Adelaide backs William Bragg's first use of X rays probing atomic structure in crystals, on way to 1915 Nobel Prize
William Bragg's use of X rays in the atomic research that would win him the Nobel Prize with son Lawrence was strongly supported by Adelaide.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
The road to the 1915 Nobel Prize for physics, shared uniquely by William Bragg and his son Lawrence, had its first steps firmly entrenched in Adelaide. The Braggs won the prize “for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X rays”.
William Bragg’s use of X rays went to his time (1885-1908) as professor of mathematics and experimental physics at Adelaide University where he built an excellent science department. During this time, Bragg's interest in physics grew, particularly in electromagnetism. A key figure in unveiling the atom, the New Zealander Ernest Rutherford, visited Bragg and became of friend, en route to Cambridge University, in 1895.
Bragg followed the X rays work of Wilhelm Röntgen, the first Nobel physics prize winner.
In May 1896, in Adelaide, Bragg showed local doctors the use of “X rays to reveal structures that were otherwise invisible”.
Samuel Barbour, senior chemist for Adelaide pharmaceutical maker F.H. Faulding and Co., supplied a glass discharge (Crookes) tube for the demonstration. The tube came from Barbour’s visit to Reynolds and Branson, makers of photographic and laboratory equipment, in Leeds England.
The tube was attached to an induction coil and a battery borrowed from Charles Todd, Bragg’s father-in-law and famous South Australian postmaster-general and superintendent of telegraphs.The induction coil produced the electric spark for Bragg and Barbour to “generate short bursts of X-rays”.
Bragg allowed an X-ray photograph to be taken of his hand. The image of his fingers revealed “an old injury to one of his fingers sustained many years previously".
The turning point in Bragg’s career came in 1904 when he addressed the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science in New Zealand on “Some recent advances in the theory of the ionization of gases".
Adelaide philanthropist Robert Barr Smith financed radium bromide for Bragg to continue experiments. Bragg subsequently wrote “On the ionisation curves of radium” with Adelaide University student Richard Kleeman.
Bragg’s brilliant series of researches earned him a fellowship of the Royal Society in London and he was offered a professorship at University of Leeds in 1908.
The work of William Bragg and his son Lawrence on use of X-rays as an instrument for the systematic revelation of the way in which crystals are built propelled them to jointly win the Nobel Prize for physics in 1915.
