Norman Feather

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Norman Feather FRS[1] FRSE PRSE (16 November 1904, Pecket Well, Yorkshire – 14 August 1978, Christie Hospital, Manchester),[2] was an English nuclear physicist who, together with a colleague at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, made a breakthrough in nuclear research for the Tube Alloys project when they proposed that the 239 isotope of element 94 would be better able to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.

Early life and education

His father was headmaster at his first school.[3] He was then educated at Bridlington Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming a Fellow of Trinity College from 1929 to 1933 then Fellow and Lecturer in Natural Sciences there from 1936 to 1945.

Career

He was a Fellow of Trinity College from 1929 to 1933 and also 1936 to 1945, when he was also a lecturer. He was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1945 to 1975, then Emeritus Professor and was appointed FRS in 1945.[3]

In 1940 Feather and Egon Bretscher at the Cavendish Laboratory, made a breakthrough in nuclear research for the Tube Alloys project when they proposed that the 239 isotope of element 94 could be produced from the common isotope of uranium-238 by neutron capture, and that, like U-235, this should be able to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. Hence a slow neutron reactor fuelled with uranium would, in theory, produce substantial amounts of plutonium-239 as a by-product. This is because U-238 absorbs slow neutrons, so forming a new isotope U-239. The new isotope's nucleus rapidly emits an electron, decaying into new element with a mass of 239 and an atomic number of 93. This element's nucleus then also emits an electron and becomes a new element of mass 239 but with an atomic number 94 and a much greater half-life.

Bretscher and Feather showed theoretically feasible grounds that element 94 would be readily 'fissionable' by both slow and fast neutrons, and had the added advantage of being chemically different from uranium and therefore could easily be separated from it. This was confirmed independently in 1940 by Edwin M. McMillan and Philip Abelson at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. Nicholas Kemmer of the Cambridge team proposed the names Neptunium for the new element 93 and Plutonium for 94 by analogy with the outer planets Neptune and Pluto beyond Uranus (uranium being element 92). The Americans fortuitously suggested the same names. The production and identification of the first sample of plutonium in 1941 is generally credited to Glenn Seaborg, who used a cyclotron rather than a reactor.

References

  1. ↑ Cochran, W.; Devons, S. (1981). "Norman Feather. 16 November 1904-14 August 1978". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 27: 254. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1981.0011. 
  2. ↑ Wilkinson: Feather, Norman (1904–1978), rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2009, accessed 26 Jan 2013
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Norman Feather (1959). Mass Length & Time. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ASIN B000SD4RNU. 

External links

  • Oral History interview transcript with Norman Feather, 25 February & 5 November 1971, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
  • Who Was Who 1971-1980 (A & C Black, London)
  • Vibration and Waves published by the Edinburgh University Press 1961—Penguin Book Ltd
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