Samuel Curran

Sir Samuel Crowe Curran (1912–1998), FRS,[1] FRSE, was a physicist and the first Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Strathclyde - the first of the new technical universities in Britain. He is the inventor of the scintillation counter,[2][3] the proportional counter,[2] and the proximity fuse.[4]

Life

Samuel Curran was born on 23 May 1912 at Ballymena in Northern Ireland, but was taken as an infant to Scotland, where he spent the remainder of his childhood. After schooling at Wishaw he completed his first degree in mathematics earning first class honours, and a PhD in physics at the University of Glasgow, before taking a second PhD at the Cavendish Laboratory as a member of St John's College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he met his future wife, Joan Strothers, who was also studying for a doctorate in physics; the couple would marry on 7 November 1940.

At the start of the Second World War Curran and Strothers went to work at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Worth Matravers on the development of radar. In 1944, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley to participate in the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb. There he invented scintillation counter by adding a photomultiplier tube to an existing scintillation crystal which had previously been viewed by the human eye to obtain a radiation count.[2] This device is widely used to this day to measure ionizing radiation.

Alpha scintillation probe based on Curran's principle under calibration.

After the war Curran worked at the University of Glasgow and at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston and invented the proportional counter[2] in 1948.

In 1953 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1959, he took up the position of principal of the Royal College of Science and Technology in Glasgow which he led to full university status in 1964 as the University of Strathclyde, being appointed its first Principal and Vice-Chancellor. In doing so, he helped create the first new university in Scotland for 381 years and the first technological university in Britain,[3] thus initiating the trend of formation of modern technical universities in Britain. Curran was knighted in 1970. He remained at the university until his retirement in 1980. In his honour, the new building for the Andersonian Library was named after him the following year.

Following the birth of a handicapped daughter, the Currans set up the Scottish Association of Parents of Handicapped Children, now known as 'Enable'[5]with Samuel Curran serving as its president from 1964 to 1991.

Death

Samuel Curran died on 15 February 1998 in hospital in Glasgow, aged 85.

Major publications

The following is based on the list in Who's Who:[2]
"Counting Tubes", S.C. Curran, Academic Press (New York), 1949, (with J. D. Craggs);
"Luminescence and the Scintillation Counter", 1953;
"Alpha, Beta and Gamma Ray Spectroscopy", 1964;
"Energy Resources and the Environment" (jt), 1976;
"Energy and Human Needs" (with J. S. Curran), 1979;
"Issues in Science and Education", 1988;
...and various papers on nuclear researches and education in Proc. Royal Society

References

  1. ↑ Fletcher, W. (1999). "Sir Samuel Crowe Curran. 23 May 1912 -- 25 February 1998: Elected F.R.S. 1953". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 45: 95. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1999.0008.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "‘CURRAN, Sir Samuel (Crowe)". Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2007. Retrieved 10 April 2010 (subscription required)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Curran, Sir Samuel Crowe (Sam). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, May 2006 (subscription required)
  4. ↑ Brennen, James W. (September 1968), The Proximity Fuze Whose Brainchild?, United States Naval Institute Proceedings.
  5. ↑ http://www.enable.org.uk/