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William George Penney, Baron Penney (24 June 1909 – 3 March 1991), was an English mathematician and professor of mathematical physics at the Imperial College London and later the rector of Imperial College. He is acknowledged as having had a leading role in the development of Britain's nuclear programme, a clandestine programme started in 1942 during World War II which produced the first British atomic bomb in 1952. As the head of the British delegation working in the Manhattan Project, Penney initially carried out calculations to predict the damage effects generated by the blast wave of an atomic bomb. Upon returning home, Penney directed Britain's own nuclear weapons directorate, codename ''Tube Alloys'', and directed scientific research at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment which resulted in the first detonation of a British nuclear bomb, (see codename ''Operation Hurricane'') in 1952. After the test, Penney became chief adviser to the newly created British government's United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). He was later chairman of the authority, which he used in international negotiations to control nuclear testing with the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Penney's notable scientific contributions included the mathematics for complex wave dynamics, both in shock and gravitational waves, proposing optimization problems and solutions regarding the hydrodynamics wave which played a major role in the applications materials and the metallurgy. During his later years, Penney lectured in mathematics and physics, and was tenured as the Rector of the Imperial College London until his death. ==Early life and education== William George "Bill" Penney was born in Gibraltar, British Overseas Territory, on 24 June 1909. His father was a sergeant-major in the British Army's Ordnance Corps who was then serving overseas. Penney was raised in Sheerness, Kent, and attended the local technical school in Colchester where he completed his technical studies. From 1924 to 1926, he was educated at Sheerness Technical High School for Boys where he displayed a talent for science. In 1927, his passion for science landed him in a local science laboratory where he worked there as an assistant which helped him to gain a scholarship to study science at the prestigious Imperial College of Science. He applied and was admitted to the Imperial College Faculty of Natural Sciences where he began taking courses on mathematics, particularly courses on Linear Algebra, Calculus, Partial differential equations and differential geometry. His talent was recognised by the Governor's Prize for Mathematics from the faculty of science. In 1929 Penney graduated, obtaining the B.Sc. in Mathematics with First Class Honours at age 20. Penney was admitted to the post-graduate department that year, and earned his M.Sc. in mathematics in 1931. Then he was offered a research position at the London University, where he studied for a doctorate. In 1932, Penney was awarded the Ph.D. in Mathematics after submitting his doctoral thesis containing work on optimization and cross section of the physical properties of sold-state crystals. Penney accepted a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship and first traveled to United States where he became foreign research associate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, returning to England soon after. In England, Penney was granted the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship to attend the Trinity College at Cambridge University. He changed his mathematical career to physics, and conducted a thorough research and theoretical investigation into the structure of metals and the magnetic properties of crystals. In 1935, Penney submitted his final thesis and obtained a D.Sc. in Mathematical Physics from the University of Cambridge; his thesis contained the fundamental work in the applications of quantum mechanics to the physics of crystals. In 1936, he was elected to the Stokes studentship at Pembroke College, Cambridge, but in the same year he returned to London and was appointed Reader in Mathematics at Imperial College London, a post he held from 1936 to 1945. As a recognized prodigy at Imperial College he was set for a distinguished academic career until World War II intervened. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William Penney, Baron Penney」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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