Eric Burhop

A graduate of the University of Melbourne, Burhop was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship to study at the Cavendish Laboratory under Lord Rutherford.

Under the supervision of Mark Oliphant, he investigated nuclear fusion.

The thesis was good enough, though, for Burhop to be awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship to study at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory under Lord Rutherford in 1933.

The scholarship included a first-class ticket to London on the liner RMS Oronsay.

At this time the Cavendish Laboratory was one of the leading centres of physics in the world.

Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop, (31 January 1911 – 22 January 1980) was an Australian physicist and humanitarian.

Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop was born in Hobart, Tasmania, on 31 January 1911, the third child of two Salvation Army officers, Henry Augustus Burhop and his wife Bertha née Head.

He had two older sisters, Edna and Vera.

His family was not wealthy, and they moved frequently owing to the nature of his parents' evangelical work.

The family moved to Ballarat in 1923, where he attended Ballarat High School for most of his secondary education, receiving his leaving (Year 11) certificate in 1926.

He transferred to Melbourne High School for his final year.

Burhop won a scholarship, and entered the University of Melbourne in 1928.

He initially studied civil engineering, but switched to science after two years, and majored in physics.

In 1929, he was awarded a bursary that provided financial assistance.

He graduated in 1931 with a Bachelor of Science BSc degree with first class honours in physics.

He then earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA), also with first class honours, in mathematics in 1932, and a Master of Science in physics in 1933.

For a master's research problem, Professor Thomas Laby had Burhop investigate the probability K shell ionisation by electron impact by measuring the intensity of the resultant X-ray emissions.

This aroused an interest in the Auger effect, a subject in which he would later become an authority.

By contrast, his master's thesis on "The Band Spectra of Diatomic Molecules" had little influence on his later work.

In 1932, Cavendish laboratory scientists John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton split the atomic nucleus, James Chadwick discovered the neutron, and Patrick Blackett and Giuseppe Occhialini confirmed the existence of the positron.

Burhop was supervised by a fellow Australian, Mark Oliphant.

He was initially assigned a task of investigating the diffusion of positive alkali metal ions on hot metal surfaces, but soon switched to a more interesting subject, the measurement of the excitation function for the pairs of deuterons producing a triton through nuclear fusion:

Burhop was able to observe the reaction at energies of less than 8 keV.

He continued his investigations of X-rays and the Auger effect.

He conducted investigation of the probabilities of the ionisation of the K and L shells of silver, using the Born approximation.

He produced a non-relativistic theory of the Auger effect in 1935, followed by a relativistic treatment the following year.

He later wrote a monograph on the subject.

In 1935, he produced a non-relativistic theory of the Auger effect.

He returned to the University of Melbourne as a lecturer in 1936, and helped Professor Thomas Laby build up the physics department there.

During the Second World War, he worked in the Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney, where he produced a laboratory model of a cavity magnetron.

This followed by a relativistic treatment in 1936 with Harrie Massey, another Australian expatriate fellow at the Cavendish.

While never formally charged with atomic espionage or so much as directly questioned by investigators, due to his leftist political views, anti-nuclear activism as well as his personal links to exposed Soviet spies, Burhop was the subject of comprehensive surveillance on the part of the UK, US and Australia's counterespionage agencies in the 1940s–1950s, a fact that was publicised in 2019.

In September 1942, he returned to Melbourne as the officer in charge of the Radar Research Laboratory, where he continued the development of cavity magnetrons and reflex klystrons for radar sets.

In May 1944, he became one of three Australian physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bombs.

In early 1945, Harrie Massey offered Burhop a position as a lecturer in the Mathematics Department at University College, London.

He fostered international cooperation in nuclear physics.

His work on the Auger effect would culminate in a monograph, The Auger Effect and Other Radiationless Transitions (1952).

Before coming to Cambridge, Burhop had not engaged in political activities.

At Cambridge he encountered political debate generated by the suffering caused by the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe.

While he rejected his parents' faith in favour of rationalist science, he did not reject their values, especially that of compassion for others, and there was no estrangement between them.