Phillip Burton Moon FRS

Philip Burton Moon, (1907-1994) was educated at Leyton County High School before winning a scholarship to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1935. He graduated in the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1928, having taken Physics in part II. Moon went on to research in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge under M.L.E. Oliphant. In 1931 he was appointed Assistant Lecturer at Imperial College London (Lecturer from 1934). Working under G.P.Thompson he researched in neutron physics. In 1938 Moon moved to University of Birmingham as Lecturer in the Department of Physics following his former supervisor M.L.E. Oliphant . He and Oliphant set up a school of nuclear physics. During the Second World War Moon spent time in Washington and Manhattan, America, working on short-wave radar, and the atomic bomb projects, returning to England after the war to continue research in nuclear physics at Birmingham. Cyclotron work begun before the war was continued and a proton synchroton became operational in the early 1950s.

Moon was appointed Reader in 1943, and Professor in 1946. On Oliphant's move to the Australian National University at Canberra in 1950, Moon succeeded him in the Poynting Chair of Physics, holding this post until his retirement in 1974. He was head of the Department of Physics until 1970 and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering 1969-1972.

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