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Ralph H. Fowler

Sir Ralph Howard Fowler
Fowler,Ralph Howard 1934 London.jpg
London 1934
Born (1889-01-17)17 January 1889
Fedsden, Roydon, Essex, England
Died 28 July 1944(1944-07-28) (aged 55)
Trumpington, Cambridgeshire, England
Nationality English
Fields Physicist
Institutions Cambridge University
Alma mater Cambridge University
Academic advisors Archibald Vivian Hill
Doctoral students Garrett Birkhoff
S. Chandrasekhar
Paul Dirac
Wang Zhuxi
Homi J. Bhabha
Douglas Rayner Hartree
John Lennard-Jones
Harrie Massey
William McCrea
Nevill Francis Mott
Maurice Pryce
Bertha Swirles
Known for Statistical physics
Fowler-Nordheim-type equations
Notable awards Rayleigh Prize (1913)
Adams Prize (1924)
Royal Medal (1936)
Fellow of the Royal Society

Sir Ralph Howard Fowler OBE FRS (17 January 1889 – 28 July 1944) was a British physicist and astronomer.

Fowler was initially educated at home but then attended Evans' preparatory school at Horris Hill and Winchester College. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge and read mathematics, becoming a wrangler in Part II of the Tripos.

In the First World War he obtained a commission in the Royal Marine Artillery and was seriously wounded in his shoulder in the Gallipoli Campaign. The wound enabled his friend Archibald Hill to use his talents properly. As Hill's second in command he worked on anti-aircraft ballistics in the Experimental Department of HMS Excellent on Whale Island. He made a major contribution on the aerodynamics of spinning shells. He was awarded the OBE in 1918.

In 1919, Fowler returned to Trinity and was appointed college lecturer in mathematics in 1920. Here he worked on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, bringing a new approach to physical chemistry. With Arthur Milne, a comrade during the war, he wrote a seminal work on stellar spectra, temperatures, and pressures. In 1925 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He became research supervisor to Paul Dirac and, in 1926, worked with him on the statistical mechanics of white dwarf stars. In 1928 he published (with Lothar Nordheim) a seminal paper that explained the physical phenomenon now known as field electron emission, and helped to establish the validity of modern electron band theory. In 1931, he was the first to formulate and label the zeroth law of thermodynamics. In 1932 he was elected to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory.


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