William Lawrence Bragg
1890–1971, North Adelaide, South Australia, Australia, Ipswich, Suffolk, England
British physicist, the youngest-ever Nobel laureate in physics at age 25, known for Bragg's law and X-ray crystallography.
Born in Adelaide, William Lawrence Bragg was the son of physicist William Henry Bragg. As a Cambridge student he developed an account of X-ray reflection from atomic planes in crystals; Bragg's law relates diffraction angle to wavelength and lattice spacing.
In 1915 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with his father for their analysis of crystal structures by X-rays. He held professorships at Manchester and Cambridge and later directed the Cavendish Laboratory; at the Royal Institution he helped extend X-ray crystallography as a method for examining materials and molecular structures.
Nobel-winning work
W. L. Bragg shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his father 'for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays'. Aged 22, he formulated Bragg's law nλ = 2d sinθ (1912), treating diffraction as reflection by atomic planes, and determined the structures of NaCl, KCl and diamond (1913). He remains the youngest-ever physics laureate; X-ray crystallography later enabled the DNA structure.
Workplaces: University of Cambridge, University of Manchester, Royal Institution, London
United Kingdom