William B. Bonnor, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

William B. Bonnor

Mathematician and gravitation physicist

Date of Birth: 13-Sep-1920

Place of Birth: London

Date of Death: 17-Aug-2015

Profession: physicist, mathematician

Nationality: United Kingdom

Zodiac Sign: Virgo


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About William B. Bonnor

  • William Bowen Bonnor (9 September 1920 – 17 August 2015) was a mathematician and gravitation physicist best known for his research into astrophysics, cosmology and general relativity.
  • For most of his academic career he was a professor of mathematics at the University of London. William Bonnor was born in London on 13 September 1920.
  • He was educated at County High School, Ilford, at South East Essex Technical College and at Birkbeck College.
  • His degrees of B.Sc., Ph.D.
  • and D.Sc.
  • were all obtained by part-time study. On leaving school in 1937 Bonnor served in clerical and executive branches of the Civil Service until 1944, when he became a chemist in the Admiralty, doing development work in paint technology.
  • In 1946 he joined Shell Refining and Marketing Company to work on the rheology of lubricating greases. His career as a mathematician commenced in 1949 after obtaining a degree in mathematics at Birkbeck College.
  • He joined the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Liverpool, where he met his future wife, Jean Stott, a staff tutor in social science.
  • In 1957 he was appointed Reader and head of the mathematics department at Queen Elizabeth College (QEC), University of London.
  • He was promoted to Professor in 1962, and stayed with the College until retirement in 1985. This period was the golden age of general relativity, and Bonnor played a part in it, particularly in the London Relativity Seminar.
  • This had begun at Imperial College in the 1950s, moved to King's College and then to QEC from 1977 to 1983.
  • He was also active internationally, making contact with scientific workers in the socialist countries in eastern Europe, particularly those in Jena in East Germany.
  • During this period he published a paper on the Bonnor Beam which models the gravitational field of a beam of light. Bonnor held visiting appointments at the Universities of Illinois (1960–61), Otago (1984) and Cape Town (1984–86).
  • In 1999 he was awarded the honorary degree of D.Sc.
  • by the University of Portsmouth. Bonnor's research was published in about 150 papers in various scientific journals.
  • The most cited paper described the effect of gravitation on Boyle's law; this has been extensively used in the theory of star formation.
  • Another well-cited paper applies Newtonian dynamics to the formation of galaxies in cosmology.
  • However, most of Bonnor's research was on the theory of general relativity.
  • In this area he worked on the theory of gravitational waves, on the field of two charged bodies, and on the interaction of spinning particles.
  • In 1964 he published "The Mystery of the Expanding Universe", a popular book on cosmology.
  • Bonnor remained scientifically active long after his retirement, averaging around two papers a year in his last 30 years, and had a paper under review at the time of his death.
  • In 1999, at the age of 78, he showed that in some cosmological models the expansion of space-time affects the size of hydrogen atoms, while in others it remains strictly constant.He married Jean Stott, and had two children: Helen and Richard.
  • He had four grandchildren: Amy, Tim, Jessica and George. William Bonnor died at his home of a heart attack on 17 August 2015.

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