Record

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
Research field	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

Archives associated with this Fellow

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

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