Early Years
Cockcroft was born in Todmorden, England the eldest son of a mill owner. He was educated at Todmorden Secondary School (1909–1914) (where his physics teacher, Luke Sutcliffe, would later tutor another future Nobel Prize-winner, Geoffrey Wilkinson) and studied mathematics at the Victoria University of Manchester (1914–1915). He was a signaller in the Royal Artillery from 1915 to 1918. After the war ended, he studied electrotechnical engineering at Manchester College of Technology from 1919 until 1920. Cockcroft received a mathematics degree from St. John's College, Cambridge in 1924 and began research work under Ernest Rutherford. In 1929 he was elected a Fellow of St. John's College.
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