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Samuel Curran
Sir Samuel Crowe Curran, FRS, FRSE (23 May 1912 – 15 February 1998) was a Scottish physicist and academic who was 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, the proportional counter, and the proximity fuze.
To date, Curran remains the longest serving principal and vice chancellor of the University of Strathclyde, holding the post for 16 years, not counting his previous five years as principal of the Royal College of Science and Technology.[citation needed]
Samuel Curran was born on 23 May 1912 at Ballymena in Ireland, the son of John Hamilton Curran (from Kinghorn in Fife), and his wife, Sarah Carson Crowe (some sources state Sarah Owen Crowe).
The family moved to Scotland soon after for his father to work as foreman of a steelworks near Wishaw. His brother Robert Curran, later a famous pathologist, was born soon after. He had two other brothers, Hamilton and John.
After schooling at Wishaw High School (where he was dux) 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.
At the start of the Second World War Curran and Joan Strothers, who he subsequently married, went to work at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Worth Matravers on the development of radar. In 1944, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley to participate in the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb. There he invented the scintillation counter by adding a photomultiplier tube to an existing scintillation crystal which had previously been viewed by the human eye to obtain a radiation count. This device is 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 1947 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Thomas Alty, Philip Dee, Robert A Houston and James W Cook. In 1953 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
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Samuel Curran
Sir Samuel Crowe Curran, FRS, FRSE (23 May 1912 – 15 February 1998) was a Scottish physicist and academic who was 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, the proportional counter, and the proximity fuze.
To date, Curran remains the longest serving principal and vice chancellor of the University of Strathclyde, holding the post for 16 years, not counting his previous five years as principal of the Royal College of Science and Technology.[citation needed]
Samuel Curran was born on 23 May 1912 at Ballymena in Ireland, the son of John Hamilton Curran (from Kinghorn in Fife), and his wife, Sarah Carson Crowe (some sources state Sarah Owen Crowe).
The family moved to Scotland soon after for his father to work as foreman of a steelworks near Wishaw. His brother Robert Curran, later a famous pathologist, was born soon after. He had two other brothers, Hamilton and John.
After schooling at Wishaw High School (where he was dux) 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.
At the start of the Second World War Curran and Joan Strothers, who he subsequently married, went to work at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Worth Matravers on the development of radar. In 1944, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley to participate in the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb. There he invented the scintillation counter by adding a photomultiplier tube to an existing scintillation crystal which had previously been viewed by the human eye to obtain a radiation count. This device is 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 1947 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Thomas Alty, Philip Dee, Robert A Houston and James W Cook. In 1953 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.