Scientific Research and Later Life
Ralph Bagnold became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1944 and, on 7 June 1944 he retired from the army permanently with the honorary rank of Brigadier and returned to his scientific interests.
On 8 May 1946, Bagnold married Dorothy Alice Plank at Rottingdean, Sussex (daughter of A.E. Plank). The couple had a son and a daughter.
Bagnold's passion for science never left him and he continued to publish scientific papers into his nineties. Bagnold's scientific career was no less spectacular than his military one or his desert explorations. He made significant contributions to the scientific understanding of desert structures such as sand dunes, ripples and sheets. He developed the dimensionless Bagnold number and Bagnold formula for characterising sand flow. He also proposed a model for singing sands and made contributions to the science of sedimentology. His efforts were rewarded by a large number of awards, prizes and honorary degrees. He was the 1969 recipient of the G. K. Warren Prize from the National Academy of Sciences. In 1971 he received the Wollaston Medal, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London and in 1981 the David Linton Award of the British Geomorphological Research Group. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974. Other awards included the 1970 Penrose Medal by the Geological Society of America; and the Sorby Medal from the International Association of Sedimentologists. He also received honorary D.Sc. degrees from both the University of East Anglia and the Danish University of Aarhus.
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