Thomas Eckersley

This article is about the English physicist and engineer. For the English poster artist, see Tom Eckersley.
Thomas Eckersley
Born Thomas Lydwell Eckersley
(1886-12-27)27 December 1886
Died 15 February 1959(1959-02-15) (aged 72)
Institutions Marconi Company
Alma mater
Notable awards

FRS (1938)[1]

Faraday Medal, IET (1951)[2]

Thomas Lydwell Eckersley FRS[1] (27 December 1886 – 15 February 1959) was an English theoretical physicist and engineer.[1][3]

Education and early life

Eckersley was born in Gibraltar.[4] He was educated at Bedales School, University College, London, where he gained a degree in engineering, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a second degree in mathematics.

Career and research

In 1919 he joined the Marconi Company as a theoretical research engineer and stayed there for the remainder of his career. He devoted most of his career to research into radio waves reflected downwards from the Heaviside layer and how they interfered with direction finding equipment.

Awards and honours

Eckersley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1938[1]

Personal life

Eckersley's mother Rachel was the fifth child of Victorian biologist Thomas Henry Huxley renowned for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Eckersley's younger brother was the BBC's first Chief Engineer Peter Eckersley. In 1920, Eckersley married author Barry Pain's, daughter Eva Amelia.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Ratcliffe, J. A. (1960). "Thomas Lydwell Eckersley 1886-1959". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. Royal Society publishing. 5 (0): 69–74. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1960.0006. ISSN 0080-4606.
  2. Oxford, Marconi Archive, Bodleian Library, Ms. Marconi 995.
  3. J. A. Ratcliffe. "Eckersley, Thomas Lydwell (1886–1959), theoretical physicist and engineer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32966. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. The B.B.C. and all that. Roger Eckersley. Sampson Low, London, 1946. Page 2.
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