Alan Howard Ward

Last updated

Alan Howard Ward OBE (28 July 1925 - 2 December 2021) was a Physicist who influenced science education in Africa and contributed to the understanding of the impacts of radioactive chemicals on human health.

Contents

Alan Howard Ward
Alan Howard Ward in 2005.3.jpg
Born28 July 1925
Died2 December 2021
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of Birmingham
Known forNuclear physics
SpouseElizabeth Honor Ward
ChildrenFour
Awards OBE
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsFinsen Institute
University of Ghana
University of Zambia
University of Swaziland
Open University
Thesis Directional-correlation in radioactivity  (1949)
Doctoral advisor Mark Oliphant

Education and early years

Alan was the youngest of four children of Edward Howard Ward, a post office worker, and Ursula Mabel Ward (née Vale). He was born in Woodford, London. He attended The Forest School in Waltham Forest until 1937. The family later moved to Chichester where he attended Chichester High School for Boys. Following a wartime degree at the University of Birmingham he worked under Mark Oliphant and completed a PhD in 1949. [1] [2] [3] Alongside his studies, he served with the Air Training Corps from 20 September 1941 to 1 August 1943, where he was trained as a Flight Mechanic, and served with the Home Guard from 6 October 1943 to 31 December 1944. As part of the Birmingham University Senior Training Corps, he obtained the War Certificate "A" in 1944 and "B" in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering in 1945.

Career

Finsen Institute, Denmark

After a period as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, Ward was sent by the Atomic Energy Research Establishment to study Thorotrast poisoning at the Finsen Institute in Denmark for two years. This work involved following up on patients who had been injected with Thorotrast as a radiocontrast agent in medical radiography, and started his interest in medical physics. [4] [5]

University of Ghana

Following an interview by the Inter-University Council for Higher Education Overseas (ICHEO), [6] Ward was appointed as a lecturer in physics at the University of Ghana in 1951. For the period 1956-59 he served as Secretary of the Ghana National Committee for the International Geophysical Year. He was made a Senior Lecturer in 1958, and associate professor in 1963. He represented Ghana at the "Atoms for peace" conference in Geneva in 1959, and at Commonwealth Atomic Scientists and IAEA meetings.

Retention and toxicity of Strontium-90

Starting in 1959, Ward founded a University Radioisotope and Health Physics Unit in Ghana with support from the Government National Research Council (later the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With support from the Radiochemical Centre in Amersham (later Amersham plc) and the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, he carried out long-term experiments on the effects of low doses of Strontium-90 on monkeys. [7] [8] [9] [10] Some of these results were presented at the UNESCO International Conference on Radioisotopes in Scientific Research in 1957. The unit also used radioisotopes to track dimethoate in the commercially important cacao trees. [11]

Atomic bomb tests

In advance of the Gerboise Bleue French atomic bomb test in Algeria, Ward initiated radioactive fallout measurements across Ghana, and worked with the Ministry of Defence to build and staff dedicated laboratories in both Legon and Northern Ghana. His results on the level of radioactive fallout were contested by the French Government, who sent military officers to inspect the laboratories and verify the results. The results were presented to President Kwame Nkrumah's government, contributing to the decision to cut off diplomatic relations with France. [12]

Proposed nuclear reactor at Kwabenya

President Nkrumah asked Robert Patrick Baffour, then Vice-Chancellor of the Kumasi College of Science and Technology (later the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology), to head up an initiative to establish a nuclear power program for Ghana. This later led to a proposal that Ghana import an IRT 2000 nuclear research reactor [13] from the Soviet Union by 1964 and install it at Kwabenya. Ward, as head of the Radioisotopes and Health Physics Unit at Legon, estimated that Ghana needed approximately sixty "top-level Ghanaian scientists" and that it was not feasible to meet those needs. [14] Nkrumah decided as a result that Ward was not fully supportive of his plans for nuclear research collaboration with the Soviet Union, so had him replaced by Alan Nunn May. [15] [16] This led to Ward leaving Ghana at the end of 1965.

UNZA

Ward was appointed as Professor of Physics at the University of Zambia (UNZA) in 1965, where he helped to found the department. He continued research on medical physics and remained there until 1975.

University of Swaziland

Ward joined the University of Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland (UBLS, later the University of Botswana and Swaziland and now the University of eSwatini) at the start of 1976. Reflecting the initial specialization of the university in agriculture, his research direction turned to the applications of physics to commercial farming. During his time in Swaziland he was awarded an OBE for services to science education in Africa.

