Scientists From World War II
John Desmond Bernal was born in Nenagh, Ireland, on May 10, 1901. He went to Stony Hurst College, Lancashire and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. During World War II Bernal was a scientific advisor to Lord Mountbatten, he had carried out several research projects for the government. This included working with Solly Zuckerman on the impact of bombing on people and buildings. In august 1943, he attended the Quebec Conference and helped to select the landing for the beaches for the D-Day invasion of France. And in 1947, Bernal was awarded the US Medal of Freedom.
Felix Bloch was born into a Jewish family in Zurich, Switzerland, on October 23, 1905. He studied mathematics, engineering and physics in Zurich before moving to Germany to study under Werner Heisenberg at the University of Leipzig. When Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Bloch immigrated to the United States and worked at the Stanford University where he continued his research into neutrons. In 1943, Bloch joined the Manhattan Project in the United States and over the next two years he worked with Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Otto Frisch, Enrico Fermi, David Bohm, James Chadwick, James Franck, Emilio Segre, Niels Bohr, Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, and Klaus Fuchs in creating the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war Bloch returned to Stanford University where he continued his research and in 1953 he won the Nobel Prize for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance. The following year Bloch was appointed the first Director General of CERN in Geneva. Felix Bloch died in 1983.
Frank Whittle was born on June1, 1907, in Coventry, England. He joined the Royal Air Force as an apprentice in 1923. In 1929, he took out a patent on a turbo-jet engine, the Air Ministry rejected his ideas as impractical. Whittle studied at Cambridge University before forming the Power Jets Company. The Royal Air Force became more interested in Whittle’s ideas in 1939 when they heard that Hans Ohain in Germany had developed the world’s first jet plane. The HE 178. Whittle's jet-propelled Gloster E28 took its first flight on May 15, 1941, and travelled at speeds of 350 mph. This was followed by the Gloster Meteor that was used to intercept German V1 Flying Bomber. Power Jets Company was taken over by the British government in 1944.Whittle retired from the Royal Air Force in 1948 with the rank of air commodore.
"Spartacus Educational." Spartacus Educational. Web. 11 May 2016.
http://spartacus-educational.com/2WWscientists.htm
Riley Simmons
http://spartacus-educational.com/2WWscientists.htm
Riley Simmons