Robert Cockburn (physicist)
| Sir Robert Cockburn | |
|---|---|
| Born |
31 March 1909 Portsmouth, England |
| Died | 21 March 1994 (aged 84) |
| Known for | Physicist and electronic countermeasure expert |
Sir Robert Cockburn, KBE CB, (/ˈkoʊbərn/ KOH-bərn 31 March 1909 – 21 March 1994) was a British physicist who played an important role in the field of electronic countermeasures for the RAF in the defence of Britain during World War II.
Born in Portsmouth, Cockburn was educated at Southern Secondary School for Boys and Portsmouth Municipal College. He studied at the University of London while working as a science teacher at the West Ham Municipal College, and completed his PhD in 1939.
In 1937 Cockburn took up a research post at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, a part of the Air Ministry. Here he worked on the ground-to-air VHF communication system that was used to good effect by RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain.
In 1940, Cockburn was assigned to the Telecommunications Research Establishment near Swanage, where he set up and headed a team to work on radio countermeasures - the Battle of the Beams. Jamming the German navigation beams reduced the devastation caused by their heavy bombing raids during the Blitz, and his team also developed many devices to fool or jam enemy radar, which greatly reduced the losses sustained by Royal Air Force bombers in the offensive stages of the war.
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