Nevill Francis Mott
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Sir Nevill Francis Mott (September 30, 1905 – August 8, 1996), FRS, CH, was a British physicist. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1977, sharing the award with Philip W. Anderson and J. H. Van Vleck, who had pursued independent research.
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[edit] Early life
He was born in Leeds and grew up first in the village of Giggleswick, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where his father had been the Senior Science Master at the local school. It was a generally secular childhood. The family moved (due to his father's jobs) first to Staffordshire, then to Chester and finally Liverpool, where his father had been appointed Director of Education. Mott was at first educated at home by his mother, who was a Cambridge Mathematics Tripos graduate. His parents had actually met in the Cavendish Laboratory, when both engaged in Physics research. At ten years of age he began formal education at Clifton College in Bristol, then at St. John's College, Cambridge.
[edit] Academic career
He was appointed to a lecturership at Manchester University in 1929. He returned to Cambridge in 1930 as a Fellow and lecturer of Gonville and Caius College and in 1933 moved to Bristol University as Melville Wills Professor in Theoretical Physics.
In 1948 he became Henry Overton Wills Professor of Physics and Director of the Henry Herbert Wills Physical Laboratory at Bristol. In 1954 he was appointed Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge, a post he held until 1971. Additionally he served as Master of Gonville and Caius College, 1959-1966.
[edit] Accomplishments
Mott's accomplishments include explaining theoretically the effect of light on a photographic emulsion (see latent image) and outlining the transition of substances from metallic to nonmetallic states (Mott transition). The term Mott insulator is also named after him.
Nevill Mott was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1936. Mott served as president of the Physical Society in 1957. In the early 1960s he was chairman of the British Pugwash group. He was knighted in 1962. He continued to work until he was about ninety. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1995.
[edit] Family
He was married to Ruth Eleanor Horder, and had two daughters, Elizabeth and Alice.
He died in Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire.
[edit] External links
- Sir Nevill Francis Mott
- Mott's memories University of Bristol (accessed Jan 2006)
- National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists Bath University
| Preceded by: Sir James Chadwick |
Master of Gonville and Caius College 1959-1966 |
Succeeded by: Joseph Needham |
Categories: 1905 births | 1996 deaths | Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge | Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour | English physicists | Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge | Fellows of the Royal Society | Nobel laureates in Physics | Old Cliftonians | Alumni of the University of Bristol
