Robert William Ditchburn (14 January 1903 – 8 April 1987) was an English physicist whose career started as

Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin is a chair in physics founded in 1724 and funded by the Erasmus Smith Trust, which was established by Erasmus Smith, a wealthy London merchant, who liv ...

Trinity College Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Unive ...

(1929-1946), and ended at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...

, where he worked hard to build up the physics department.Obituary: Robert William Ditchburn, 14 January 1903 – 8 April 1987
The Royal Society Publishing

Life and career

Ditchburn was born in Waterloo, near Liverpool, England, and was educated first at Liverpool University, taking a physics degree there in 1922. He then went to

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, 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 ...

, earning BA (1924) and a PhD (1928) for research done under J. J. Thomson at 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 ...

.Papers and correspondence of Robert William Ditchburn, 1903–1987
University of Reading Special Collections Services He successfully competed for a Fellowship at TCD in 1928, and the following year moved to Ireland to become Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy. In 1930 he was elected 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 ...

and delivered one of the Donnellan Lectures in 1945. Apart from a few years back in England at the Admiralty Research Laboratory in

Teddington Teddington is an affluent suburb of London in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Historically an Civil parish#ancient parishes, ancient parish in the county of Middlesex and situated close to the border with Surrey, the district became ...

during WWII, he remained in Dublin until 1946. He then became professor and head of the department of physics at Reading University, where he remained until 1968. While there, he focussed on building up the department, and set up the J.J. Thomson Physical Laboratory. He authored the book ''Light'' (Interscience Publishers, Inc, 1953).Catalogue of the papers and correspondence of Robert William Ditchburn FRS (1903–1987)
The National Archives Kew, Richmond, Surrey His own research included work on

photoionization Photoionization is the physical process in which an ion is formed from the interaction of a photon with an atom or molecule. Cross section Not every interaction between a photon and an atom, or molecule, will result in photoionization. The prob ...

, the optical properties of solids and the effects of

eye movements Eye movement includes the voluntary or involuntary movement of the eyes. Eye movements are used by a number of organisms (e.g. primates, rodents, flies, birds, fish, cats, crabs, octopus) to fixate, inspect and track visual objects of i ...

visual perception Visual perception is the ability to detect light and use it to form an image of the surrounding Biophysical environment, environment. Photodetection without image formation is classified as ''light sensing''. In most vertebrates, visual percept ...

, in particular methods for stabilizing retinal images.Robert William Ditchburn
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 34 (Dec., 1988), pp. 64–95 In 1962, he became a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

. He was very active in retirement, both as a consultant for the diamond industry, and working for nuclear disarmament in Pugwash movement. He published the book ''Eye Movements and Visual Perception'' (Clarendon Press, 1973) and in 1983 he was awarded the C. E. K. Mees Medal by The Optical Society "for his lengthy career in many disciplines of optics and for his enrichment of optical knowledge".C. E. K. Mees Medal Winners
The Optical Society In 1960 he got the Thomas Young Orator Prize.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ditchburn, Robert William Academics of Trinity College Dublin Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Trinity College Dublin Members of the Royal Irish Academy People from Crosby, Merseyside Vision scientists 20th-century British physicists English anti–nuclear weapons activists British mathematicians People from Carrickmacross 1903 births 1987 deaths