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Sir William Henry Bragg	William Lawrence Bragg
1/2 of the prize	1/2 of the prize
United Kingdom	United Kingdom
University College London, United Kingdom	Victoria University Manchester, United Kingdom
b. 1862 d. 1942	b. 1890 (in Adelaide, Australia) d. 1971

William Henry Bragg was born at Westward, Cumberland, on July 2, 1862. He was educated at Market Harborough Grammar School and afterwards at King William's College, Isle of Man. Elected a minor scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1881, he studied mathematics under the well-known teacher, Dr. E. J. Routh. He was Third Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos, Part I, in June 1884, and was placed in the first class in Part II in the following January. He studied physics in the Cavendish Laboratory during part of 1885, and at the end of that year was elected to the Professorship of Mathematics and Physics in the University of Adelaide, South Australia. Subsequently he became successively Cavendish Professor of Physics at Leeds (1909-1915), Quain Professor of Physics at University College London (1915-1925), and Fullerian Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution.

His research interests embraced a great many topics and he was an adept at picking up a subject, almost casually, making an important contribution, then dropping it again. However, the work of Bragg and his son Lawrence in 1913-1914 founded a new branch of science of the greatest importance and significance, the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays. If the fundamental discovery of the wave aspect of X-rays, as evidenced by their diffraction in crystals, was due to von Laue and his collaborators, it is equally true that the use of X-rays as an instrument for the systematic revelation of the way in which crystals are built was entirely due to the Braggs. This was recognized by the award of the Nobel Prize jointly to father and son in 1915.

During the First World War, Bragg was put in charge of research on the detection and measurement of underwater sounds in connection with the location of submarines. It was probably in acknowledgement of his work, as well as of his scientific eminence, that Bragg was made a C.B.E. in 1917 and was knighted in 1920. The Order of Merit followed in 1931. After having been a Fellow since 1907, he was elected President of the Royal Society in 1935.

He was an honorary doctor of some sixteen universities, and a member of the leading foreign societies. Many other medals and awards were bestowed upon him among which may be mentioned the Rumford Medal in 1916 and the Copley Medal (its premier award) in 1930.

He was the author of many books, including Studies in Radioactivity; X-Rays and Crystal Structure; The World of Sound; Concerning the Nature of Things; Old Trades and New Knowledge; An Introduction to Crystal Analysis, and The Universe of Light. His favorite recreation was golf.

In 1889 he married Gwendoline Todd, daughter of Sir Charles Todd, F.R.S., Postmaster General and Government Astronomer of South Australia. Their son William Lawrence Bragg shared the Nobel Prize with his father.

After a life of astonishing productiveness, Sir William Bragg died on March 10, 1942.

William Lawrence Bragg, son of William Henry Bragg, was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on March 31, 1890. He received his early education at St. Peter's College in his birthplace, proceeding to Adelaide University to take his degree in mathematics with first-class honours in 1908. He came to England with his father in 1909 and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as an Allen Scholar, taking first-class honours in the Natural Science Tripos in 1912. In the autumn of this year he commenced his examination of the von Laue phenomenon and published his first paper on the subject in the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in November.

In 1914 he was appointed as Fellow and Lecturer in Natural Sciences at Trinity College and the same year he was awarded the Barnard Medal. From 1912 to 1914 he had been working with his father, and the results of their work were published in an abridged form in X-rays and Crystal Structure (1915). It was this work which earned them jointly the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915, and from this year to 1919, W. L. Bragg served as Technical Advisor on Sound Ranging to the Map Section, G.H.Q., France, receiving the O.B.E. and the M.C. in 1918. He was appointed Langworthy Professor of Physics at Manchester University in 1919, and held this post till 1937.

W. Lawrence Bragg, who had been elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1921, was Director of the National Physical Laboratory in 1937-1938 and Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics, Cambridge, from 1938 to 1953. He was Chairman of the Frequency Advisory Committee from 1958 to 1960.

Knighted in 1941, Sir Lawrence holds the degree of M.A. (Cambridge), Honorary D.Sc. (Dublin, Leeds, Manchester, Lisbon, Paris, Brussels, Liege, and Durham), honorary Ph.D. (Cologne), and honorary LL.D. (St.Andrews). He has many honorary fellowships and is an honorary or foreign member of American, French, Swedish, Chinese, Dutch, and Belgian Scientific Academies, besides being Membre d'Honneur de la Société Française de Minéralogies et Cristallographie.

He was awarded the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society in 1931; the Royal Medal of the same Society in 1946, and the Roebling Medal of the Mineral Society of America in 1948.

Together with his father, he has published various scientific papers on crystal structure after their joint publication of 1915: The Crystalline State (1934), Electricity (1936), and Atomic Structure of Minerals (1937).

Sir Lawrence's chief interests at the present time are the application of X-ray analysis to the structure of protein molecules, which are being investigated in the Davy Faraday Laboratory of the Royal Institution, in continuation of similar work at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. This collaboration has succeeded in determining for the first time the structure of the highly complex molecules of living matter.

Having been awarded the Nobel Prize at the very early age of 25, W. Lawrence Bragg was the youngest-ever laureate. The very rare opportunity of celebrating a golden jubilee as a Nobel Laureate was given special attention during the December ceremonies at Stockholm in 1965, when Sir Lawrence, at the invitation of the Nobel Foundation, delivered a lecture - the first Nobel Guest Lecture - in retrospect, on developments in his field of interest during the last fifty years.

In 1921 he married Alice Grace Jenny (née Hopkinson) of Cambridge, and they have two sons (the elder of whom became chief scientist with Rolls Royce, while the younger entered a Cambridge instrument-making firm), and two daughters (the elder of whom married an official of the Foreign Office, while the second married the son of the Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge).

Source: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1915/index.html

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