Low-Temperature Physicist Whose Love of the Arts Prompted an Unlikely Career Change

Obituary

GO Jones

Low-temperature physicist whose love of the arts prompted an unlikely career change

Peter Kalmus
Thursday July 20, 2006

Guardian

Few academics have made as dramatic a career change as Professor Gwyn Jones, the eminent low-temperature physicist who, having built up the physics department at Queen Mary College, London University, to a prominent research and teaching unit, left to become director of the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. Jones, who has died aged 89, also wrote several novels, a book of short stories, played classical violin and jazz piano, and had a strong interest in literature and the visual arts.

During the second world war Jones - known as "GO" - worked on the British Tube Alloys atomic bomb project in the UK and US. After the war, with Joseph Rotblat (obituary, September 2 2005) and others, he set up the Atomic Scientists Association to explain the problems and difficulties of the nuclear era. The association had no base, so the sitting room of his Hampstead home became its first office. Jones served a term as vice-president, and was active also in the meetings of the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs.

Jones's earliest research work was about glass, but when he went to London University he started a programme of work in condensed matter physics; in particular studying matter at temperatures a degree or so above absolute zero. While other universities had well-funded laboratories with equipment capable of producing many litres of liquid helium, he had to manage with very modest resources. But by building small helium liquefiers, producing only fractions of a litre at a time, he made sufficient quantities to carry out significant experiments.

He ingeniously made one liquefier using parts from a motorcycle engine and was delighted to see it still on display when he visited his old department while he was in his 80s. He joked that, with the demise of the UK motor cycle industry and the emergence of high-tech companies, it would now be even more amazing to make a motorcycle out of a helium liquefier.

Jones was born in Wales, where his father was a school inspector. He was educated at Monmouth and Port Talbot secondary schools. After graduating from Oxford, he did research on glass at Sheffield University, and later joined the academic staff there from 1939 to 1941.

He was a member of the government's atomic energy project for four years until 1946, then a research fellow at the Clarendon laboratory, Oxford, until 1949. His long association with London University began in 1949 when he was appointed reader in experimental physics at Queen Mary College. In 1953 he was appointed professor of physics and departmental head, remaining there until 1968. He was influential in building a flourishing department with research groups covering astrophysics, elementary particles and aspects of theoretical physics, in addition to his own specialism in condensed matter and low temperature physics.

Jones was an acute spotter and recruiter of staff. In that era, selection boards for new lecturers hardly existed, and recruits were appointed by the principal after recommendations made by the departmental head concerned. In effect, Jones "selected" the seven scientists who became his successors, plus at least two who became heads of physics departments at other institutions.

As well as his commitment to physics, he was passionate about the arts, and during his tenure at Queen Mary he wrote three novels, as well as two works on physics. He was happily able to bring these two strands together in the new home for his department, which was constructed under his guidance. He arranged for several sculptures and pictures to be included in the eight-storey building, which had a meeting room for staff and postgraduates, doubling as an art gallery, with displays by both established and new artists every few weeks. In connection with this gallery he met the artist Betty Blandino, who later became his second wife, and with whom he had a happy marriage for 33 years, up until his death.

At the age of 50, after some 15 years as department head, Jones persuaded the college authorities to change the permanent headship of the physics department into a rotating one, a reform which was copied by other departments and has become the norm in UK universities.

It might have been predicted that Jones would be one of those prominent physicists who become vice-chancellors. But he made a rather more radical change of career: in 1968, he was appointed director of the National Museum of Wales, a post, he discovered, that was not without its problems. There was a staff of 400, a council of 36, a court of 160 and an abundance of committees. The bureaucracy was formidable compared to the easy-going university management style at the time, but Jones survived, and found his work satisfying. Among his many achievements was the successful acquisition of a large grant for purchasing contemporary paintings to add to the Impressionist works of the Davies bequest.

He appointed a design team who created new galleries with what were considered, at the time, to be very avant-garde displays. Liaising with the art department of the Welsh Arts Council, he initiated thematic exhibitions that were shown in the large entrance hall. These had very un-museum-like subjects, with titles such as War, Marriage, Work and Worship.

He established several auxiliary museums outside Cardiff, including the Graham Sutherland Museum at Picton Castle and - perhaps the most ambitious project - the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum, situated in the docks area, which celebrated Cardiff's prominent history as a port. It took eight years of persuasion, but was opened by the prime minister three weeks after Jones's retirement. He was awarded a CBE for distinguished services to Wales.

Jones left the museum after nine years in 1977, and moved from the Wye valley to retirement in Oxford. Again, music was a powerful interest; he played the violin in several orchestras and arranged many Sunday meetings in his home, where he played or sang all day with friends. He is survived by his wife Betty and the daughters of his first marriage, Jill and Katie.

· Gwyn Owain Jones, physicist, museum director and author, born March 29 1917; died July 3 2006.