John Alan Chalmers

Professor John Alan Chalmers (29 September 1904 - 14 March 1967) was a British atmospheric physicist based at Durham University. He is well known for his contributions to atmospheric electricity, particularly a widely-respected textbook, and, outside his scientific work, for his involvement with Scouting.

John Alan Chalmers (known as Alan) was born in London in 1904 and won a scholarship to Highgate School. He had one brother, Bruce Chalmers (who later became a well-known metallurgist), and a sister, Marian. In 1923 he won an open scholarship to Queen's College Cambridge and graduated with a first class degree in Natural Sciences (Physics). He remained at Cambridge in the Cavendish Laboratory to study for a PhD, supervised by Rutherford. In 1928 he left Cambridge to take up a lectureship at Durham University. He received his PhD for a thesis entitled "Some problems in radioactivity" in 1930.

Chalmers started working on atmospheric electricity early in his career and published around 90 papers. He spent his entire career at Durham, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1937, Reader in 1947 and Professor in 1965. Many of the students he mentored became distinguished scientists (for example, Frank Pasquill). The first edition of his textbook was published in 1949. It was subsequently revised (also called Atmospheric Electricity but with a new publisher) in 1957, with the second edition published posthumously in 1967. Chalmers worked across the whole subject of atmospheric electricity, but he published most papers on point discharge (now more commonly referred to as corona discharge) and the charge on precipitation. He was equally at home with theory and experimental work, including developing instrumentation where needed. This approach reflected his rigorous and broad training in experimental physics typical of the Cavendish Laboratory led by Thomson and Rutherford. Many of his field experiments were carried out in the grounds of Durham University Observatory.

Chalmers was also a respected teacher and administrator at the University of Durham and became Dean of the Science Faculty in the 1960s. The J.A. Chalmers Prize for Experimental Physics is still awarded to the best undergraduate student of experimental physics.

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