E. J. Bowen

E. J. Bowen

Edmund ("Ted") John Bowen FRS (April 29, 1898 – November 19, 1980) was a British physical chemist. Born in Worcester, England, E. J. Bowen attended the Royal Grammar School Worcester. He won the Brackenbury Scholarship in 1915 and 1916 to the University of Oxford where he studied chemistry. He returned to Balliol College after serving in the Royal Garrison Artillery during World War I and in 1922 became a Fellow of University College, Oxford. At University College he served as Domestic Bursar and as Junior Proctor of the University in 1936.

Created a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1935 for his research into fluorescence, he was awarded the Davy Medal in 1963. He wrote a seminal book called The Chemical Aspects of Light. He was President of the Faraday Society and Vice-President of the Chemical Society.

Most of Bowen's work was carried out at the Trinity and Balliol College Laboratories. His 1966 Liversedge Lecture on Fluorescence was based on his life's research. On retirement, he became an Honorary Fellow of University College and was one of the longest serving Fellows of that college (43 years as an ordinary Fellow and a total of 59 years). There is a room in the college named after him. He was also a prominent Worcester Old Elizabethan serving on its Committee for many years and organizing the Oxford branch of that club.

On 16 May 1931, Bowen, then a University don, attended one of a series of three lectures given by Albert Einstein that year at Rhodes House. After the lecture he obtained one of the blackboards used by Einstein and together with Francis Wylie presented it to the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford where it remains on prominent display to this day.

It is interesting to note that at around five generations back from Bowen on a chemistry genealogy tree one will find Liebig and at around fourteen generations back, Werner Rolfinck. The line of supervisors can be traced directly back as far back as Niccolò Leoniceno in the 15th century.

As well as chemistry, Bowen also had an interest in geology, especially around Ringstead Bay on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset. Perisphinctes boweni, an ammonite from the Jurassic period, is named after him.

Bowen lived for most of his working life in Park Town and is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, north of Oxford. Bowen was married to Edith née Moule and they had a son (also a chemist) and a daughter.