Background
Edward Victor Appleton was born on September 6, 1892, in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England to Peter Appleton, a warehouseman, and Mary Wilcock.
The honorary degree of Doctor of Science was conferred upon Sir Edward Victor Appleton by the Chancellor Sir Charles Bickerton Blackburn KCMG OBE at the ceremony held on 29 August 1952, part of the University of Sydney's Centenary celebrations. Sir Edward Victor Appleton, GBE KCB, MA Hon ScD Camb DScLond Hon LLD Aberdeen, Birmingham, St Andrews, London & Glasgow Hon DSc Oxford, Brussels & Leeds, FRS, was Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. Chairman of the Professorial Board Professor A D Trendall (on left) presenting Sir Edward Victor Appleton (centrre left) to the Chancellor (centre right), Sydney Morning Herald photo, copies held by the University of Sydney Archives.
The honorary degree of Doctor of Science was conferred upon Sir Edward Victor Appleton by the Chancellor Sir Charles Bickerton Blackburn KCMG OBE at the ceremony held on 29 August 1952, part of the University of Sydney's Centenary celebrations. Sir Edward Victor Appleton, GBE KCB, MA Hon ScD Camb DScLond Hon LLD Aberdeen, Birmingham, St Andrews, London & Glasgow Hon DSc Oxford, Brussels & Leeds, FRS, was Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. Chairman of the Professorial Board Professor A D Trendall (on left) presenting Sir Edward Victor Appleton (centrre left) to the Chancellor (centre right), Sydney Morning Herald photo, copies held by the University of Sydney Archives.
Sir Edward Victor Appleton (1892-1965), Physicist and Nobel Prize winner.
Sir Edward Victor Appleton (1892-1965), Physicist and Nobel Prize winner.
Sir Edward Victor Appleton (1892-1965), Physicist and Nobel Prize winner.
Sir Edward Victor Appleton (1892-1965), Physicist and Nobel Prize winner.
Sir Edward Victor Appleton with colleagues during the demonstration of an experiment in the laboratory.
Morningside Cemetery, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
The grave of Sir Edward Victor Appleton.
In 1947 Appleton was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Appleton became a member of the Royal Society of London in 1927.
In 1933 Appleton was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society of London "in recognition of an original discovery in the physical sciences, particularly electricity and magnetism or their applications".
The Faraday Medal is the top medal awarded by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) was awarded Appleton in 1946.
The Edward Appleton Medal and Prize is awarded by the Institute of Physics for distinguished research in environmental, earth or atmospheric physics. Originally named after Dr. Charles Chree, it was renamed in 2008 to commemorate Edward Victor Appleton.
In 1950 Appleton was awarded the Royal Medal for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge" and one for "distinguished contributions in the applied sciences", done within the Commonwealth of Nations.
In 1950 Appleton was awarded the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for "distinguished merit in promoting Arts, Manufactures and Commerce".
The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) was awarded Appleton in 1962.
Bradford, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
Appleton received his primary education from Hanson Grammar School.
1908 - 1910 Appleton studied at the University of London, physics, B.S. in London, England, United Kingdom.
1910 - 1913 Appleton studied at the St John's College, Cambridge, Natural Science, crystallography, B.A., Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom.
In 1947, the year in which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was also awarded the highest civilian decoration of the United States – the Medal of Merit – and was made an Officer of the French Legion of Honour.
Appleton was awarded the Norwegian Cross of Freedom for his war work.
Edward Victor Appleton was born on September 6, 1892, in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England to Peter Appleton, a warehouseman, and Mary Wilcock.
Appleton received his primary education from Hanson Grammar School. He excelled in his studies and displayed a keen interest in science and mathematics. At the age of 16 he entered the University of London. Appleton showed exceptional promise as a boy, matriculating at the University of London at sixteen and winning a scholarship to St. John’s College, Cambridge, at eighteen.
