Charles Coulson - King's College, London

King's College, London

In 1947, Coulson accepted a University chair in Theoretical Physics at King's College, London. This was reported as a news item in Nature. The note described him as "among the foremost workers in Great Britain on the wave-mechanical side of quantum theory". It extolled his breadth of interests that took in the action of radiation on bacteria and the theory of liquids and solutions, besides the molecular orbital treatment of small molecules and ions, the approximation methods needed for large organic molecules for studies of bond lengths in coronene and conductivity of graphite, chemical reactivity, the treatment of momentum distribution functions and Compton-line profiles and his "well deserved reputation for his kindly and helpful encouragement of younger research workers."

Initially, Coulson's group were assigned offices on the top floor of a building (reached by a rickety wooden staircase) that overlooked the Strand, with considerable benefit when cavalcades paraded by on Lord Mayor's Day and Royal occasions. In 1952, the group moved down to offices in the new Physics Department, interspersed with Biophysics and other experimental groups. With developments in computing opening new vistas for the theoreticians, along with the developments in laboratory methods, the entire department enjoyed the intellectual ferment of the 1950s.

In his account of the official opening of the new Physics Department, Maurice Wilkins wrote: "the theoretical group deals with "applications of wave mechanics and statistical mechanics ... the theory of the chemical bond ... questions of chemical reactivity ... stability of crystal structures, biological properties of cancer-producing compounds and other molecules, electrical and magnetic properties of metals, ... properties of electrolytes and colloidal solutions, including ... electrophoresis ... more than one hundred papers have been published during the past five years."

Coulson's group consisted of (1) graduate students who conducted research on electronic structure and valence theory, for a Ph.D. degree directly under Coulson's supervision, (2) students working for a Ph.D. in statistical thermodynamics under the supervision of Fred Booth and, later, in nuclear physics supervised by Louis Elton and then Dr. Percy, (3) students working for an M.Sc. on topics in applied mathematics to be followed by a Ph.D. with another supervisor in the Mathematics Department, and (4) visitors, some of whom held senior academic and industrial appointments. The valence theory Ph.D. students included Simon J. Altmann, Michael P Barnett, Aagje Bozeman, Peter J. Davies, Harry H. Greenwood, Peter Higgs, Julianne Jacobs, Roland Lefebvre, George Lester, John Maddox, Norman H. March, and Robert Taylor. Statistical mechanics was pursued by Geoffrey V. Chester, John Enderby, Alec Gaines and Alan B. Lidiard. The students who went on to the Mathematics Department included Godfrey Lance, Eric Milner and Geoffrey Sewell. Collectively, these wrote nearly 30 books in later years. Visitors who stayed for months included Professor Inga Fischer-Hjalmas of the University of Stockholm, Dr. John van der Waals of Shell Oil, and Dr. Joop der Heer from the University of Amsterdam.