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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Cavendish Laboratory
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Centre for experimental physics founded at Cambridge in 1871 by the 7th duke of Devonshire in memory of a distinguished scientist in his own family, Henry *Cavendish. James Clerk *Maxwell was the first director, a post subsequently held by J.J. *Thomson (discoverer of the electron) and by *Rutherford (discoverer of the nucleus and the proton). *Chadwick was at the Cavendish when he discovered the neutron in 1932, and in the same year *Cockcroft achieved the first nuclear reaction induced by artificially accelerated particles.
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In the second half of the 20C the laboratory extended its range to include radio astronomy under Martin *Ryle (the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory was built in 1964) and for a while molecular biology – the field in which Cambridge scientists made one of the greatest breakthroughs of the 20C with the discovery in 1953 of the structure of *DNA.
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