Leslie H. Martin

Laby nominated him for an 1851 Research Fellowship and a free trip to England to study physics under Ernest Rutherford at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish laboratory.

Sir Leslie Harold Martin, (21 December 1900 – 1 February 1983) was an Australian physicist.

Leslie Harold Martin was born in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray on 21 December 1900, to Henry Richard Martin, a railway worker, and his wife Esther (Ettie) Emily, née Tutty.

He attended Flemington State School and won a Junior State Scholarship to Melbourne High School for his final years of secondary schooling in 1917 and 1918.

His mathematics teacher, Miss Julia Flynn, encouraged him, and he won a Victorian Education Department Senior Government Scholarship in 1918.

He entered the University of Melbourne on the scholarship in 1919, to study for a Bachelor of Science for Education, with the intention of becoming a maths teacher.

In 1921, in his final year, he came top of his year with first class honours in Natural Philosophy (physics) and was awarded the Dixson Scholarship in Natural Philosophy.

In 1922, he completed his Master of Science degree, writing his master's thesis on "The emission of X Rays" under the supervision of Professor T. H. Laby.

He was awarded first class honours and both the Dixson and Kernot Scholarships.

Martin was awarded the Fred Knight Research Scholarship in 1923, which allowed him to continue his research with Laby.

He earned extra money as a demonstrator in the Department of Natural Philosophy, and he lectured in the evenings at the Working Men's College.

Before departing, he married Gladys Maude Elaine Bull, a Bachelor of Music student at the University of Melbourne, at St James's Church of England in Ivanhoe on 13 February 1923.

She did not complete her studies, but instead accompanied him to England, sailing on the SS Berrima.

They had two sons; the first, Leon Henry Martin, born in Cambridge on 25 April 1924.

When Gladys became pregnant again, she decided to return to Australia to be with her parents.

Their second son, Raymond Leslie Martin, was born on 3 February 1926.

Leon died on the return voyage to England on the SS Benalla in July 1926.

Martin enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge, and continued his research into X-rays under Rutherford's supervision.

He completed his PhD in 1926.

The results of this work were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, and the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

He was awarded an International Research Fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation, allowing him to stay on into 1927.

He later recalled that:"John Cockcroft and I worked in the same room at the Cavendish Laboratory. We designed a half-million-volt accelerator tube which was used with a powerful Tesla to produce fast electrons. The electric field around the H.T. electrode produced magnificent coloured discharges in vacuum tubes. These fascinated Rutherford. He loved to edge closer to the H.T. electrode holding a vacuum tube at arm's length in an attempt to increase the brilliance of the electrical display. These visitations scared us. Cockcroft ultimately passed a spark to earth through a lump of meat, boring a hole half an inch in diameter. This impressed Rutherford, who liked the direct approach but his visits became less frequent."

Martin applied for a position as a lecturer at the University of Melbourne in January 1927.

He was successful, and returned to Australia in August 1927.

His corner of the Cavendish Laboratory was taken over by Ernest Walton.

Martin continued his research into X-rays, working with Laby, J. C. Bower and F. F. H. Eggleston.

He won the David Syme Research Prize in 1934, for his investigation of the Auger effect, the emission of electrons after ionisation by X-rays.

Work with the chemical element xenon gave important confirmation of Paul Dirac's quantum field theory.

In 1937 he became an associate professor in Natural Philosophy, and second-in-charge of the Natural Philosophy Department.

With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Martin commenced projects at the request of the Australian Defence Forces, investigating a proximity fuse for the Australian Army and an acoustic communications system for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) that would allow an instructor and trainee pilot to converse with each other.

He led a team that built a prototype Height and Range

Finder No. 3, Mark IV, for the Army, but the Army cancelled the order in August 1941 when the prototype was nearly complete.

In January 1942, he was seconded to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research's Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney to develop secret valves for a Radio Direction Finder.

He teamed up with Eric Burhop to build a magnetron, producing a working prototype on 23 May 1942.

He then went on to build an original magnetron that generated 25 centimetre microwave radiation.

These magnetrons were used in radar equipment by the Army, RAAF, Royal Australian Navy (RAN), and United States Army Air Forces (USAAF).

He was Professor of Physics at the University of Melbourne from 1945 to 1959, and Dean of the Faculty of Military Studies and Professor of Physics at the University of New South Wales at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in Canberra from 1967 to 1970.

He was the Defence Scientific Adviser and chairman of the Defence Research and Development Policy Committee from 1948 to 1968, and a member of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission from 1958 to 1968.

In this role he was an official observer at several British nuclear weapons tests in Australia.

He was one of the 24 Founding Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science and had a significant influence on the structure of higher education in Australia as chairman of the Australian Universities Commission from 1959 until 1966.