| Basil Schonland |
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During World War One , Schonland volunteered for service and served with the Signal Service of the Royal Engineers in France. He was wounded at Arras and was awarded the OBE. After the war he became a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University where he studied the scattering of beta particles. In 1922 , Schonland returned to South Africa and took up a post at University Of Cape Town as a lecturer and later Professor of Physics. In 1923 Schonland married Isabel Craib and had one son and two daughters. He left Cape Town in 1937 to become the director of the Bernard Price Institute of Geophysics at Witwatersrand University . Schonland joined the South African Special Signals Services at the outbreak of the Second World War and worked on Radar research. In 1941 he was sent to England to advise on radar. He became the superintendent of the Army Operational Research Group of the Air Defence Research and Development Establishment at Richmond , Surrey and became one of the key playesr in radar research. By 1944 he was the scientific adviser to General Richard Montgomery with 21st Army Group in England , France and Belgium . By the war end he held the rank of colonel. In 1945 Schonland returned to South Africa and with the help of General Jan Smuts , established the Council For Scientific And Industrial Research . He also resumed his post as director of the Bernard Price Institute at Witwatersrand University and in 1951 became the first Chancellor of Rhodes University . In 1954 , Schonland became the deputy director and later director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire . When the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority was created in 1960 , he became the director of its research group. He was Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1960 for his services to British science. Schonland died after a long illness on 24 November 1972 . In 1999 , he was voted South Africa's "Scientist of the Century" and in 2002 he was awarded posthumously the Order Of Mapungubwe - Gold class for his services to science in South Africa. |
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