Basil Ferdinand Jamieson Schonland, 1896-1972

Abstract

In the long list of scientists who have contributed to our knowledge of lightning Basil Schonland’s name will stand forth for ever. Benjamin Franklin’s name was the first; C. T. R. Wilson and G. C. Simpson were protagonists in the early years of this Century and from their work came knowledge of the electric fields and the field changes associated with thunder-clouds and lightning flashes, but Schonland was the first to use successfully the camera with rotating lenses by which the complex nature of the flash and the time-sequence of its component strokes were elucidated. With collaborators in the Transvaal he wrote a score of scientific papers on lightning, revealing discoveries of the utmost importance to science and engineering, and in no other country have comparable contributions been made to our knowledge of the subject. In the midst of this work came World War II in which he played an important part, and at the end of his extremely vigorous life of scientific experimentation came his life and work at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell but it is as the leading authority on lightning that his name can truly be classed, alone, with Benjamin Franklin.