Abstract
MR. P. I. DEE, whose appointment to the chair of natural philosophy at the University of Glasgow was announced in NATTJBE of April 17, has for the past twenty years been one of the most outstanding of the younger physicists at Cambridge ; first as student, then as teacher and research worker. From Marling School, Stroud, Mr. Dee entered Sidney Sussex College in 1922 as entrance exhibitioner. In 1925 he obtained a first class in Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos and was elected scholar of his College. In the following year he gained a first in physics in Part II of the Tripos, was elected research scholar at Sidney and started work under Prof. C. T. R. Wilson at the Solar Physics Observatory. For several years after this, Mr. Dee's work continued to be mainly on the Wilson cloud chamber, and it gained him in 1928 a Taylor research fellowship (at Sidney) and in 1930 the Stokes studentship, which required his emigration to Pembroke. On the expiry of his tenure of this studentship in 1934, his own College reclaimed him with the award of a full fellowship (without teaching duties). Meanwhile, the University of Cambridge had appointed him demonstrator and then lecturer in the Cavendish Laboratory. Here, for a period, he was responsible for the teaching in the advanced practical class, and in 1937 he took over the organization of research in the High Voltage Laboratory, in which, at the outbreak of the War, he had just succeeded in bringing the second (2-million volt) Philips set into operation. When this set comes to be re-assembled and work restarted, when the War ends, his colleagues at Cambridge will miss his leadership more than brief words can convey. Mr. Dee was elected to the Royal Society's fellowship in 1941.
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Mr. P. I. Dee, F.R.S. Nature 151, 471 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151471b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151471b0