John Kenneth Hulm (4 July 1923,
Southport
Southport is a seaside resort, seaside town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England. It lies on the West Lancashire Coastal Plain, West Lancashire coastal plain and the east coast of the Irish Sea, approximately north of ...
, UK – 16 January 2004) was a British-American physicist and engineer, known for the development of superconducting materials with applications to high-field superconducting magnets.
In 1953 with George F. Hardy he discovered the first
A-15 superconducting alloy.
John K. Hulm received his undergraduate degree in 1943 from the
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
and then worked on radar development until the end of WWII. After the war he returned to Cambridge and received his PhD in 1949
[ with a thesis on the thermal conductivity of superconductors. His thesis advisor was ]David Shoenberg
David Shoenberg (4 January 1911 – 10 March 2004) was a British physicist who worked in condensed matter physics. Shoenberg is known for having developed experimental and theoretical principles to study the De Haas–Van Alphen effect to charact ...
. At the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
, Hulm was a postdoc from 1949 to 1951 and an assistant professor from 1951 to 1954.[
In 1954 he became employed at the ]Westinghouse Electric Corporation
The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was ...
research laboratory in Pittsburgh. There he assembled and led a research team dealing with the physics of materials, especially superconductors. He was promoted in 1956 to manager of
the lab’s Solid State Physics Department and in 1960 to associate director, Material Science, with several departments under his management. He spent the rest of his working career at Westinghouse.
In the 1960s Hulm took on more managerial and engineering duties. For the two years 1974 and 1975 on a leave of absence from Westinghouse, he was the science attaché at the U.S. Embassy in London. He returned to Westinghouse as manager of the Chemical Sciences Department. In the 1980s he was director of corporate research and R&D planning. He retired in 1988. In 1989 he accompanied to Japan to evaluate that country’s superconductivity research. During his career he was the author or co-author of about 100 scientific papers.[
In 1948 Hulm married Joan Askham. Upon his death he was survived by his widow, four daughters, a son, and six grandchildren.]
Awards and honours
* 1964 — John Price Wetherill Medal
The John Price Wetherill Medal was an award of the Franklin Institute. It was established with a bequest given by the family of John Price Wetherill (1844–1906) on April 3, 1917. On June 10, 1925, the Board of Managers voted to create a silv ...
(shared with Howard Aiken
Howard Hathaway Aiken (March 8, 1900 – March 14, 1973) was an American physicist and a list of pioneers in computer science, pioneer in computing. He was the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I, the United States' first C ...
, John Eugene Kunzler, and Bernd Matthias
Bernd T. Matthias (June 8, 1918 – October 27, 1980) was a German-born American physicist credited with discoveries of hundreds of elements and alloys with superconducting properties. He was said to have discovered more elements and compounds wi ...
)
* 1979 — American Physical Society International Prize for New Materials (shared with John Eugene Kunzler and Bernd T. Matthias)
* 1980 — Member of the National Academy of Engineering
* 1988 — Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Selected publications
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hulm, John Kenneth
1923 births
2004 deaths
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
British materials scientists
20th-century British physicists
20th-century American physicists
British emigrants to the United States