Book puts Nobel Laureate back in limelight
The University has also launched 'Thursday Review', on the first Thursday each month, as a public event to show-case new books published by La Trobe staff and researchers.
First book off the shelf to inaugurate this event was William and Lawrence Bragg, Father and Son: The Most Extraordinary Collaboration in Science by La Trobe University philosopher Emeritus Scholar Dr John Jenkin.
Speaker at the session, held in the University Bookshop on the main Melbourne campus at Bundoora, was Emeritus Professor John Riley.
The Braggs are relatively unknown compared with names like Howard Florey and Macfarlane Burnet. Yet they feature in the pantheon of Australian Nobel laureates, jointly winning the Prize in Physics in 1915 'for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X–rays'.
William Bragg was born in Britain and came to the University of Adelaide in the 1880s. His son, Lawrence, was born in Australia in 1890, eventually returning to the UK where he became Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge, gaining a knighthood in 1941.
Dr Jenkin's book charts how this humble English father and his Australian son rose to international prominence and then back to relative obscurity. He says Lawrence Bragg explained the interaction of X–rays with crystals, and he and his father pioneered X–ray spectroscopy and X–ray crystallography.
The pair then led the field of X–ray crystallography internationally for fifty years, with most areas of science transformed by the knowledge they created: physics, chemistry, geology, materials science, electronics, and most recently biology and medical science.
Information about future events:
Cecilia O'Halloran: (03) 9479 6528