Ralph Howard Fowler was born on 17 January 1889 in
Roydon, England, the son of Howard Fowler from
Burnham-on-Sea, and Frances Eva Dewhurst, the daughter of a cotton merchant from
Manchester. After attending
Winchester College, Fowler won a scholarship to
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied mathematics and became a
Wrangler in Part II of the
Mathematical Tripos. In
World War I, Fowler obtained a commission in the
Royal Marine Artillery and was seriously wounded in his shoulder in the
Gallipoli campaign. The wound enabled his friend
Archibald Hill to use his talents properly. As Hill's second in command he worked on anti-aircraft ballistics in the
Anti-Aircraft Experimental Section of
HMS Excellent on
Whale Island. He made a major contribution on the
aerodynamics of spinning shells. He was awarded the
OBE in 1918. In 1919, Fowler returned to Trinity College, where he became College Lecturer in Mathematics the following year. Fowler worked on
thermodynamics and
statistical mechanics, bringing a new approach to physical chemistry. With
Arthur Milne, a comrade during the war, he wrote a seminal work on
stellar spectra, temperatures, and pressures. In 1925, he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society. The following year, he was appointed
John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Mathematical Physics in the
Cavendish Laboratory. In 1933, he worked with
John Bernal to develop a model for the structure of water and ice known as the
ice rules. In 1939, when
World War II began, he resumed his work with the Ordnance Board, despite poor health, and was chosen for scientific liaison with Canada and the United States. He knew America well, having visiting professorships at
Princeton University and the
University of Wisconsin–Madison. For this liaison work, he was knighted in 1942 (see
MAUD Committee). He returned to Britain later in the war and worked for the Ordnance Board and the Admiralty up until a few weeks before his death in 1944. Fifteen Fellows of the Royal Society and three Nobel Laureates (Chandrasekhar, Dirac, and Mott) were supervised by Fowler between 1922 and 1939. In addition to Milne, he worked with
Sir Arthur Eddington,
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar,
Paul Dirac,
Homi J. Bhabha, and
Sir William McCrea. It was Fowler who introduced Dirac to quantum theory in 1923. Fowler also put Dirac and
Werner Heisenberg in touch with each other through
Niels Bohr. At Cambridge, he supervised the doctoral studies of 64 students, including
John Lennard-Jones,
Paul Dirac, and
Garrett Birkhoff. Fowler died on 28 July 1944 in
Trumpington at the age of 55. The
Fowler Islands in
Crystal Sound on the Antarctic Peninsula were named by the
UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee in his honour. == Personal life ==