Edward Andrade - Biography

Edward Neville da Costa Andrade FRS (27 December 1887 – 6 June 1971) was an English physicist, writer, and poet.

Background

Andrade was a Sephardi Jew and is a descendant Moses da Costa Andrade (not Moses da Costa as is sometimes stated). Moses da Costa Andrade is Edward Neville's 2nd great grandfather, and was a feather merchant in London's East End.

Edward Neville studied for a doctorate at the University of Heidelberg and then had a brief but productive spell of research with Ernest Rutherford at Manchester in 1914. They carried out experiments to determine the wavelengths of gamma-rays of radium. He joined the Royal Artillery during the First World War, and then became Professor of Physics at the Ordnance College in Woolwich in 1920.

Career

He was Quain Professor of Physics at University College, London from 1928 to 1950, and then Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution for three years, until opposition to his attempts to reform the RI led to a vote of no confidence in him by members of the RI, following which he resigned.

Andrade was also was a broadcaster, on BBC radio's Brains Trust.

• The Structure of the Atom (1927)
• Engines (1928)
• The Mechanism of Nature (1930)
• Simple Science with Julian Huxley
• More Simple Science (1935) with Julian Huxley
• An Approach to Modern Physics (1956)
• Sir Isaac Newton (1954)
• A Brief HIstory of the Royal Society (1960)
• Physics for the Modern World (1962)
• Rutherford and the Nature of the Atom (1964)

He told The Literary Digest his name was pronounced "as written, i.e., like air raid, with and substituted for air."

His papers are held by the University of Leicester

External links

• E N da C Andrade: Some Personal Reminiscences (pdf)
• Oral History interview transcript with Edward Andrade 18 December 1962, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives