Hello.
Hello, is that the reference library?
Yes. Can I help you?
I hope so. I rang earlier and asked for some information about Denys Hawtin, the scientist. You asked me to ring back.
Oh, yes. I have found something.
Good. I've got a pencil and paper. Perhaps you could read out what it says.
Certainly. Hawtin, Denys. Born: Darlington 1836; died New York 1920.
Yes. Got that.
Inventor and physicist. The son of a farm worker, he was admitted to the University of London at the age of fifteen.
Yes.
He graduated at seventeen with a first class degree in Physics and Mathematics. All right?
Yes, all right.
He made his first notable achievement at the age of eighteen. It was a method of refrigeration which arose from his work in low temperature physics. He became professor of Mathematics at the University of Manchester at twenty-four, where he remained for twelve years. During that time he married one of his students, Natasha Willoughby.
Yes. Go on.
Later, working together in London, they laid the foundation of modern Physics by showing that normal laws of cause and effect do not apply at the level of subatomic particles. For this he and his wife received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1910, and did so again in 1912 for their work on very high frequency radio waves. In his lifetime Hawtin patented 244 inventions. Do you want any more?
Yes. When did he go to America?
Let me see. In 1920 he went to teach in New York, and died there suddenly after only three weeks. Still, he was a good age.
Yes. I suppose so. Well, thanks.