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Concept
Bernard Lovell
Summary
Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell (ˈlʌvəl ; 31 August 1913 6 August 2012) was an English physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980.
Lovell was born at Oldland Common, Bristol, in 1913, the son of local tradesman and Methodist preacher Gilbert Lovell (1881-1956) and Emily Laura, née Adams. Gilbert Lovell was an "authority on the Bible" and, having "studied English literature and grammar", was still "bombarding his son with complaints on points of grammar, punctuation and method of speaking" when Lovell was in his forties. Lovell's childhood hobbies and interests included cricket and music, mainly the piano. He had a Methodist upbringing and attended Kingswood Grammar School.
Lovell studied physics at the University of Bristol obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1934, and a PhD in 1936 for his work on the electrical conductivity of thin films. At this time, he also received lessons in music from Raymond Jones, a teacher at Bath Technical School and later an organist at Bath Abbey. The church organ was one of the main loves of his life, apart from science.
Lovell worked in the cosmic ray research team at the University of Manchester until the outbreak of the Second World War. At the beginning of the war, Lovell published his first book, Science and Civilization. During the war he worked for the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) developing radar systems to be installed in aircraft, among them H2S. In June 1942 he was involved in the recovery of a highly secret cavity magnetron from the wreckage of a Handley Page Halifax that had crashed killing a number of his colleagues, including EMI engineer Alan Blumlein, while on a test flight.
At the end of the Second World War, Lovell attempted to continue his studies of cosmic rays with an ex-military radar detector unit, but suffered much background interference from the electric trams on Manchester's Oxford Road.
Official source
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