British physicist, b. 1862, d. 1942. Sir William Henry Bragg studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and physics at the Cavendish Laboratory. He worked as a professor at the University of Adelaide, Leeds University, University College London, and the Royal Institution.
Bragg was interested in a great number of topics in physics. However, his best known work was his discovery, with his son, of the method of determining the structure of crystals using x-rays. X-ray crystallography was to become an important tool for scientists in the future, such as James Watson and Francis Crick, who used x-ray crystallographic pictures to help confirm their theory of the structure of DNA.
During WWI, Bragg was in charge of research that would help locate submarines. He was knighted in 1920.
He was awarded the 1915 Nobel Prize in physics with his son, William Lawrence Bragg,
"for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by
means of X-rays"
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Reseached on www.nobel.se