Robert William Boyle
| Robert William Boyle | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 2, 1883 Carbonear, Newfoundland |
| Died |
April 18, 1955 (aged 71) London, England |
| Residence | Canada, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | Newfoundlander, Canadian, British |
| Fields | Physics, Radioactivity, Ultrasonics |
| Institutions |
University of Manchester University of Alberta Board of Invention and Research National Research Council of Canada |
| Alma mater | McGill University |
| Doctoral advisor | Ernest Rutherford |
| Known for | ASDIC (Sonar) |
| Notable awards |
Royal Society of Canada Flavelle Medal (1940) |
Robert William Boyle (October 2, 1883 – April 18, 1955) was a physicist and one of the most important early pioneers in the development of sonar.
Boyle was born in 1883 at Carbonear in the Dominion of Newfoundland. Boyle left Newfoundland for Montreal, Quebec in the Dominion of Canada where he trained at McGill University under Nobel Prize winner Sir Ernest Rutherford, in the then fledgling field of radioactivity. He earned McGill's first Doctor of Philosophy in physics in 1909. He then moved to England to continue his work by following Rutherford to the University of Manchester.
In 1912 he returned to Canada at the request of Henry Marshall Tory to become head of the physics department at the University of Alberta, and shifted his research to ultrasonics.
During the First World War Boyle volunteered his expertise to the British Admiralty and, with the help of his old teacher Ernest Rutherford, he joined the Board of Inventions and Research and worked with British physicist Albert Beaumont Wood, a fellow student of Rutherford's.
Before 1917 the scientific teams from the Allied countries worked separately, however, after joining forces with French researchers, Boyle produced a working prototype of what the British called "ASDIC" (the first sonar).
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