page_title: John Cockcroft
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: John Cockcroft / Later life
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Engelse natuurkundige Sir John Cockrott krijgt "Atomen voor de vrede" prijs
context_page_description: Sir John Douglas Cockcroft, OM, KCB, CBE, FRS was a British physicist who shared with Ernest Walton the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951 for splitting the atomic nucleus, and was instrumental in the development of nuclear power.
  After service on the Western Front with the Royal Field Artillery during the Great War, Cockcroft studied electrical engineering at Manchester Municipal College of Technology whilst he was an apprentice at Metropolitan Vickers Trafford Park and was also a member of their research staff. He then won a scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he sat the tripos exam in June 1924, becoming a wrangler. Ernest Rutherford accepted Cockcroft as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory, and Cockcroft completed his doctorate under Rutherford's supervision in 1928. With Ernest Walton and Mark Oliphant he built what became known as a Cockcroft–Walton accelerator. Cockcroft and Walton used this to perform the first artificial disintegration of an atomic nucleus, a feat popularly known as splitting the atom.
  During the Second World War Cockcroft became Assistant Director of Scientific Research in the Ministry of Supply, working on radar.
context_section_description: On 24 January 1959, Churchill College, Cambridge, was formally recognised by the University. Two days later, the Trustees announced that Cockcroft would be its first Master. Although it would also teach the humanities and social sciences, 70 per cent of the student body would study science and technology related subjects. Cockcroft nominated the first fellows, and he oversaw the initial construction. Controversy arose over the chapel. A 1961 plan to build it at the entrance to the college, as was traditional at Cambridge, led to the immediate resignation of Francis Crick, a staunch atheist, as a fellow. The first undergraduates arrived in 1961, and the college, still incomplete, was formally opened by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, on 5 June 1964.
  Cockcroft was president of the Institute of Physics from 1954 to 1956, and of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.  He served as chancellor of the Australian National University in Canberra from 1961 to 1965, a largely symbolic post that involved a visit once a year for degree conferring ceremonies.  He delivered the Rutherford Memorial Lecture in 1944. He was the British delegate on the Council of CERN as well as Chairman of the Nuclear Physics Sub-Committee of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.
  In addition to winning, along with Walton, the Hughes Medal and 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics, Cockcroft received numerous awards and accolades over the years. He became a knight bachelor in December 1948. This was normal: scientists were seldom inducted into the chivalric orders, but he was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in May 1953. Perhaps because this was rare, scientists normally regarded becoming a member of the Order of Merit as a greater honour; Cockcroft became an Order of Merit member in December 1956. He also received the Royal Medal in 1954, the Faraday Medal  in 1955, the American Medal of Freedom  in 1947 and Atoms for Peace Award in 1961, He was made a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur by France in 1952, and was awarded the Knight Commander of the Military Order of Christ by Portugal in 1955, and the Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso X by Spain in 1958.
  Cockcroft died from a heart attack at his home at Churchill College, Cambridge, on 18 September 1967. He is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, in the same grave as his son Timothy. A memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey on 17 October 1967.
  Several buildings in the United Kingdom are named after him: the Cockcroft building at the New Museums Site of the University of Cambridge, comprising a lecture theatre and several hardware laboratories; the Cockcroft Institute at Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire; the Cockcroft building of the University of Brighton; and the Cockcroft building of the University of Salford. The oldest building at the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University, the Cockcroft building, is named after him.
  Cockcroft's papers are held at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, and are accessible to the public.  They include his lab books, correspondence, photographs (with dozens depicting the construction of Chalk River, CKFT 26/4), theses and political papers.
caption: Cockcroft receiving the Atoms for Peace Award in January 1961
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