| Authorised form of name | Williams; Evan James (1903 - 1945); physicist |
| Dates | 1903 - 1945 |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | Cwmsychbant, near Lampeter, near the border of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire, Wales, United Kingdom |
| Date of birth | 08 June 1903 |
| Place of death | His parents' home, Brynawel, Cwmsychbant, near Lampeter, Cardiganshire, Wales, United Kingdom |
| Date of death | 29 September 1945 |
| Occupation | Physicist |
| Research field | Physics |
| Atomic physics |
| Activity | Education:
Llanwenog national school; Llandysul county school; Swansea Technical College, which became University College of Swansea, MSc 1924; University of Wales PhD 1926; Cambridge PhD 1929, DSc (Wales) 1930
Career:
Leverhulme Fellow and Lecturer in Physics in the University of Liverpool. Professor elect in the University of Wales, Aberystwyth; spent a year with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, Denmark; Chair of physics at Aberystwyth, Wales (1938); joined the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough to develop new physical methods of detecting submerged U-boats from the air (1940); joined P. M. S. Blackett in the operational research section at Coastal Command as principal scientific officer to improve the methods of finding and sinking U-boats (1941); director of operational research at Coastal Command (1941); diagnosed with cancer (1944). |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 16/03/1939 |
| Age at election | 35 |
| Proposer | Edward Victor Appleton |
| William Lawrence Bragg |
| Charles Galton Darwin |
| John Douglas Cockcroft |
| Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac |
| Charles Thomson Rees Wilson |
| Douglas Rayner Hartree |
| Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett |
| Ralph Howard Fowler |
| James Chadwick |
| Relationships | Parents: James Williams, stonemason, a zealous Congregationalist, and a winner of many prizes for Welsh lyrics at local eisteddfodau, and Elizabeth Lloyd.
Siblings: Two brothers. |
| OtherInfo | Distinguished for both experimental and theoretical work on the passage of electrical particles through matter.
His investigations of electron collisions showed the inapplicability of classical formulae and have helped to establish the correctness of quantal theory in this field. Experiments on photo-electric effect, on Compton effect, on scattering of hard gamma-rays and conservatism of energy in individual radiation processes have helped to verify the existing theory of radiation.
Obtained experimental evidence for the existence of the heavy electron.
Helped to develop the theory of the effect of temperature on atomic arrangement in alloys. |
| Royal Society Obituary or Memoir | Click to view (may be contained within a meeting notice, presidential address or list of death notices) |
| Source | Sources:
Bulloch's Roll; DNB (MP)
Obituaries:
Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 1945-1948 vol 5 pp 387-406, plate, by P M S Blackett |
| Code | NA3701 |
| RefNo | Title | Date |
| EC/1939/20 | Williams, Evan James: certificate of election to the Royal Society | |
| RR/42/81 | Referee's report by Richard Whiddington, on a paper 'Passage of slow ß-particles through matter—production of branches' by Evan James Williams | May 1930 |
| RR/42/82 | Referee's report by Charles Drummond Ellis, on a paper 'The rate of loss of energy by ß-particles in passing through matter' by Evan James Williams | October 1930 |
| RR/42/83 | Referee's report by Charles Drummond Ellis, on a paper 'The loss of energy by ß-particles and its distribution between different kinds of collisions' by Evan James Williams | October 1930 |
| RR/49/35 | Referee's report by Geoffrey Ingram Taylor, on a paper 'The effect of thermal agitation on atomic arrangement in alloys' by William Lawrence Bragg and Evan James Williams | [January 1934] |
| RR/51/137 | Referee's report by Charles Galton Darwin, on a paper 'Anomalous dispersion and absorption of X-rays' by Evan James Williams | [September 1933] |
| RR/55/60 | Referee's report by Geoffrey Ingram Taylor, on a paper 'The effect of thermal agitaion on atomic arrangement in alloys—II' by William Lawrence Bragg and Evan James Williams | July 1935 |
| RR/66/330 | Referee's report by John Douglas Cockcroft, on a paper 'K-electron capture, nuclear isomerism and the longperiod activities of titanium and scandium' by H Walke, Evan James Williams and G R Evans | 11 March 1939 |
| RR/66/334 | Referee's report by Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Baron Blackett of Chelsea, on a paper 'Some observations on cosmic rays using a large randomly operated cloud chamber' by Evan James Williams | [May 1939] |
| NLB/71/728 | Copy letter from Francis Alexander Towle, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society; to [Evan James] Williams Esq. | 15 October 1928 |
| RR/57/55 | Referee's report by Geoffrey Ingram Taylor, on a paper 'The effect of thermal agitation on atomic arrangement in alloys-III' by Evan James Williams | [July 1935] |
| RR/44/135 | Referee's report by Ralph Howard Fowler, on a paper 'The passage of a- and ß- particles through matter and Born's theory of collisions' by Evan James Williams | October 1931 |
| RR/46/115 | Referee's report by Charles Galton Darwin, on a paper 'Applications of the method of impact parameter in collisions' by Evan James Williams | [September 1932] |
| RR/65/279 | Referee's rpeort by Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, on a paper 'Concerning the scattering of fast electrons and of cosmic-ray particles' by Evan James Williams | November 1938 |