Retirement

Ward retired to the United Kingdom in 1986. During his retirement he worked as a Physics Associate Lecturer with the Open University and taught with the University of the Third Age (U3A). As part of a wider interest in climate change, he adapted, built, and used electric vehicles, and became chair of the Battery Vehicle Society.

Physics texts adapted for Africa

During their time in Ghana, Ward's wife E. H. Ward wrote a physics text covering the high school curriculum and adapted for an African audience. [17] [18] This used images and examples from Ghana to illustrate physical concepts, and appeared in a "Science for Tropical Secondary Schools" series. Alan Ward later collaborated with his wife to update the books to use S.I. units and update some of the contents. [19] [20] [21] [22] This updated version later appeared as a single volume. [23]

Personal life and death

Ward met Elizabeth Honor Shedden (12 April 1926 - 18 September 2016), also a physicist, at the University of Birmingham, and they married in 1950. They were both active in the Birmingham University Evangelical Christian Union, and remained active church members throughout their lives. Alan Ward died on the 2nd December 2021 at Groveland Care Home in Yeovil, Somerset. They had four children Kristina, Sheena, James, and Thomas, whose memoir [24] has a more detailed account of Ward's life and work.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Niels Bohr Institute</span> Scientific research institute

The Niels Bohr Institute is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics, and biophysics.

Martin David Kamen was an American chemist who, together with Sam Ruben, co-discovered the synthesis of the isotope carbon-14 on February 27, 1940, at the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley. He also confirmed that all of the oxygen released in photosynthesis comes from water, not carbon dioxide, in 1941.

Bismuth (83Bi) has 41 known isotopes, ranging from 184Bi to 224Bi. Bismuth has no stable isotopes, but does have one very long-lived isotope; thus, the standard atomic weight can be given as 208.98040(1). Although bismuth-209 is now known to be radioactive, it has classically been considered to be a stable isotope because it has a half-life of approximately 2.01×1019 years, which is more than a billion times the age of the universe. Besides 209Bi, the most stable bismuth radioisotopes are 210mBi with a half-life of 3.04 million years, 208Bi with a half-life of 368,000 years and 207Bi, with a half-life of 32.9 years, none of which occurs in nature. All other isotopes have half-lives under 1 year, most under a day. Of naturally occurring radioisotopes, the most stable is radiogenic 210Bi with a half-life of 5.012 days. 210mBi is unusual for being a nuclear isomer with a half-life multiple orders of magnitude longer than that of the ground state.

Naturally occurring chromium (24Cr) is composed of four stable isotopes; 50Cr, 52Cr, 53Cr, and 54Cr with 52Cr being the most abundant (83.789% natural abundance). 50Cr is suspected of decaying by β+β+ to 50Ti with a half-life of (more than) 1.8×1017 years. Twenty-two radioisotopes, all of which are entirely synthetic, have been characterized, the most stable being 51Cr with a half-life of 27.7 days. All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are less than 24 hours and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than 1 minute. This element also has two meta states, 45mCr, the more stable one, and 59mCr, the least stable isotope or isomer.

Potassium has 26 known isotopes from 31
K to 57
K, with the exception of still-unknown 32
K, as well as an unconfirmed report of 59
K. Three of those isotopes occur naturally: the two stable forms 39
K (93.3%) and 41
K (6.7%), and a very long-lived radioisotope 40
K (0.012%)

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert V. Gentry</span> American young Earth creationist & nuclear physicist

Robert Vance Gentry was an American young Earth creationist and nuclear physicist, known for his claims that radiohalos provide evidence for a young age of the Earth.

