William Thomas Astbury 1898–1961

Abstract

W. T. Astbury was one of Sir William Bragg’s earliest and most devoted disciples. Born of humble parentage—a fact of which he was always proud—in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, in the pottery district of England on 25 February 1898 he received his secondary training in Longton High School from 1908 to 1916. Scholarships enabled him to go to Cambridge in order to study Chemistry. He was there 1916/17 and 1919/21, war service intervening. In both parts of the Natural Science Tripos he obtained first class, 1920 in Chemistry, Physics and Mineralogy, and 1921 in Physics. He immediately became Demonstrator in Physics at University College, London, under Professor W.H. Bragg who took him along as Assistant to the Royal Institution and the Davy-Faraday Laboratory when he moved there in 1923. Astbury remained at the R.I. for five years and was the soul and activator of the keen group of young workers that Sir William had brought together there (conf. J. D. Bernal and K. Lonsdale in Part VII). The reason for this lay in his unlimited enthusiasm for the new subject of crystal structure analysis, his temperamental approach, and the unexpected and sometimes provocative, but often most helpful turns in his conversation.