Harrie Massey

Infobox_Scientist
name = Harrie Massey


image_width =
caption = Harrie Stewart Wilson Massey (1908-1983)
birth_date = birth date|1908|5|16|df=y
birth_place = St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia
death_date = death date and age|1983|11|27|1908|5|16|df=y
death_place = Cambridge, UK
residence = UK
nationality = Australian
field = Physicist
work_institution = Queen's University of Belfast
Cambridge University
University College London
alma_mater = University of Melbourne
Cambridge University
doctoral_advisor = Ralph Fowler
doctoral_students = David Robert Bates
Ian Sloan
Michael Seaton
known_for =
religion =
footnotes =

Sir Harrie Stewart Wilson Massey (16 May1908 - 27 November1983) was an influential Australian mathematical physicist. He worked primarily in the fields of atomic and atmospheric physics.

Life and career

Harrie Massey was born in St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia, but grew up in the rural community of Hoddles Creek. Massey enrolled in the local state school in 1913. At the age of 16 he won a Senior Government Scholarship to the University of Melbourne. There he studied physics and chemistryand graduated with a first class honours BSc in 1927. He stayed on to study mathematicsand was awarded another first class degree, a BA, in 1929. At that time, the university did not offer a PhD program but, clearly gifted, he took on an MSc with both experimental and theoretical components. The former dealt with soft X-ray deflection from metal surfaces and the latter with wave mechanics. His external examiner was Ralph Fowler from the University of Cambridge who was Paul Dirac's PhD supervisor.

In 1929, with the benefit of another scholarship, Massey went to Trinity College, Cambridge to perform research at the Cavendish Laboratory led by Ernest Rutherford. Fowler was appointed as Massey's supervisor although it was clear that he did not need any supervision "per se".Massey obtained his PhD on the "The Collision of Material Particles" in 1932. He co-authored a book on atomic collision processes with Nevill Mott shortly afterwards. He then became a lecturer at the Queen's University of Belfast in 1933 and left to take up a chair in Mathematics at University College London five years later. This was to create a strong academic link between QUB and UCL which persists to this day.

During the Second World War he worked for the Admiralty Mining Establishment. He had a great influence on the future careers of nearly every scientist that worked there including David Bates, who was invited to join the staff at UCL, and Robert Boyd, who was offered a research assistant post. Francis Crick was introduced to Maurice Wilkins by Massey.

Massey was made head of the UCL Physics department in 1950and remained its head after the department was merged with Astronomy in 1973. He retiredin 1975.

He was the first chairman of the British National Committee for Space Research andhelped found the European Space Research Organization as well as the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL.

Honours & awards

* Royal Society Hughes medal 1955
* Knighted 1960

He has had a number of awards named after him;

* Royal Society/COSPAR Massey Award. [http://www.cosparhq.org/Awards/awards.htm]
* Australian Institute of Physics Harrie Massey Medal and Prize. [http://www.aip.org.au/medals/massey.php]

Books

*cite book
last=Mott
first=NF
authorlink=Nevill Mott
coauthors=Massey, HSW
title=Theory of Atomic Collisions
publisher=Clarendon Press, Oxford
year=1949 (1st edition, 1933)
*cite book
title=Ancillary Mathematics
last=Massey
first=HSW
coauthors=Kestelman, H
publisher=Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd
edition=2nd ed.
year=1964
*cite book
last=Massey
first=HSW
title=Applied Atomic Physics Processes
publisher=Academic Press
year=1982
isbn=0-12-419951-8
*cite book
last=Massey
first=HSW
title= History of British space science
coauthors=Robins, MO
publisher=Cambridge University Press
year=1986
isbn=0-521-30783-X

See also

* Atomic physics
* British Atomic Scientists Association
* Mullard Space Science Laboratory

External links

* [http://www.phys.ucl.ac.uk/department/history/BFox1.html From Lardner to Massey, by JW Fox]