Henry Evelyn Derek Scovil

Dr. Henry Evelyn Derrick Scovil, better known as H. E. D. Scovil or Derrick Scovil, is a physicist noted for his contributions to masers and bubble memory.

Scovil received his D. Phil. in 1951 from University of Oxford for his thesis "Investigation of Paramagnetic Substances at Centimetre Wave-Lengths", studied paramagnetic resonance at Clarendon Laboratory, then moved to Bell Labs where he, George Feher, and H. Seidel built the first tunable, solid state maser. In the late 1950s he and colleagues constructed ruby travelling wave masers, cooled to 4.2K by liquid helium, which were then the world's lowest-noise microwave amplifiers. They were used by Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson in their investigations of the cosmic microwave background.

Scovil was awarded the Franklin Institute's 1972 Stuart Ballantine Medal and the 1975 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award "for the concept and development of single-walled magnetic domains (magnetic bubbles), and for recognition of their importance to memory technology". He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Selected works

* H E D Scovil et al, "The 'Extra' Levels in Rare Earth Salts", Proc. Phys. Soc. A 65 954-955, 1952.
* B. Bleaney, H. E. D. Scovil, R. S. Trenam, "The Paramagnetic Resonance Spectra of Gadolinium and Neodymium Ethyl Sulphates", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Vol. 223, No. 1152 (Apr. 7, 1954), pp. 15-29.
* H. E. D. Scovil, G. Feher, and H. Seidel, "Operation of a Solid State Maser", Phys. Rev. 105, 762 - 763, 1957.
* J E Geusic and H E D Scovil, "Microwave and optical masers", Rep. Prog. Phys. 27 241-327, 1964.
* Andrew H. Bobeck and H. E. D. Scovil, "Magnetic Bubbles", Scientific American, Vol. 224, No. 6, pages 78-91, June 1971.

The correct name/spelling is Henry Evelyn Derrick Scovil.

References

* [http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/library/thesus.asp?LID=Clarendon Clarendon: Thesis List]
* [http://lsbb.unice.fr/publi/GWfinalprehist.pdf A Modest Prehistory of Low Temperature Detectors, by Georges Waysand]
* [http://www.nae.edu/nae/naepub.nsf/e67ebaa6da15f1e685256a8400560624/89ac0f364a32c1988525693700543e4d?OpenDocument National Academy of Engineering entry]
* [http://content.cdlib.org/dynaxml/servlet/dynaXML?docId=kt5b69n7k2&doc.view=entire_text Optics and Laser Spectroscopy, interview with Arthur L. Schawlow]
* [http://angel.library.ubc.ca/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/ubcnew&CISOPTR=5338&REC=2 Photograph]