source. His work on nuclear physics led to his involvement in the British atomic bomb research project Tube Alloys and his membership of the British Mission to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, where he worked in Enrico Fermi's Advanced Development Division in the F-3 Super Experimentation group. His contributions up to 1945 are discussed by Margaret Gowing in her "''Britain and Atomic Energy'', 1935-1945." Early life Born in Zurich, Switzerland and educated at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) there, Bretscher gained a PhD degree in organic chemistry at Edinburgh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Following the Allies of World War I, Allied victory over the Central Powers in 1918, the RAF emerged as the largest air force in the world at the time. Since its formation, the RAF has played History of the Royal Air Force, a significant role in Military history of the United Kingdom, British military history. In particular, during the Second World War, the RAF established Air supremacy, air superiority over Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain, and led the Allied strategic bombing effort. The RAF's mission is to support the objectives of the British Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence (MOD), which are to "provide the capabilities nee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
