Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

Ronald Wilfred Gurney

British theoretical physicist (1898–1953) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Remove ads

Ronald Wilfred (or Wilfrid) Gurney (1898– 14 April 1953)[1] was a British theoretical physicist and research pupil of William Lawrence Bragg at the Victoria University of Manchester during the 1920s and 1930s, Bristol University during the 1930s and later in the US,[1] where he died in New York City.

He was born in Cheltenham in 1898.[2]

Radioactive decay processes

Whilst at the Palmer Physical Laboratory at Princeton University from 1926 to 1928,[2] he discovered alpha decay via quantum tunnelling, together with Edward Condon and independently of George Gamow. In the early 1900s, radioactive materials were known to have characteristic exponential decay rates or half lives. At the same time, radiation emissions were known to have certain characteristic energies. By 1928, Gamow had solved the theory of the alpha decay of a nucleus via quantum tunnelling and the problem was also solved independently by Gurney and Condon.[3][4][5]

Remove ads

Books

See also

References

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads