Michael Woolfson Michael Woolfson Michael Mark Woolfson (born 9 January 1927) is a British physicist and planetary scientist. His research interests lie in the fields of x-ray crystallography, biophysics and the formation of stars and planets. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford and received his PhD from UMIST. He was a research assistant at UMIST 1950-52 and at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, 1952-54. He was an ICI Fellow, University of Cambridge, 1954-55. At UMIST he was a lecturer, 1955–61, and a Reader, 1961-65. He was Professor of Theoretical Physics, 1965-94 University of York and head of the Department of Physics,
Cavendish Professor of Physics something of a contradiction, dressing as a Victorian gentleman but working on the cutting edge of physics. Rutherford died suddenly in 1937, marking the end of an era for the Cavendish. Sir Lawrence Bragg became Cavendish Professor just before the outbreak of the Second World War, which resulted in many staff joining various defence research establishments, notably to develop radar. Work on neutron physics performed at this time was translated into the Manhattan Project to build an atom bomb. In 1971 it was renamed from the "Cavendish Professorship of Experimental Physics" to the "Cavendish Professorship of Physics". Until Brian Pippard