Powell, Cecil Frank 1903-69
English physicist and Nobel Prize winner

Born in Tonbridge, Kent, he was educated at Cambridge, where he received his PhD in 1927. Throughout his career he worked at the University of Bristol, as Wills Professor of Physics (1948-63) and subsequently as director of the Wills Physics Laboratory. A former pupil of Ernest Rutherford and Charles Wilson, Powell used specially developed photographic emulsions to study nuclear interactions and improved the techniques used to analyse nuclear particle tracks. In 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for his development of nuclear emulsions and his part in the discovery of the charged pion, a particle which had been predicted by Hideki Yukawa in 1935. In addition to his scientific work he was one of the leaders of the movement to increase the social responsibility of scientists.