Born Wilsden, (West Yorkshire), England, 22 March 1868
Died Ealing, (London), England, 24 June 1940
British spectroscopist Alfred Fowler was the first to produce in the laboratory the spectral line at 4686 Å due to ionized helium and made significant contributions to the understanding of the spectra of ionized gases in general. He was the seventh son of Hiram and Eliza Hill Fowler and married Isabella Orr in 1892. She and their son and daughter survived him.
Fowler was educated at local schools, starting at the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science) in South Kensington (near London), where he studied mechanics. In 1885, he began work as a research student at the Solar Physics Observatory [SPO] under Norman Lockyer. Fowler held a position as demonstrator at the SPO from 1888 to 1901 when he was appointed to an assistant professorship at the Royal College of Science (still later Imperial College, London). He was appointed to a full professorship in 1920 after...
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Selected References
Dingle, Herbert (1940). Observatory 63: 262–267.
——— (1941). “Alfred Fowler.” Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 3: 483–497.
——— (1963). “A Hundred Years of Spectroscopy.” British Journal for the History of Science 1: 199–216.
——— (1972). “Fowler, Alfred.” In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. Vol. 5, pp. 101–102. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Fowler, A. (1909). “”Spectroscopic Comparison of o Ceti with Titanium Oxide.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 69: 508–510.
——— (1910). “Investigations Relating to the Spectra of Comets.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 70: 484–496.
——— (1912). “Observations of the Principal and Other Series of Lines in the Spectrum of Hydrogen.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 73: 62–71. (Proved valuable in establishing Bohr's theory of spectra.)
——— (1914). “Series Lines in Spark Spectra.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A 214: 225–266. (Bakerian Lecture.)
——— (1922). Report on Series on Line Spectra. London: Fleetway Press. (Fowler's main work on spectroscopy is the book that gives a detailed account of the knowledge of the series which had been acquired up to that time.)
——— (1923). “Sir Norman Lockyer, K. C. B., 1836–1920.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 104: i–xiv.
——— (1923). “The Series Spectrum of Trebly‐Ionised Silicon (Si IV).” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 103: 413–429.
——— (1928). “Memories of Sir Norman Lockyer.” In Life and Work of Sir Norman Lockyer, edited by T. Mary Lockyer and Winifred L. Lockyer, pp. 453–462. London: MacMillan.
Gale Henry, G. et al. (1941). “Alfred Fowler, 1868–1940.” Astrophysical Journal 94: 1–4.
Hills, E. H. (1915) “Address Delivered by the President … on presenting the Gold Medal of the Society to Professor Alfred Fowler.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 75: 355–362.
Hubble, E. (1934) “The Award of the Bruce Gold Medal To Professor Alfred Fowler.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 46: 87–93.
Leone, Matteo and Nadia Robotti (2000). “Stellar, Solar and Laboratory Spectra: The History of Lockyer's Proto‐elements.” Annals of Science 57: 241–266.
Meadows, A. J. (1970). Science and Controversy: A Biography of Sir Norman Lockyer. London: MacMillan.
Lockyer, J. Norman (1897). “On the Iron Lines present in the Hottest Stars.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 60: 475–476. (On the “enhanced lines.”)
Plummer, H. C. (1941). “Alfred Fowler.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 101: 132–135.
Robotti, Nadia (1983). “The Spectrum of ζ Puppis and the Historical Evolution of Empirical Data.” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 14: 123–145. (On the λ 4686 controversy.)
Tenn, Joseph S. (1995). “Alfred Fowler: The Twenty‐Ninth Bruce Medalist.” Mercury 24, no. 5: 5, 36–37.
Wilkins, G.A. (1994). “Sir Norman Lockyer's Contributions to Science.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 35: 51–57.
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Robotti, N., Leone, M. (2007). Fowler, Alfred. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_472
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