Albert Percival (Jimmy or A.P.) Rowe, CBE (23 March 1898 – 25 May 1976) was a British physicist and senior research administrator who had a major role in the development of Radar before and during World War II.[1].
Rowe was born in Launceston, Cornwall, and after attending the Portsmouth Naval Dockyard School went to Imperial College, London in 1918, graduating with a first-class honours in physics in 1921, and postgraduate diploma in air navigation in 1922.
In the Air Ministry he was convinced by 1934 of the need for new methods of air defence, and was secretary of the Tizard Committee which supported the early development of radio-based detection. In 1935, he coined the acronym RDF as a cover for the work, meaning Range and Direction Finding but suggesting the already well-known Radio Directing Finding technology. Rowe replaced Robert Watson-Watt as Superindentent of the Bawdsey Research Station where the Chain Home RDF system was developed, and continued to lead the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE), which carried out pioneering research on microwave radar.
Putley describes him as a complex character with a strong sense of mission, so, difficult to live with. But he supports Rowe’s decisions in giving priority and most of TRE’s resources to the completion of the Chain Home and Chain Home Low systems in 1938-39, but also continuing research in 1940 on developing airborne interception (AI) radar and, with the cavity magnetron, centimetric radar, though microwave systems could have been regarded as too long-term to be useful at that time. Despite opposition, he also led in the development of Oboe and H2S. He was awarded a CBE in 1942.[1]
Rowe was worn out and in poor health after the war, and got a less stressful job in Australia. Recovering, he was the first Scientific Advisor to the Australian government and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Adelaide. He retired back to England.