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.

Moon made important contributions to physics. The citation of Moon for the Royal Society Hughes Medal noted his work in three main areas: "nuclear physics, the discovery of gamma-ray resonances, and the use of colliding molecular beams to study chemical reactions". In the 1930s at Imperial College London, working with J.R. Tillman, he had demonstrated the existence of thermal neutrons and during the war after work on radar he joined the 'Tube Alloys' project working on developing the atomic bomb. Returning to Birmingham after the war, Moon resumed work with the cyclotron and saw the completion of the Proton Synchrotron, the first synchrotron of its type in the world to work at full power. He also developed a technique for observing the resonant scattering of gamma rays by nuclei using high-speed rotors.

Moon was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1947. He gave the Royal Society's Rutherford Memorial Lecture on a visit to Australia in 1975 and was awarded its Hughes Medal in 1991.

Reference: Timothy E. Powell and Peter Harper, Catalogue of the Papers and Correspondence of Philip Burton Moon FRS (National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists. Bath. 1997).

For further reading about the University of Birmingham see: Eric Ives, Diane Drummond, Leonard Schwarz The First Civic University: Birmingham 1880-1980 An Introductory History (The University of University of Birmingham Press. 2000).

From the guide to the University of Birmingham Staff Papers: Papers of Phillip Burton Moon FRS, 1929-1996, (University of Birmingham Information Services, Special Collections Department)