A Unique Partnership: William and Lawrence Bragg and the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics

Abstract

The award of the 1915 Nobel Prize in physics jointly to William Henry Bragg and his elder son, William Lawrence Bragg – `for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of Röntgen rays' – seems to have been largely uncontroversial at the time, butthere are a number of questions that surround the award and the events that followed it that deserve exploration. This paper attempts to address these questions.