William Bragg bonds with Charles Todd in pushing Adelaide's science and technology; marries his daughter
William Bragg (standing, second from left) becomes part of wider family of Charles Todd (seated at right) and his wife Alice (at left) in 1897, at their home in the grounds of the Adelaide Observatory. Bragg's wife Gwen is seated in front of him and his young sons Lawrence (left) and Bob (right) are at the front. William and Lawrenbce Bragg would share the Nobel Prize for physics in 1915.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
On his first day in South Australia in 1886, William Bragg met Charles Todd, government astronomer, postmaster general and superintendent of telegraphs – and father-in-law to be, at the Todd family’s home within the Adelaide Observatory buildings complex in the Adelaide city's parklands off West Terrace.
Todd had guided the epic Adelaide-Darwin telegraph line project to its finish in 1872. He was an early (unsuccessful) proponent for Adelaide to use electricity for street lighting. But, with telecommunications enthusiast Todd as postmaster general, South Australia was an early adopter of telephone technology with its first exchange operating at the general post office building by 1883. This was seven years after Alexander Graham Bell had invented to telephone.
Bragg was the new 23-year-old Adelaide University Elder professor of mathematics and experimental physics – and a future Nobel physics winner – when he met Todd. It would turn into a close alliance on several levels. Firstly, Bragg married Gwendoline, one of Todd’s four daughters, in 1889. Their elder son, (William) Lawrence, would share the Nobel Prize in physics with his father in 1915. Lawrence had the advantage of a boyhood stimulated by his regular visits to his grandfather’s observatory complex.
Charles Todd and William Bragg also developed a deep intellectual alliance that would fuse science and technology. Bragg and Todd were involved in sending one of Australia’s first radio signals in Adelaide in 1899. These were Morse code messages, including one over eight kilometres from the Charles Todd’s Adelaide Observatory wireless hut on West Terrace, Adelaide, to the Bragg family’s hut at Henley Beach
The Todd-Bragg fusion would benefit their own work but have lasting effects on Adelaide. Both were involved in South Australia's most significant early step in science/technology education: the School of Mines and Industries in the 1890s.
On the family level, William Bragg first met Charles Todd’s sons Charles Edward and Hedley Lawrence when they were starting medical and business careers. In later years, Charles would consult Bragg on the medical use of the new X rays and Hedley would seek his advice on the electrification of the city.
