About Lawrence Bragg
Sir William Lawrence Bragg (31 March 1890 – 1 July 1971) was an Australian-born British X-ray crystallographer who uniquely shared a Nobel Prize with his father William Henry Bragg – the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays," an important step in the development of X-ray crystallography. As of 2025, Bragg is the youngest ever Nobel laureate in physics, or in any science category, having received the award at the age of 25. Bragg was the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, when James D. Watson and Francis Crick reported the discovery of the structure of DNA in February 1953. == Education == William Lawrence Bragg was born on 31 March 1890 in Adelaide, South Australia, the son of William Henry Bragg (1862–1942), who was appointed Elder Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Adelaide in 1885, and Gwendoline Todd (1869–1929), daughter of Charles Todd, government astronomer of South Australia. In 1900, Bragg enrolled at Queen's School, North Adelaide, followed by five years at St Peter's College, Adelaide. He went to the University of Adelaide at the age of 16 to study mathematics, chemistry, and physics, graduating in 1908. The same year, his father accepted the Cavendish Chair of Physics at the University of Leeds and brought the family to England. Bragg enrolled at the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate student of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the autumn of 1909, receiving a major scholarship in mathematics, despite taking the exam while in bed with pneumonia. After initially excelling in mathematics, he transferred to the physics course in the later years of his studies, and graduated in 1912 with First Class Honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos. In 1914, Bragg became a Fellow and Lecturer in Natural Sciences at Trinity College.
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