Mark Oliphant

Mark Oliphant married Rosa Louise Wilbraham, a girl he had known since teenage, in 1925. They had one biological son who died as a child, and two adopted children.

He lived a long life and died on 14 July 2000, at the age of 98.

Mark Oliphant was born on 8 October 1901, in Kent Town, Adelaide, Australia, to Harold George "Baron" Oliphant and Beatrice Edith Fanny Oliphant. His father was a civil servant with the South Australian Engineering and Water Supply Department and part-time lecturer in Economics, while his mother was an artist. He had four younger brothers.

A kind hearted boy, he became a vegetarian after witnessing the slaughter of pigs. He was completely deaf in one ear and had to wear glasses for short-sightedness.

He graduated from Adelaide High School and began studying at the University of Adelaide in 1919. Initially he was interested in a medical career but his physics professor Kerr Grant offered him a cadetship in the Physics Department which Oliphant accepted.

He received his Bachelor of Science (B.Sc) degree in 1921. Then he completed his honors degree before working with Roy Burdon to publish two papers on the properties of mercury in 1927.

In 1925, Oliphant had heard a speech given by New Zealand physicist, Sir Ernest Rutherford, which greatly inspired him. In order to work with this great scientist, he applied for a position at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge where he was accepted in 1927.

At the laboratory, he worked with other brilliant scientists like John Cockcroft, Ernest Walton, James Chadwick; and Patrick Blackett. He also enjoyed a close relationship with his mentor, Rutherford, and together they worked on heavy hydrogen reactions.

The 1930s was a highly productive time at the Cavendish laboratory. Oliphant constructed a particle accelerator that could fire protons with up to 600,000 electronvolts of energy. He also produced several important papers.

In collaboration with Rutherford and others, Oliphant discovered the nuclei of Helium-3 (helions) and tritium (tritons). He soon became the first to experimentally demonstrate nuclear fusion which eventually led to the development of the hydrogen bomb.

In 1937, Oliphant was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and also took up the Poynting Chair of Physics at Birmingham University. He became involved with the development of radar the next year and successfully led his team in developing the cavity magnetron used in advanced microwave radar.

Mark Oliphant accomplished the first laboratory fusion of hydrogen isotopes in 1932. He also participated in further research on nuclear fusion for military purposes as part of the Manhattan Project following which the first atomic bombs were designed and built.

He played a pivotal role in the development of radar. He headed a group of scientists which included John Randall and Harry Boot to create a radical new design, the cavity magnetron that led to the invention of microwave radar.