Dr. R. A. Hull

Abstract

DR. R. A. HULL was killed at the age of thirty-eight when he fell while climbing the Brouillard ridge of Mont Blanc on August 22. Going up to Oxford in 1929 as an exhibitioner of St. John's College, he obtained a first class in Physics Finals in 1932 and was elected a senior scholar of Christ Church in 1934. He took the degree of D.Phil, in 1936 and was then working in the low-temperature team at the Clarendon Laboratory. The work was often harassing and difficult. Experiments frequently lasted as long as twenty hours, yet his great powers of concentration enabled him to keep command of an experiment in the most trying conditions. His patient and ingenious experiments contributed much to the technique of working below 1° K. which had been established in Oxford by 1939. When the War came he joined the Admiralty research team at Oxford, and in 1941 designed and constructed what was probably the first continuous-wave oscillates, in the millimetre region. As the War progressed he became more and more occupied with the training of physicists, who were required in ever-growing numbers. His very considerable administrative abilities now became apparent, both in the organisation of teaching and elsewhere in the Laboratory. In 1944 he spent a term as a visiting professor at Harvard University, assisting in the U.S. Navy's radio training scheme, and in the same year he was elected a fellow of Brasenose College. In 1948 he became a member of the General Board of the Faculties and was soon an accepted and vigorous representative of the science faculties.