Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy

The younger Lloyd is known for experimentally verifying conical refraction, a theoretical prediction made by William Rowan Hamilton about the way light is bent when travelling through a biaxial crystal.

He is best known for his work with John Cockcroft to construct one of the earliest types of particle accelerator, complete with its Cockcroft-Walton voltage-multiplying circuit, devised by themselves and subsequently reproduced widely in high-voltage generators elsewhere.

In experiments performed at Cambridge University in the early 1930s using the generator, Walton and Cockcroft became the first team to use a particle beam to transform one element to another.

The current incumbent, Jonathan Coleman (2022),[7] is well known in the field of nanomaterials for his development of liquid phase exfoliation, a versatile method for making 2D materials in large quantities.

[8] In addition, the history of the Erasmus Smith Professorship is described in Eric Finch's excellent book, “Three Centuries of Physics in Trinity College Dublin”.