Maurice Pryce

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Maurice Pryce

| image = Maurice Pryce.jpg

| citizenship = British

| workplaces = Liverpool University
University of Bristol
University of Southern California
University of British Columbia

| birth_date = 24 January 1913

| birth_place = Croydon, London, England

| death_date = {{dda|df=y|2003|7|24|1913|1|24}}

| alma_mater = University of Cambridge
Princeton University

| thesis_title = The wave mechanics of the photon

| thesis_year = 1937

| doctoral_advisor = Max Born
Ralph Fowler

| doctoral_students = Anatole Abragam
David M. Brink
Kenneth Le Couteur
Marshall Stoneham
John Clive Ward
John Ziman

| known_for = Pryce's theorem

| awards = FRS (1951)

}}

Maurice Henry Lecorney Pryce (24 January 1913 – 24 July 2003){{cite news|url=http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article2078737.ece|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150603052950/http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article2078737.ece|url-status=dead|archive-date=3 June 2015|title=Professor Maurice Pryce, Physicist who strove to make nuclear power safe |access-date=2011-12-16}}{{cite journal |last1=Elliott |first1=Roger |last2=Sanders |first2=J. H. |journal=Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society |volume=51 |pages=355–366 |url=https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rsbm.2005.0023 |title=Maurice Henry Lecorney Pryce, 24 January 1913 – 24 July 2003 |year=2005 |doi=10.1098/rsbm.2005.0023 |s2cid=73224905 |access-date = 2022-09-22|url-access=subscription }} was a British physicist.

Life

Pryce was born in Croydon to an Anglo-Welsh father and French mother, and in his teens attended the Royal Grammar School, Guildford. After a few months in Heidelberg to add German to the French that had been his first language at home, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge.

In 1935, he went to Princeton University, supported by a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship (now Harkness Fellowship) where he worked with Wolfgang Pauli and John von Neumann, obtaining his Ph.D. with a thesis on The wave mechanics of the photon under the supervision of Max Born and Ralph Fowler.{{MathGenealogy|id=42857|name=Maurice Henry Lecorney Pryce}}{{cite journal|author1=Dalby, Bill |author2=Sanders, John |author3=Stevens, Kenneth |title=Obituary: Maurice Henry Lecorney Pryce|journal=Physics Today|date=May 2004|volume=57|issue=5|pages=76–77|doi=10.1063/1.1768681|bibcode = 2004PhT....57e..76D |doi-access=free}}

In 1937, he returned to England as a Fellow of Trinity, until, in 1939, he was appointed Reader in Theoretical Physics at Liverpool University under James Chadwick. In 1941, he joined the Admiralty Signals Establishment (now part of the Admiralty Research Establishment) to work on radar. In 1944, he joined the British atomic energy team in Montreal designing nuclear reactors, but, in 1945, returned to England, first to Cambridge and then, in 1946, to Oxford, where he was appointed Wykeham Professor of Physics.

Among his doctoral students were Anatole Abragam and John Clive Ward. In 1947, in collaboration with John Ward, he co-authored a paper that originated on the probability amplitude of two entangled quanta propagating in opposite directions.M. H. L. Pryce and J. C. Ward, Angular correlation effects with annihilation radiation, Nature 160, 435 (1947).

In 1950, Klaus Fuchs was head of the theoretical physics group at AERE, Harwell. When Fuchs was arrested for supplying atomic secrets to the USSR, Pryce served part-time as his replacement. In 1954, he moved to the University of Bristol as Head of the Physics Department. In 1964, he returned to North America, first to the University of Southern California and then, in 1968, to the University of British Columbia. From 1968 to 1978, he served on the Technical Advisory Committee (for nuclear waste management) of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

Distinctions

1935 Fellow, Cambridge Philosophical Society
1936 Member, American Physical Society
1938 Fellow, Royal Astronomical Society
1946 Fellow, Physical Society (London); Member of Council 1959–61
1951 Fellow of the Royal Society
1957 Member of Radar and Signals Advisory Board, Ministry of Supply
1958 Member of Electronics Research Council, Ministry of Aviation
1959 Member (later Chairman) Advisory Council, Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham
1960 Honorary Member of Council, Société de Physique, Paris