Walter Thompson Welford FRS (31 August 1916 – 18 September 1990) was a British physicist with expertise in optics.
[1] Welford attended Hackney Technical College, leaving at 16 to work as a technician at the London Hospital and then Oxford University Biochemistry Department.
He studied mathematics privately and in 1942 obtained a first-class external degree from the University of London.
After working for a time at the optical instrument manufacturer Adam Hilger Ltd., he came to Imperial College London in 1947 as a research assistant.
He was appointed lecturer in 1951 and after successive promotions became a full professor of physics in 1973, retiring in 1983.
He continued to be scientifically active at Imperial College and the University of Chicago until his death in 1990.
[1] He also won awards for his work in Microlithography and the ultraviolet: experiments with an excimer laser.
Walter Welford's pioneering and often cited work in Solar Energy, revolving around the optics of CPCs was the work that got him elected to the Royal Society, though others hold all the patents related to Solar Energy.
Telescopes, Welford created some of the earliest shots of Jupiter from a lens he designed.
There are several documents online such as the Optical legacy of Imperial College London, which cite the inventiveness of Welford and the department.
A full bibliography appears on the accompanying microfiche, nat the Royal Society, in London.
(2) (2) 1949 Wavefront aberrations of oblique pencils in a symmetrical optical system: refraction and transfer formulae.
(3) (4) 1950 The computation of wavefront aberrations of oblique pencils in a symmetrical optical system.
(4) (5) 1951 (With L. C. Martin & P. B. Watt) An apparatus for correlated interferometer and resolving power tests on camera lenses.
Van der Raay, C. C. Butler, N. C. Barford, D. Macmullan, A. Thetford, D. B. Thomas, A. Amery, W. H. Evans, M. J. Moore and 6 others) Some features of the British National Hydrogen Bubble Chamber.
(15) (45) 1966 Obtaining increased focal depth in bubble chamber photography by an application of the hologram principle.
(17) (51) 1968 (With K. H. Carnell, N. C. Gortmans & C. Pataky) A telecentric camera lens for bubble chamber photography.
B. Millar, J. Moffatt, T. D. Peel, D. F. Shaw, W. Turner and 5 others) An 80 cm liquid helium bubble chamber.
(21) (65) 1971 (With J. C. Dainty) Reduction of speckle in image plane hologram reconstruction by moving pupils.
(22) (66) 1971 (With R. A. Lawes) An illumination system of improved power and resolution for the HoughPowell device.
(26) (74) 1973 (With R. Q. Twiss) On the coherence length of a monochromator for use with a Michelson stellar interferometer.
(29) (77) 1974 Film flatness, lens distortion, illumination and other matters in bubble chamber photography.
(31) (79) 1974 (With K. H. Carnell, M. J. Kidger, A. J. Overill, R. W. Reader, F. C. Reavell & C. G. Wynne) Some experiments on precision lens mounting.
(32) (81) 1975 First order statistics of speckle produced by weak scattering media.
(33) (82) 1975 Practical design of an aplanatic hologram lens of focal length 50 mm and numerical aperture 0.5.
(37) (92) 1977 Optical estimation of statistics of surface roughness from light scattering measurements.
(38) (97) 1978 (With D. J. Nicholas & C. Pataky) High aperture optics for laser compression experiments: a new type.
(39) (100) 1978 (With R. Winston) The optics of nonimaging concentrators: light and solar energy.
(41) (107) 1980 (With R. Q. Twiss) Adjusting spatially separated plane mirrors to coplanarity.
(44) (121) 1986 (With F. N. Goodall & R. A. Moody) Reduction photolithography by ablation at wavelength 197 nm.