James L. Tuck

James Leslie Tuck (9 January 1910 – 15 December 1980) was a British physicist, working on the applications of explosives as part of the British delegation to the Manhattan Project.

Tuck was born in Manchester, England, and educated at the Victoria University of Manchester. Because of his involvement with the Manhattan Project, he was unable to submit his thesis on time and never received his doctoral degree.

In 1937 he was offered an appointment as a Salter Research Fellow at Oxford University, where he worked with Leó Szilárd on particle accelerators. In 1937 he married Elsie Harper, with whom he would later adopt two children.

At the outbreak of World War II, he was appointed as the scientific advisor to Frederick Alexander Lindemann, who was on the private staff of Winston Churchill. His research included work on shaped charges, used in anti-tank weapons. For this work in 1944 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Honours and Service

Officer of the Order of the British Empire (1944) Fellow of the American Physical Society (1952) Guggenheim Fellowship (1962) Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1970) Editor, Review of Plasma Physics and Controlled Thermonuclear Research