Samuel Tolansky
Samuel Tolansky | |
---|---|
Born | Samuel Turlausky 17 November 1906 William Lawrence Bragg |
Doctoral students | Daniel Joseph Bradley |
Samuel Tolansky, born Turlausky,[2] FRAS FRSA FInstP FRS[1][3][4] (17 November 1906 – 4 March 1973),[5] was a British physicist. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize, has a crater on the Moon named after him near the Apollo 14 landing site and he was a principal investigator to the NASA lunar project known as the Apollo program.[6]
Personal life
His parents were Lithuanian-born
Education
His early education was in Newcastle, first at Snow Street Primary School and then Rutherford College, a Boys' School, 1919–1925.
He then attended
He then attended the Physikalisch-Technische Reichanstalt in Berlin under Prof. F. Paschen and several spectroscopists where he learnt how to make high-reflectivity films by evaporation. Also in Berlin he met his future wife.
After Berlin he attended Imperial College London with the award of an 1851 Exhibition Senior Studentship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. There, from 1932 to 1934 he researched interferometry under Prof. A. Fowler and began writing "Hyperfine Structure in Line Spectra and Nuclear Spin".
Career
He began work at the
From 1947 to 1973 he was Professor of Physics at
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1947, and of the Royal Society, 1952.
He was awarded the C. V. Boys Prize for contributions to optics by the Physical Society of London in 1948; he was a Silver Medallist, Royal Society of Arts in 1961.
Amongst work he carried out he was particularly interested in the optics of diamond and, partly in this respect, investigated optical characteristics of Moon dust from the Apollo 11 first Moon landing. In 1969 he appeared on the BBC astronomy programme The Sky at Night explaining the dimensions of space, and introduced the concept of 2-dimensional 'Flatlanders'.
Publications by Tolansky
Noted from the Royal Holloway College archive:[3]
- Editor of Practical handbook on spectral analysis Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1964, ASIN: B001OP6BCG
- An introduction to interferometry (Longmans, Green and Co, London, 1955)
- Curiosities of light rays and light waves (Veneda Publishing, London, 1964)
- Fine structure in line spectra and nuclear spin (London, 1935)
- High resolution spectroscopy (Methuen and Co, London, 1947)
- Introduction to atomic physics (Longmans and Co, London, 1942)
- Multiple-beam interferometry of surfaces and films (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1948)
- Optical illusions (Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1964);
- Surface microtopography (Longmans, London, 1960); The history and use of diamond (Methuen and Co, London, 1962)
- Editor of The human eye and the sun: hot and cold light (Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1965)
- Interference microscopy for the biologist (Thomas, Springfield Illinois, 1968)
- The strategic diamond (Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1968)
- Revolution in optics (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1968)
- Microstructures of surfaces using interferometry (Arnold, London, 1968).
External links
- Samuel Tolansky papers held at the University of London
- Samuel Tolansky papers held at Royal Holloway College
References
- ^ JSTOR 769649.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31765. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b "Royal Holloway College Archive with full list of awards and honours". Archived from the original on 18 February 2012. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
- ^ "Science, Optics and You – Optical Microscopy at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory". Retrieved 14 January 2009. [dead link]
- ^ "100 years of Samuel Tolansky, a talk by Moreton Moore, Professor of Physics, at Royal Holloway College, 2007, with photographs and illustrations
of his work" (PDF). Retrieved 14 January 2009. - ISBN 978-0-09-468200-9.