Sir Ralph Howard Fowler (17 January 1889 – 28 July 1944) was an English physicist.
Education
Ralph H. Fowler was born at Roydon, Essex, on 17 January 1889 to Howard Fowler, from Burnham, Somerset, and Frances Eva, daughter of George Dewhurst, a cotton merchant from Manchester.[3] He was initially educated at home, going on to attend Evans' preparatory school at Horris Hill and Winchester College. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge and studied mathematics, becoming a wrangler in Part II of the Mathematical Tripos.
In 1919, Fowler returned to Trinity and was appointed college lecturer in mathematics in 1920. Here he worked on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, bringing a new approach to physical chemistry. With Arthur Milne, a comrade during the war, he wrote a seminal work on stellar spectra, temperatures, and pressures. In 1925 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society.[1] He became research supervisor to Paul Dirac and, in 1926, worked with him on the statistical mechanics of white dwarf stars. In 1927 he was one of the participants of the fifth Solvay Conference on Physics that took place at the International Solvay Institute for Physics in Belgium. In 1928 he published (with Lothar Nordheim) a seminal paper that explained the physical phenomenon now known as field electron emission, and helped to establish the validity of modern electron band theory. In 1931, he was the first to formulate and label the zeroth law of thermodynamics.[5] In 1932 he was elected to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1933 he worked with John Bernal to develop a model for the structure of water and ice known as the ice rules.[6]
In 1939, when World War II began, he resumed his work with the Ordnance Board, despite poor health, and was chosen for scientific liaison with Canada and the United States. He knew America well, having visiting professorships at Princeton and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. For this liaison work he was knighted in 1942 (see MAUD Committee). He returned to Britain later in the war and worked for the Ordnance Board and the Admiralty up until a few weeks before his death in 1944.
Statistical mechanics, the theory of the properties of matter in equilibrium; based on an essay awarded the Adams prize in the University of Cambridge, 1923–24. Cambridge University Press. 1929.[10][11]2nd edition. 1936.[12]
Passage of electrons through surfaces and surface films; being the thirty-first Robert Boyle lecture. Oxford University Press. 1929.
with E. A. Guggenheim: Statistical thermodynamics: a version of statistical mechanics for students of physics and chemistry. Cambridge University Press. 1939.[13]