Richard Alan Andersen is an American neuroscientist. He is the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. His research focuses on visual physiology with an emphasis on translational research to humans in the field of neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, and cortical repair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghana Atomic Energy Commission</span> Ghanaian scientific organization

The Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) is the state organization in Ghana involved with surveillance of the use of nuclear energy in Ghana. It is similar in aim to the Ghana Nuclear Society (GNS), with the difference being that the GNS is a nonprofit organisation, whereas the GAEC is part of the parliament of Ghana. Its primary objectives were set out by the parliament act 588, which involve investigating the use of nuclear energy for Ghana and supporting research and development both in Ghana and abroad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Julius</span> American physiologist and Nobel laureate 2021

David Jay Julius is an American physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate known for his work on molecular mechanisms of pain sensation and heat, including the characterization of the TRPV1 and TRPM8 receptors that detect capsaicin, menthol, and temperature. He is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

Spin squeezing is a quantum process that decreases the variance of one of the angular momentum components in an ensemble of particles with a spin. The quantum states obtained are called spin squeezed states. Such states have been proposed for quantum metrology, to allow a better precision for estimating a rotation angle than classical interferometers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick Cordier (mineralogist)</span> French mineralogist

Patrick Cordier is a mineralogist who uses experimental and numerical approaches to study the plasticity of geological materials. He has authored or co-authored over 200 articles in international scientific journals. He received the Dana Medal from the Mineralogical Society of America in 2016, and is currently a chief editor of the European Journal of Mineralogy. and a member ofInstitut Universitaire de France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tamir Gonen</span> American biochemist and biophysicist

Tamir Gonen is an American structural biochemist and membrane biophysicist best known for his contributions to structural biology of membrane proteins, membrane biochemistry and electron cryo-microscopy (cryoEM) particularly in electron crystallography of 2D crystals and for the development of 3D electron crystallography from microscopic crystals known as MicroED. Gonen is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, the founding director of the MicroED Imaging Center at UCLA and a Member of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiyoshi Nagai</span> Japanese structural biologist (1949–2019)

Kiyoshi Nagai was a Japanese structural biologist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge, UK. He was known for his work on the mechanism of RNA splicing and structures of the spliceosome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yi Zhang (biochemist)</span> Chinese-American biochemist

Yi Zhang is a Chinese-American biochemist who specializes in the fields of epigenetics, chromatin, and developmental reprogramming. He is a Fred Rosen Professor of Pediatrics and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, a senior investigator of Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is also an associate member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, as well as the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is best known for his discovery of several classes of epigenetic enzymes and the identification of epigenetic barriers of SCNT cloning.

Jeffrey R. Long is a professor of chemistry at University of California, Berkeley known for his work in metal−organic frameworks and molecular magnetism. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 and is the 2019 F. Albert Cotton Award recipient. His research interests include: synthesis of inorganic clusters and porous materials, investigating the electronic and magnetic properties of inorganic materials; metal-organic frameworks, and gas storage/capture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliography of Max Born</span>

Max Born was a widely influential German physicist and mathematician who was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pivotal role in the development of quantum mechanics. Born won the prize primarily for his contributions to the statistical interpretation of the wave function, though he is known for his work in several areas of quantum mechanics as well as solid-state physics, optics, and special relativity. Born's entry in the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society included thirty books and 330 papers.

Quantum engineering is the development of technology that capitalizes on the laws of quantum mechanics. Quantum engineering uses quantum mechanics as a toolbox for the development of quantum technologies, such as quantum sensors or quantum computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Carpick</span>

Robert William Carpick is a Canadian mechanical engineer. He is currently director of diversity, equity, and inclusion and John Henry Towne Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is best known for his work in tribology, particularly nanotribology.

Edward H. Sargent is a Canadian scientist, who serves as University Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Vice-President of Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Toronto. He also is the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. He will join the Departments of Chemistry and of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northwestern University, and will be affiliated with the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern.

John Michael Jumper is an American senior research scientist at DeepMind Technologies. Jumper and his colleagues created AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence (AI) model to predict protein structures from their amino acid sequence with high accuracy. Jumper has stated that the AlphaFold team plans to release 100 million protein structures. The scientific journal Nature included Jumper as one of the ten "people who mattered" in science in their annual listing of Nature's 10 in 2021.

