Arquivo F1206 - Wilfrid Bennett Lewis fonds

Wilfrid Bennett Lewis was born in 1908 at Castle Carrock in Cumberland, England. He was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he earned a B.A. (Hons.) in 1930. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1934 for work on the analysis of alpha-particle groups, and in the same year was elected a Research Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. From 1939 to 1946 he worked on improvements in radar for the Air Ministry Establishment (later to become the Telecommunications Research Establishment). In 1946 he resigned to take up the Directorship of the Division of Atomic Energy of the National Research Council of Canada. He was appointed Vice-President of Research and Development of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited in 1952 and Senior Vice-President in 1963. Upon his retirement in 1973 he took up a chair as Distinguished Professor of Science at Queen's University. He died in 1987.
Among the many honours accorded to Lewis were the Fellowship of the Royal Society, 1945 (awarded the Society's Royal Medal in 1972), C.B.E. 1946, the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada 1952 and the 1967 Atoms for Peace Award.