Edward Appleton

[close] Sir Edward Victor Appleton (1892 - 1965) was an English physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1947 for his contributions to the knowledge of the ionosphere, which led to the development of radar and shortwave radio.

A graduate of the University of Cambridge, Appleton was commissioned as a second lieutenant for the Royal Engineers in 1915. During the First World War, he was an instructor at the Royal Engineers Signals Depot in Fenny Stratford, and served briefly on the Western Front. He brought a captured German thermionic valve back with him. He became the Wheatstone Professor of Physics at King's College London in 1924 and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1927. His primary research interests were how radio waves were created and propagated and unravelling the mystery of how they were reflected by the upper atmosphere.

Appleton returned to Cambridge in 1936 as Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy and, when Ernest Rutherford died in October of that year, became acting director of the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Appleton became the Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. In this role, he marshalled the scientific knowledge of Britain in service of the war effort. He was also closely involved with the development of radar, an outgrowth of his pre-war research into the ionosphere. He was also in charge of Tube Alloys, the British nuclear weapons project, which was merged into the American Manhattan Project in 1943.

From 1948 until his death in 1965, he was the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. As such, he oversaw its growth and was involved in the controversial redevelopment of the historic George Square.