Joseph Alexander Gray

Gray, Joseph Alexander

Joseph Alexander Gray, physicist (b at Melbourne, Australia 7 Feb 1884; d at London, Eng 5 Mar 1966). After graduating from Melbourne U in 1907, Gray worked in Sir Ernest RUTHERFORD's laboratory in Manchester, Eng, concentrating on the study of the interaction of electrons and X-rays with atoms. In 1912 he went to McGill to conduct further research. On the Western Front in WWI, he was in charge of locating enemy batteries by sound ranging. Awarded an OBE, Gray returned to McGill in 1919. From 1924 until his retirement in 1952, he was research professor at Queen's. His discoveries regarding the breadth of the energy spectrum of electrons and the scattering of X-rays were important contributions to the development of the new theory of the atom. The Royal Society of London, to which he was appointed in 1932, credited his work as "clearly foreshadowing what is known as the Compton effect" (for which A.H. Compton received the Nobel Prize). He was elected to the RSC in 1922 and received the first gold medal of the Canadian Association of Physicists in 1956.