1951: John Douglas Cockcroft (1897-1967)

Nobel Prize in Physics 1951 (jointly with Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton)

"for their pioneer work on the transmutation of atomic nuclei by artificially accelerated atomic particles"

Born in Todmorden, Lancashire, John Cockcroft served as a Signaller in the Royal Artillery from 1915-18, interposing stints studying Mathematics at the University of Manchester (1914-15), and Electrical Engineering at the Manchester College of Technology (1919-20). After receiving his BSc, he spent two years as an apprentice with Metropolitan-Vickers before joining St John’s in 1922 to read Mathematics - a first class BA in 1924 preceding a PhD in 1928.

Following the conferral of his doctorate, Cockcroft would remain in Cambridge until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, as a Fellow of St John’s and as the College’s Junior Bursar from 1933-39. Meanwhile, he moved through the ranks in the University as Demonstrator in Physics from 1929-35, then Lecturer from 1935-39 before being appointed Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy (succeeding fellow Johnian and Nobel Laureate, Edward Appleton) in 1939.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1936. In 1938 he shared the Hughes Medal with Ernest Walton (with whom he would later share the Nobel) “For their discovery that nuclei could be disintegrated by artificially produced bombarding particles”, and was awarded the Royal Medal in 1954 “In recognition of his distinguished work on nuclear and atomic physics”.

His Jacksonian Professorship was interrupted by the war, and he took up the appointment of Chief Superintendent at the Air Defence, Research and Development Establishment, Ministry of Supply in 1941, then Director of the Atomic Research Establishment of the National Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Research plant at Chalk River from 1944-46. After the War he served as Director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell from 1946-58, and thereafter became the first Master of Churchill College, Cambridge in 1959, where he remained until his death in 1967.

His research was instrumental in the development of nuclear power, and the Nobel Prize in 1951 celebrating his ‘splitting the atom’ was just one of many honours bestowed upon him. He was awarded over 20 honorary degrees from institutions around the world, made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1944, Knighted in 1948, created Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1953 and awarded the Order of Merit (OM) in 1957, an Honour restricted to 24 living persons at any one time.