Thomas Lydwell Eckersley, 1886-1959

Abstract

Thomas Lydwell Eckersley was born on 27 December 1886 in London. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Henry Huxley who was at one time President of the Royal Society. From the age of 2 1/2 to 6 Eckersley lived in Mexico where his father, who was a civil engineer, was engaged in building a railway. In his early life Eckersley was interested in engineering and in scientific devices and he had a desire to emulate his father and to build bridges. At the age of 11 he went to Bedales School where he came under the influence of an able teacher of mathematics who laid the foundations of his life-long interest in the subject. He left school at the early age of 15 and went to University College London, to read engineering, but he found he was not really as interested in the practical aspects of the work as he had at one time supposed, and he achieved only a Second Class degree. On leaving the University he went to the National Physical Laboratory where he found himself working under Albert Campbell on the behaviour of iron under the influence of alternating magnetic fields. Through this work he became interested in magnetic detectors for radio waves, and he did a good deal of experimenting with radio apparatus at his own house. His first paper was published, jointly with Campbell, on the effect of Pupin loading coils on waves travelling along transmission lines.