Lawrence Bragg

This article is about the Australian-born physicist. For his father and fellow Nobel Prize winner, see William Henry Bragg.

Sir
Lawrence Bragg
CH OBE MC FRS
Bragg in 1915
Born
William Lawrence Bragg

(1890-03-31)31 March 1890
Adelaide, Colony of South Australia
(now South Australia, Australia)
Died1 July 1971(1971-07-01) (aged 81)
Waldringfield, Suffolk, England
EducationSt Peter's College, Adelaide
Alma materUniversity of Adelaide
Trinity College, Cambridge
Known forX-ray diffraction
X-ray spectroscopy
X-ray microscopy
Bubble raft
Bragg's law
Bragg–Gray cavity theory
Bragg–Williams approximation
Spouse
Alice Hopkinson
​
(m. 1921)​
Parents
RelativesCharles Todd (grandfather)
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
Institutions
Academic advisorsJ. J. Thomson
William Henry Bragg
Doctoral students
Other notable studentsWilliam Cochran
3rd Director of NPL
In office
1937–1938
Preceded byFrank Edward Smith (Acting)
Succeeded byCharles Galton Darwin
Portrait of William Lawrence Bragg taken when he was around 40 years old.

Sir William Lawrence Bragg (31 March 1890 – 1 July 1971) was an Australian-born British physicist and X-ray crystallographer, discoverer (1912) of Bragg's law of X-ray diffraction, which is basic for the determination of crystal structure. He was joint recipient (with his father, William Henry Bragg) of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915, "For their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays";[4] an important step in the development of X-ray crystallography.[5]

Bragg was knighted in 1941.[4] As of 2024, he is the youngest ever Nobel laureate in physics, having received the award at the age of 25.[6] Bragg was the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, when the discovery of the structure of DNA was reported by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in February 1953.

  1. ^ Phillips, D. (1979). "William Lawrence Bragg. 31 March 1890 – 1 July 1971". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 25: 74–143. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1979.0003. JSTOR 769842.
  2. ^ "Alexander Stokes". The Telegraph. 28 February 2003. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  3. ^ "National Library of Wales: From Warfare to Welfare 1939–59". Archived from the original on 18 November 2015. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  4. ^ a b "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1915". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  5. ^ Stoddart, Charlotte (1 March 2022). "Structural biology: How proteins got their close-up". Knowable Magazine. doi:10.1146/knowable-022822-1. Retrieved 25 March 2022.
  6. ^ "Facts on the Nobel Prize in Physics". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 16 January 2016.