Robert William Boyle
Robert William Boyle | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 2nd, 1883 |
| Died | April 18th, 1955 |
| Nationality | Newfoundlander, Canadian, British |
| Alma mater | McGill University |
| Known for | ASDIC (Sonar) |
| Awards | Royal Society of Canada Flavelle Medal |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, Radioactivity, Ultrasonics |
| Institutions | University of Manchester University of Alberta Board of Invention and Research National Research Council of Canada |
| Doctoral advisor | Ernest Rutherford |
Robert William Boyle (born at Carbonear, Newfoundland October 2, 1883; died at London, England April 18, 1955) was a Newfoundlander physicist and one the of most important early pioneers in the development of sonar.
Boyle trained at McGill University under Nobel Prize winner Sir Ernest Rutherford, in the then fledgling field of radioactivity. He earned McGill's first PhD in physics in 1909. He then moved to England to continue his work by following Rutherford to the University of Manchester.
In 1912 he returned to Canada at the request of Henry Marshall Tory to become head of the physics department at the University of Alberta, and shifted his research to ultrasonics.
During the First Great War Boyle volunteered his expertise to the British Admiralty and, with the help of his old teacher Ernest Rutherford, he shortly joined the Board of Inventions and Research and worked with British physicist Albert Beaumont Wood, a fellow student of Rutherford's. Before 1917 the scientific teams from the Allied countries worked separately, but after joining forces with French researchers Boyle produced a working protoype of what the British called "ASDIC" (the first sonar). Early versions of the technology were being installed on British ships just as the war came to an end.
In 1919 Boyle returned to Alberta and shortly thereafter became dean the Faculty of Applied Science, a position he held until 1929. That year he joined the National Research Council of Canada as the director of physics, where he supervised research into radar during the Second World War. He continued to work at the National Research Council until his retirement in 1948, when he moved back to England.
He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1921 and awarded the Flavelle Medal in 1940.