He graduated with first class honours in physics in 1913 and started postgraduate work in crystallography under William Henry Bragg. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I he became a signals officer in the Royal Engineers, an assignment that aroused his interest in radio.
Edward Victor Appleton joined the West Riding Regiment, and later transferred to the Royal Engineers. During his war service he was introduced to radio, a means of communication then in its infancy in the military. This kindled in him an interest in radio waves.
After the World War I he joined the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge in 1920 as the assistant demonstrator in experimental physics. There he worked in collaboration with Balthazar van der Pol and the two began an investigation of the operation of radio vacuum tubes. In 1924, when he was only thirty-two, he became Wheatstone professor of physics at King’s College of the University of London, where he remained for twelve years. During the first year, he and Miles Barnett, a graduate student from New Zealand, performed a crucial experiment that led to a measurement of the height of the reflecting atmospheric layer of ionized gases, which had been postulated by Oliver Heaviside and A. E. Kennelly in explanation of the first transatlantic radio transmission by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901. In the experiment, the frequency of the new British Broadcasting Company transmitter at Bournemouth was periodically varied after broadcasting hours at a constant rate, so that the interference between the direct (ground) and reflected (sky) waves resulted in a regular fading in and out at a site about 100 kilometers away, in a manner analogous to the behavior of optical interference fringes.
Besides discovering specific layer of the ionosphere, Appleton and his co-workers showed that the sky wave generally was elliptically polarized, and calculated the reflection coefficients and electron densities of the layers and their diurnal and seasonal variations. His work may also be considered to be of prime technological significance, not only in regard to radio transmission but also as a milestone in the development of radar; the determination of the height of the E layer was the first distance measurement made by radio, a technique that was closely followed by Robert Alexander Watson-Watt, the British radar pioneer, who had collaborated with Appleton in atmospheric research and had many subsequent professional contacts with him.
The rest of Appleton’s life was spent in research flowing from his own discoveries, an endeavor in which he continued to maintain a degree of involvement that was astonishing in view of the many other duties thrust upon him.
He was appointed Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 1936 and served there till 1939. Following a three-year tenure as Jacksonian professor of natural philosophy at the University of Cambridge, Appleton was appointed secretary of the government’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. During the World War II, he worked on radar and the atomic bomb in this position. As the secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, he was also made responsible for the administrative control of all British work on the subject. In 1943 he visited the United States and Canada in order to facilitate collaboration between American and British scientists. He also worked along with Dr. J. S. Hey of the Ministry of Supply and the two men discovered that sunspots are powerful emitters of short radio waves.
In 1949 he was made principal and vice chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, where he remained until his death.
The BBC invited him in 1956 to deliver the annual Reith Lectures. Edward Victor Appleton delivered a series of six radio broadcasts, titled ‘Science and the Nation’ in which he explored the different aspects of scientific activity in Britain at the time.
He died on 21 April 1965, at the age of 72, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Appleton confirmed that radio waves of wavelength sufficiently short to penetrate the lower area of the ionosphere are reflected through an higher region.This discovery made possible more reliable long-range radio communication and aided in the development of radar.
Quotations:
"I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill."
"No scientific subject has ever aroused quite the same mixture of hopes and fears."
"I am only a physicist with nothing material to show for my labours. I have never even seen the ionosphere, although I have worked on the subject for thirty years. That does show how lucky people can be. If there had been no ionosphere I would not have been standing here this morning."
"[T]he history of science has proved that fundamental research is the lifeblood of individual progress and that the ideas that lead to spectacular advances spring from it."
"I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don't understand."
Appleton became a member of the Royal Society of London in 1927. In 1922 he was initiated into Freemasonry. For outstanding services to science and industrial research and was elected President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1953.
Appleton married Jessie Longson in 1915; they had two daughters, Marjery and Rosalind. A month before his death, Appleton, a widower since 1964, married Mrs. Helen F. Allison, who had been his private secretary for thirteen years.