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Powell, Cecil Frank
Cecil Frank Powell papers and correspondence, 1919-2002.
Original material: Contains biographical material (including three chapters of an uncompleted autobiography), speeches and publications. There are 105 manuscript notebooks which fall into three separate groups: Cambridge notes by Powell on lectures by Rutherford, C. T. R. Wilson and others; Bristol notebooks, 1939-1949, of cosmic ray observations by Powell and his team; and notebooks of miscellaneous material such as drafts by Powell for his own lectures, speeches or publications, notes taken at conferences, etc. There are also journals, notebooks and reports relating to the Royal Society expedition to Montserrat in 1936 to investigate earth tremors on which Powell served as seismologist. Except for a few letters dealing with publications, there is no personal or professional correspondence. Documents (including correspondence) dealing with Powell's work for international organisations were destroyed after his death.
First supplementary accession: TIncludes biographical material such as congratulatory letters on the Nobel Prize, Powell's sixtieth birthday and the Lomonosov Gold Medal, and family letters. Powell's research is represented chiefly by contemporary letters recording the high altitude balloon flights in Sardinia in 1952 and 1953. There are also photographs relating to Powell's scientific work and some drafts for lectures, addresses and broadcasts. Powell's public life in national and international affairs remains scantily documented, only a few records of Pugwash conferences and a little correspondence, disproportionately skewed towards the second half of the alphabet, surviving what was believed to be the wholesale destruction of his correspondence and papers after his death.
Second supplementary accession: The principal component is an alphabetical sequence of correspondence running A-S. This sequence, which was believed lost, precedes that running S-Z, which is presented in catalogue CSAC 111/2/86. The material, which is not exclusively correspondence, covers a wide range of topics from collaboration on research and expeditions with British and foreign universities, to relations with governmental bodies including the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and the UK Atomic Energy Authority. There is also material relating to scientific societies such as the Royal Society and national and international laboratories and research organisations such as the National Physical Laboratory and CERN. There are also correspondence and papers bearing on the supply of materials for cosmic ray research, balloon flights expeditions and analysis of exposed emulsion stacks, atomic energy and nuclear weapons isues, publications and conferences. A separate alphabetical sequence relating to balloon and aeroplane flights comprises a record of expeditions, 1953-1971. It includes correspondence, photographs, technical drawings, maps, memoranda and reports on balloon flights (1953-1971) and aeroplane flights (1957-1964). Further research material includes laboratory notebooks relating to n-p scattering, K-research collaboration and neutrino experiments, photographs of various stages of balloon preparation and flight, and documentation of some conferences attended by Powell, 1960-1965, especially the series of Rochester conferences on High Energy Physics; the Ultra High Energy Nuclear Physics conference in Bristol (1963); various CERN conferences; and the 1965 International Union of Pure and Applied Physics conference.
Cecil Frank Powell (1903-1969). Physicist. Research assistant to C.T.R. Wilson at Cambridge and A.M. Tyndall at Bristol University beginning in 1928. Lecturer (1931-1946), Reader (1946-1948), Melville Wills Professor of Physics (1948-1963), and Henry Overton Wills Professor and Director of the H.H. Wills Laboratory (1964-1969), University of Bristol.. Chairman of the World Federation of Scientific Workers (1956-1959); Chairman of the Science Policy Committee CERN (1961-1963); signer of the Russell-Einstein manifesto of July 1955; presided at the plenary session of the first Pugwash Conference in July 1947. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1949 (Hughes Medal, 1949; Royal Medal, 1961) and awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Powell, Cecil Frank
European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Great Britain. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.
International Union of Pure and Applied Physics -- Congresses.
National Physical Laboratory (Great Britain)
Royal Society (Great Britain)
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.
Rochester Conference on High Energy Nuclear Physics.
Aeronautics -- History.
Ballooning.
Nobel Prizes.
Particles (Nuclear physics)
Drafts (documents). aat
Broadcasts. aat
Lectures lcgft
Notebooks. aat
Photographs. aat
Speeches. aat
Physicists -- Biography. lcsh
Lomonosov Gold Medal.
Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs
AIP-ICOS
University of Bristol. Arts and Social Sciences Library. Special Collections. Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 ITJ, England, UK
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