Cavendish Professor of Physics the university regulations which allowed students who had not studied at Cambridge to receive a B.A. by submitting a thesis which was judged "of distinction as a record of original research." Among the students attracted by this change was future Cavendish Professor Ernest Rutherford. Whilst Thomson was Cavendish Professor, he discovered the electron and the existence of isotopes, and also fostered an atmosphere of friendliness and mutual helpfulness. Rutherford returned to Cambridge in 1918, and spent the last 19 years of his life there. This was around the time of the change from classical to modern physics, and Rutherford was
UH Physics Department 2000. His PhD thesis (1985-1990) was on statistical mechanics of commensurate-incommensurate phase transitions under the supervision of Robert Griffiths. Prof. Simon Charles Moss joined the physics department in 1972 performin research on the full gamut of materials from hetero- structures and multilayers to quasi-crystals and decagonal crystals using x-ray and neutron scattering as probes of order in matter. He died of a heart attack on 14 March 2011. UH Physics Department The Department of Physics at the is a department of the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics performing research traditional fields such as High Energy Physics