Department of Physics, University of Oxford
The building was named after Edward Hyde, who was the 1st Earl of Clarendon, making it the oldest physics laboratory built in England.
The Clarendon building was designed by a British scientist named Robert Bellamy Clifton, who made the laboratory a space for undergraduates to prepare for their examinations rather than for research purposes only.
[1] In 1908, an architect named Sir Thomas Graham Jackson designed the Townsend building, which was a structure that became part of the Clarendon laboratory.
In terms of its architecture, the Townsend building was constructed with red-orange brickwork featured with a stonework detailed staircase and hallway.
The style he used for the structure was a Neo-Classical design, which draws on inspiration from the Western cultural movement in decorative and visual arts.
[2] The Townsend building has made some internal changes as small laboratory spaces have replaced regions of the wide-open lecture theatre.
The connection between these two structures was made using darkened glass panels, which makes an obvious appearance of separation due to the contrasting colours of each building.
He was responsible for making the laboratory more recognisable for its expertise in low temperature physics as well as to elevate the status of science at Oxford university.
[4] The unique architecture of the Wilkinson building appears as a large fan-shaped superstructure which was designed to house a Van der Graaf generator.
[8] Scientists that have conducted research at Oxford have made contributions to science including developments in technology and applications in the medical fields.
In collaboration with Robert Hooke, both scientists tried to solve the problem of planetary orbits and discussed theories with Isaac Newton.
His contributions he made while studying at Oxford include his observations of Stellar Aberration (an apparent motion of celestial objects caused by the Earth's orbital velocity), which is when he determined the value of the speed of light as 2.95 x 108 ms−1.
Other contributions Bradley made include his discovery of the annual change in declination, which was apparent due to the rocking motion of the Earth's axis through the gravitational attraction of the Moon.
His contributions towards the astrophysics field include his proof of the expanding universe as well as his creation of a classification system used to determine the different types of galaxies.
Sir Martin Ryle collaborated with another British astrophysicist named Antony Hewish and shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1974, for their discovery of pulsars.
[16] During the 1900s, Professor Frederick Lindemann and his father created a sensitive photo-electric cell which has the ability to detect light that comes from stars and comets.
A few years later, Lindemann recruited scientists from Germany and made the concept of low temperature physics more significant at the Clarendon laboratory.
[3] Lindemann's contributions in physics led to him playing a role in war by applying his experimental skills to atomic bomb and radar projects.
[1] Another scientist that contributed research at the Clarendon laboratory was Derek Jackson, who conducted the first experiment on determining the nuclear magnetic spin of caesium.
