John Iball

John Iball FRSE FIP (1907–1993) was a British physicist and crystallographer. He made major advances in cancer research. He gives his name to the Iball Index: the relative potency of carcinogenic compounds.

Life He was born in Hasland near Chesterfield in Derbyshire on 1 February 1907. He attended Alun County School in Mold, Flintshire from 1919 to 1925. He then went to study Mathematics and Physics at the College of North Wales in Bangor. He graduated with a first class degree (BSc) in Physics in 1928. In 1929 he received a Diploma in Education then won a research scholarship which resulted in a further degree (MSc) and doctorate (PhD) from the University of Wales in 1932. From 1932 to 1934 (under a Fellowship from the University of Wales) he did further research at the Davy Faraday Laboratory at the Royal Institution in London under the Sir William Lawrence Bragg.

Here he did X-ray studies on organic materials, particularly those of carcinogenic properties. Resultantly, in 1934 he began working in the Research Institute of the Royal Cancer Hospital, London. He did extensive studies on both the causative and curative effects of X-rays on cancer: a very delicate balance. During this period he did a study visit to Prague to visit the laboratory of Prof Jaroslav Heyrovsky to specialise further in polarography. The University of Wales awarded him a second doctorate (DSc) in 1939. The University of Dundee Museum Services hold a collection of Iball's original diagrams and electron density maps.

In 1950 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were George Dawson Preston, Edward Thomas Copson, James Forrest and Robert Percival Cook. In 1952 he became a Research Fellow in the British Empire Cancer Campaign (renamed the Cancer Research Campaign in 1970).

While in Dundee, Iball set up the Tayside and Fife Branch of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and offered assistance to local industries with any scientific matters.

He died at 11 Glamis Terrace in Dundee on 21 January 1993, shortly before his 86th birthday.

Family

Iball had one daughter, Dorothy, by his wife Margaret.