Abstract
AT a recent meeting of the Council of the University of Bristol, an announcement was received with much gratification of two munificent offers for the endowment of research in physics, one from the Rockefeller Foundation and one from Mr. W. Melville Wills. Impressed by the possibilities of the Henry Herbert Wills Physical Laboratory as a centre of research, the Rockefeller Foundation offered the sum of £50,000 to the University of Bristol for the endowment of research in experimental and theoretical physics, on condition that a further contribution of £25,000 for the same purpose was secured from other sources. Mr. Melville Wills, already a benefactor to the University, has most generously offered to give the required sum of £25,000 in memory of his late brother, the founder of the laboratory. Thanks to this further act of beneficence by a member of the Wills family, the University has been able to accept the Rockefeller Foundation's offer. The laboratory was founded by a gift of £200,000 from the late Mr. Henry Herbert Wills, and was opened in 1927 under the direction of Prof. A. M. Tyndall. A broad view of the term ‘laboratory’ was taken, and a professorship in theoretical physics was created so that the closest co-operation between theory and experiment might be effected in the laboratory. With the concurrence of the Rockefeller Foundation, the gift of Mr. Melville Wills will be utilised for the endowment of the chair at present held by Prof. J. E. Lennard-Jones in theoretical physics. One portion of the Rockefeller gift will be devoted to researches in the field of mole-cular structure and the borderland of physics and chemistry, to which the laboratory has already contributed on both the theoretical and the experimental sides. After providing for certain other immediate needs, the remainder of the gift will form a reserve to meet the growing requirements of the laboratory as a centre of research.
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[News and Views]. Nature 127, 172–177 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/127172a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/127172a0