Allen was born in
Winnipeg; he was also known as Jack Allen. His father, Frank Allen, was a professor in physics at the
University of Manitoba. John Allen studied physics initially at the
University of Manitoba, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1928. Afterwards, he went to the University of Toronto to pursue postgraduate studies. He obtained his master's degree in 1930 and undertook his PhD working with
John McLennan about
superconductivity. He there developed and built his first cryostat which was taken by John McLennan for a demonstration of superconductivity in a public lecture to the
Royal Institution in
London. He obtained his PhD degree in 1933. With a two-year US National Research Council Fellowship which he obtained in 1933, Despite the independent discovery at about the same time, the Nobel prize for
Superfluidity was awarded only to Kapitsa in 1978. He stayed in Cambridge until 1947, when he took up an appointment as a professor in natural philosophy at the
University of St Andrews,
Scotland in 1947. In 1949, he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society. During his tenure at the University of St Andrews, he was twice dean of the Faculty of Science, and oversaw the creation of a separate Faculty of Applied Science at
Dundee as well as the development of the Science complex on the
North Haugh in St Andrews, which opened in 1966. He was chair of the Very Low Temperature Commission of the
International Union of Pure and Applied Physics from 1966 to 1969 and member of the British National Committee for Physics of the
Royal Society. of a stroke. The building of the
School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of St Andrews is named after John Allen, as is the library in the J.F. Allen building. Allen died of a stroke on 22 April 2001. ==Family==