Samuel Curran

Sir Samuel Crowe Curran (1912–1998), FRS, FRSE, was a physicist and the first Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Strathclyde - the first of the new technical universities in Britain. He is the inventor of the scintillation counter and of the proportional counter.

Life

Samuel was born on 23 May 1912 at Ballymena in Northern Ireland, but was taken as an infant to Scotland where he spent the remainder of his childhood. After schooling at Wishaw he completed his first degree in mathematics, earning first class honours and a PhD in physics at the University of Glasgow before taking a second PhD at the Cavendish Laboratory as a member of St John's College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he met his future wife, Joan Strothers who was also studying for a doctorate in physics.

At the start of the Second World War Curran and Strothers went to work at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Worth Matravers on the development of radar. In 1944, shortly after moving to the University of California at Berekely to participate in the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb, he invented the scintillation counter, a device widely used to this day to measure ionizing radiation.

After the war Curran worked at the University of Glasgow and at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston and invented the proportional counter in 1948.

In 1959, he took up the position of principal of the Royal College of Science and Technology in Glasgow which he led to full university status in 1964 as the University of Strathclyde, being appointed its first Principal and Vice-Chancellor. In doing so, he helped create the first new university in Scotland for 381 years and the first technological university in Britain, thus inititing the trend of formation of modern technical universities in Britain. He remained at the university until retirement in 1980.

Following the birth of their handicapped daughter, the Currans set up the Scottish Association of Parents of Handicapped Children, now known as Enable, serving as its president from 1964 to 1991.

Sir Sam Curran died on 15 February 1998 in hospital in Glasgow, aged 85.

Major publications

The following is based on the list in Who's Who:
"Counting Tubes", S.C. Curran, Academic Press (New York), 1949, (with J. D. Craggs);
"Luminescence and the Scintillation Counter", 1953;
"Alpha, Beta and Gamma Ray Spectroscopy", 1964;
"Energy Resources and the Environment" (jt), 1976;
"Energy and Human Needs" (with J. S. Curran), 1979;
"Issues in Science and Education", 1988;
...and various papers on nuclear researches and education in Proc. Royal Society

References

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Latham, Colin & Stobbs, Anne: Pioneers of Radar (1999, Sutton, England) ISBN 0 7509 2120 X (Contribution from Sir Samuel & Lady Curran, pp 194–196)