Oliphant, Sir Mark

▪ 2001

Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant 

      Australian physicist (b. Oct. 8, 1901, Adelaide, Australia—d. July 14, 2000, Canberra, Australia), was an esteemed specialist in high-energy physics at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, where he had won a scholarship in 1927. Oliphant was also Poynting Professor of Physics at the University of Birmingham, Eng. (1937–50), and a co-discoverer (1934) of tritium with Ernest Rutherford and Paul Harteck, and he directed the team (1939) that developed the cavity magnetron used in advanced microwave radar. Having been a member of the British team that split the atom in 1932, he went to the U.S. in 1943 to work on the Manhattan Project, the joint undertaking that designed and built the first atomic bombs. Oliphant later fiercely opposed the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan and the nuclear proliferation that followed, but he endorsed research into atomic energy. After World War II he returned to Australia, where he served as director of the research school of physical sciences at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra (1950–63), president of the Australian Academy of Science (1954–57), and professor of physics of ionized gases at the Institute of Advanced Studies at ANU (1964–67). He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1937, knighted in 1959, and appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1977. From 1971 to 1976 Oliphant also held the post of governor of South Australia.

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