The life of Professor John Newton (no relation to Sir Isaac), a pioneer of Australian nuclear physics, has been celebrated in a memoir published by the Australian Academy of Science.

Emeritus Professor John Newton (1924 – 2016) was the head of the ANU Department of Nuclear Physics from 1970 to 1988. A fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Newton was internationally distinguished for his work in nuclear structure and heavy-ion reactions, and played an instrumental role in enhancing Australia’s nuclear science capability.

“By the end of his tenure, the laboratory had become internationally prominent, a position it has maintained since,” said former Head of the Nuclear Physics Department, Emeritus Professor David Hinde.

The memoir follows Newton’s life and work across the world from the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, the University of Manchester, and finally the ANU Department of Nuclear Physics in Canberra (now NPAA), outlining many of his significant findings and discoveries along the way. 

Born in a small town outside of Manchester, UK, Newton’s parents had little education. Inspired by his toy chemistry set and Meccano set, John excelled at school, winning a scholarship that covered his high school fees, followed by a scholarship to Cambridge University.

Proximity to the world-famous Cavendish Laboratories, and the chance to train up in the new field of electronics and radar gave Newton a superb springboard to his career.

During the war he worked in ‘countermeasures’, training under future ANU Vice-Chancellor Leonard Huxley. Newton was part of the team that successfully jammed the German radar with the simple and cheap method of dropping half-wavelength-long strips of aluminium foil from aircraft.

After the war Newton worked in Harwell, England, Berkeley in the United States and then back to England, at Manchester University. Over these 25 years he developed a range of remarkable experimental innovations in devices such as gamma ray detectors (improving time resolution one hundredfold), amplifiers, double-pulse generators and scintillation detectors.

With these tools he made many important discoveries in nuclear physics, covering isotope gamma-ray polarisation, decay of heavy nuclei, spectroscopy of rugby-ball shaped nuclei, and multiple Coulomb excitation, which was published in the first issue of Physical Review Letters in 1958.

In the late sixties, the then director of the Research School of Physics, Sir Ernest Titterton visited Manchester and asked Newton to apply for the position of Head of Nuclear Physics at ANU. The authors note that there was the sweetener that Titterton had already secured $2.2 million to buy a new tandem electrostatic accelerator.

“This was a highly appealing offer for Newton, as the accelerators in the UK were quite outdated,” they said.

Under Newton’s leadership the Department actually secured a far better accelerator than they initially anticipated they would be able to purchase, with an entirely new and original design.

“This was a risk taken, yet it turned out to be extremely successful. Fifty years on from its initial construction, the 14UD accelerator at the Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF) continues to be a world-class machine that has capabilities unique in Australia and rare in the world,” the authors note.

With his thoughtful approach to research Newton leveraged the capabilities of HIAF, in particular pioneering the new field of heavy ion fusion research. Even after his retirement, he continued working – his most cited first-author paper, on the need for a new dynamical approach to fusion, was submitted on his 80th birthday in 2004.

A generous bequest from Newton and his wife Silva (also a physicist) to the ANU Research School of Physics enabled the establishment of The John and Silva Newton Award (of the HIAF Endowment fund) for the support of graduate students, in their memory.

“Both John and Silva Newton had lived through challenging times in their youth, and both being physicists, they recognised the importance of providing opportunities to students,” the authors note.

Newton’s biographical memoir is authored by Katja Curtin, Mahananda Dasgupta and David Hinde from the Department of Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications. It is published in the Historical Records of Australian Science.