References

  1. ↑ Ward, A. H. "Directional-correlation in radioactivity". University of Birmingham Library. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
  2. ↑ Ward, A. H.; Walker, D. (1949). "Directional Correlation between Successive Internal-Conversion Electrons from Tantalum-181*". Nature. 163 (4135): 168. doi: 10.1038/163168a0 . ISSN   1476-4687. S2CID   4063677.
  3. ↑ Bunyan, D E; Lundby, A; Ward, A H; Walker, D (1948-10-01). "The Delayed Coincidence Method in the Study of Radioactivity, with Application to Isomerism in181Ta". Proceedings of the Physical Society. 61 (4): 300–306. doi:10.1088/0959-5309/61/4/302. ISSN   0959-5309.
  4. ↑ Ward, A. H.; Jensen, P. G. (1951). "Measurement of Radioactivity in Human Breath". Nature. 167 (4250): 600. doi: 10.1038/167600a0 . ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   14826863.
  5. ↑ Rundo, J; Ward, A H; Jensen, P G (1958-10-01). "Measurement of Thoron in the Breath". Physics in Medicine and Biology. 3 (2): 101–110. doi:10.1088/0031-9155/3/2/301. ISSN   0031-9155. PMID   13601139. S2CID   250745133.
  6. ↑ "Inter-University Council for Higher Education in the Colonies". Nature. 157 (3985): 347. 1946-03-01. doi: 10.1038/157347a0 . ISSN   1476-4687. S2CID   4104076.
  7. ↑ Edington, G. M.; Judd, J. M.; Ward, A. H. (1955). "Delayed Toxicity of Radiostrontium in Monkeys". Nature. 175 (4444): 33. doi: 10.1038/175033a0 . ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   13223785. S2CID   4274808.
  8. ↑ Edington, G. M.; Ward, A. H.; Judd, J. M.; Mole, R. H. (1956). "The acute lethal effects in monkeys of radiostrontium". The Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology. 71 (2): 277–293. doi:10.1002/path.1700710203. ISSN   1555-2039. PMID   13398874.
  9. ↑ Edington, G. M.; Judd, J. M.; Ward, A. H. (1953). "Toxicity of Radiostrontium in Monkeys". Nature. 172 (4368): 122–123. doi:10.1038/172122b0. ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   13072599. S2CID   4296621.
  10. ↑ Mole, R. H.; Ward, A. H. (1970). "Yttrium-90 in Gonads of Monkeys containing Strontium-90". Nature. 226 (5241): 175. doi: 10.1038/226175a0 . ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   4985388. S2CID   4210979.
  11. ↑ Dunn, E.; Ward, A. H. (1965). "The movement of 32 phosphorus - labelled dimethoate in the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao L." Annals of Applied Biology. 56 (3): 419–428. doi:10.1111/j.1744-7348.1965.tb01260.x. ISSN   1744-7348.
  12. ↑ Ward, A. H.; Marr, J. D. (1960). "Radioactive Fall-Out in Ghana". Nature. 187 (4734): 299–300. doi:10.1038/187299a0. ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   13842861. S2CID   4210258.
  13. ↑ Directory Of Nuclear Reactors , Vol. Iii: Research, Test And Experimental Reactors. (Soviet Research Reactor Irt). Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency. 1960. pp. 29–45.
  14. ↑ Letter from A.H. Ward, Acting Director, Radioisotope and Health Physics Unit, University of Ghana at Legon to Dr Wilson, January 29, 1963. Held in Public Records And Archives Administration Department for Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, 1963-64.
  15. ↑ Osseo-Asare, Abena Dove (2019). Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108557955. ISBN   978-1-108-47124-4. S2CID   204186038.
  16. ↑ Allman, Jean (2008-06-13). "Nuclear Imperialism and the Pan-African Struggle for Peace and Freedom: Ghana, 1959–1962". Souls. 10 (2): 83–102. doi:10.1080/10999940802115419. ISSN   1099-9949. S2CID   144174169.
  17. ↑ Ward, E. H. (1965). Senior Physics 1. London: Nelson.
  18. ↑ Ward, E. H. (1965). Senior Physics 2. London: Nelson.
  19. ↑ Ward, E. H.; Ward, A. H. (1977). Mechanics. London: Nelson.
  20. ↑ Ward, E. H.; Ward, A. H. (1977). Energy, Heat and the Structure of Matter. London: Nelson.
  21. ↑ Ward, E. H.; Ward, A. H. (1977). Light and Sound. London: Nelson.
  22. ↑ Ward, E. H.; Ward, A. H. (1977). Magnetism, Electricity and Atomic Physics. London: Nelson.
  23. ↑ Ward, Elizabeth Honor (1980). Essential senior physics in 51 units. A. H. Ward ([New ed.] ed.). Sunbury-on-Thames: Nelson. ISBN   0-17-511496-X. OCLC   16478165.
  24. ↑ Ward, Thomas (2023). People, places, and mathematics. Springer Biographies. Cham: Springer Nature. ISBN   978-3-031-39073-9.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.