John Sealy Townsend

Career in Oxford In 1900, Townsend was appointed to the newly established Wykeham Professorship of Physics at the University of Oxford.

Townsend was a laboratory demonstrator when Brebis Bleaney was an undergraduate. Bleaney recounts an occasion when Townsend gathered together all the demonstrators and proceeded to refute both quantum mechanics and relativity.

Between the two world wars, Townsend led an effective small group of researchers, often Rhodes scholars, of whom some became distinguished physicists. However, by the 1930s, he had become less effective; he was seen as a boring lecturer, a dogmatic supervisor, and out of touch with the wider world of physics. As the 1930s went on, no German refugees sought refuge in his laboratory, while Professor Frederick Lindemann gained 8 refugee physicists, some of whom gave his department an international reputation in the world of low temperature physics. In the late 1930s, the university decided to build a new Clarendon Laboratory building and looked closely at the relations between Oxford's two physics laboratories. There was a suggestion to convert the Wykeham Chair into one for theoretical physics.

In 1941, Townsend's career came to an unhappy end; he had refused to support the war effort by teaching service-men, and the university appointed a visitorial board. This found him guilty of misconduct and advised him that he would be dismissed unless he agreed to resign. He was knighted in January and resigned in September, subject to confidentiality.

Personal life and death On 5 June 1911 in Dublin, Townsend married Mary Georgiana Lambert, with whom he had two sons; Edward (born 7 August 1912) and John (born 7 June 1914). The family lived at 20 Merton Street in Oxford.

Townsend died on 16 February 1957 in Oxford at the age of 88.

Awards Year Organisation Award Citation 1914 Royal Society Hughes Medal "For his researches on electric induction in gases."

Chivalric titles Year Head of state Title 1941 George VI Knight Bachelor

Commemorations The Townsend Building of the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford is named after him, as well as the townsend unit.

Books