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Moon, Philip Burton
Philip Burton Moon papers and correspondence, 1929-1996.
Biographical papers include Moon's own autobiographical accounts and material assembled by W.E. Burcham relating to the Biographical Memoir of Moon. There is documentation of Moon's career and honours including his election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society and the award of its Hughes Medal. University of Birmingham papers include a little material relating to the Department of Physics and Moon's Deanship of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. However, the bulk of the papers relate to the development of nuclear physics at Birmingham and include material relating to the 40th anniversary of the proton synchrotron, celebrated in 1993, and the 'Birmingham Proton Synchrotron Archive' assembled by W.E. Burcham. Research materials cover Moon's work in a number of areas from the late 1920s to the 1990s. There is documentation of his work on positive ions and neutrons during the 1930s and wartime work on atomic power. This includes research material of M.L.E. Oliphant. There is material relating to Moon's post-war work on rotors and molecular beams and to his research with the University of Birmingham synchrotron. Papers documenting Moon's role in UK Accelerator Development, cover two themes: Moon's contribution to discussions in 1955 regarding the proposed development of a high energy accelerator at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, and Moon's service on the Working Party of the Physics Committee of the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science during 1960. There is a chronological sequence of drafts relating to publications, lectures and broadcasts, 1940-1992, including unpublished wartime work on radio signals, and a nearly complete set of Moon's off-prints. Moon's correspondence, is slight and includes only one extended exchange, with M.L.E. Oliphant, 1937-1946. Other correspondents of note are W.E. Burcham and D.R. Herchbach.
Moon was born on 17 May 1907 in Lewisham, London. He was educated at Leyton County High School before winning a scholarship to Sidney Sussex College Cambridge in 1925. He graduated from the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1928, having taken Physics in Part II and went on to research in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge under M.L.E. Oliphant. In 1931 Moon was appointed Assistant Lecturer at Imperial College London (Lecturer from 1934) and working under G.P. Thomson researched in neutron physics. In 1938 Moon followed his former supervisor Oliphant to the University of Birmingham as Lecturer in the Department of Physics. They began to build up a school of nuclear physics using the Department's 60-inch cyclotron. On the outbreak of war the Department initially concentrated on the development of short-wave radar. In 1942 Moon was seconded to the British Scientific Central Office in Washington D.C. He returned to Birmingham later in the year but in 1943 went back to the USA to join the Manhattan project at Los Alamos working on the atomic bomb. After the war Oliphant and Moon resumed their work to build up research in nuclear physics at Birmingham. Cyclotron work begun before the war was continued and a proton synchrotron became operational in the early 1950s. Moon was appointed Reader in 1943 and Professor in 1946. On Oliphant's move to the Australian National University at Canberra in 1950, Moon succeeded him in the Poynting Chair of Physics. He held this post until retirement in 1974. He was Head of the Department of Physics until 1970 and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering 1969-1972. Moon made a number of important contributions to physics. The citation of Moon for the Royal Society Hughes Medal noted his work in three main areas: 'nuclear physics, the discovery of gamma-ray resonances, and the use of colliding molecular beams to study chemical reactions'. In the 1930s at Imperial College London, working with J.R. Tillman, he had demonstrated the existence of 'thermal' neutrons and during the war after work on radar he joined the 'Tube Alloys' project working on developing the atomic bomb. Returning to the University of Birmingham after the war Moon resumed work with the cyclotron and saw the completion of the Proton Synchrotron, the first synchrotron of its type in the world to work at full power. He also developed a technique for observing the resonant scattering of gamma rays by nuclei using high-speed rotors. Moon was elected FRS in 1947 (Rutherford Memorial Lecture 1975; Hughes Medal 1991). He died on 9 October 1994.
Oliphant, Mark, 1901-2000
National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science.
University of Birmingham. Dept. of Physics.
University of Birmingham. Science and Engineering -- Dean.
Nuclear physics.
Catons.
Rotors.
Radio waves.
Particle accelerators.
Proton synchrotrons.
Neutrons.
Nuclear energy.
Molecular beams.
Accelerators -- Great Britain.
Autobiographies. aat
Reprints. aat
Burcham, W. E.
Herchback, D. R.
AIP-ICOS
University of Birmingham. Main Library. Information Services, Special Collections Dept., Edgbaston Campus, Birmingham B15 2TT
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