Powys-Lybbe Forbears - Person Sheet
Powys-Lybbe Forbears - Person Sheet
NameProf Sir Ralph Howard Fowler 
[3, Birth, Q1 of 1889, Epping district, vol 4A, p. 324], [3, Death, Q3 of 1944, Cambridge dist, vol 3b, p. 472]
[3, Birth, Q1 of 1889, Epping district, vol 4A, p. 324], [3, Death, Q3 of 1944, Cambridge dist, vol 3b, p. 472]Birth17 Jan 1889, Roydon, Essex
Death28 Jul 1944, Cromwell House, Trumpington, Cambs
General1st s. A noted mathematician and physicist. In both wars he specialised in munitions. Professor of several univiersities.
FatherHoward Fowler (ca1857-1934)
MotherFrances Eva Dewhurst (1862-1943)
Spouses
Marriage6 Dec 1921, All Saints church, Cambridge, Cambs [3, Marriage, Q4 of 1921, Cambridge dist, vol 3B, p. 1205]
Notes for Prof Sir Ralph Howard Fowler
His birth index:
First name(s) RALPH HOWARD
Last name FOWLER
Birth year 1889
Birth quarter 1
Mother's maiden name Dewhurst
District Epping
County Essex
Country England
Volume 4A
Page 324
Record set England & Wales Births 1837-2006
__________________
He and Eileen had four children, from a search for all children born with a surname of Fowler and mother’s maiden name of Rutherford born between 1921 and 1930 and then discarding a birth in Northumberland:
Forename(s) DoB Location
Peter H Q1 of 1923 Cambridge dist
Elizabeth R Q4 of 1925 Cambridge dist
Eliot P Q1 of 1927 Cambridge dist
Ruth E Q4 of 1930 Chesterton dist, Cambs
__________________
In 1939 he was with some acquaintances in The Wardens Lodgings of Winchester College, Winchester, Winchester M.B., Hampshire:
First name(s) Last name(s) DOB Sex Occupation Marital status Schedule Schedule Sub Number
Harold T Baker 22 Jan 1877 Male Warden Acting Bursor Single 102 1
Herbert Chitty 13 Jan 1863 Male Steward Of Manners Married 102 2
Florence E Craig 22 Dec 1894 Female Housekeeper Single 102 3
Edna E Spanner 11 Aug 1907 Female General Maid Single 102 4
Harold W G Mould 03 Aug 1919 Male School Porter Single 102 5
William C D Dampier 27 Dec 1867 Male Fellow Of Trinity College Cambridge Married 102 6
Ralph H Fowler 17 Jan 1889 Male University Proffesor Cambridge Widowed 102 7
William L Hichens 01 May 1874 Male Company Director Married 102 8
Ref: RG101/2360D/009/38
___________________
Hid death index from FreeBMD - not on FindMyPast:
Surname First name(s) Age District Vol Page
Deaths Sep 1944 (>99%)
Fowler Ralph H 55 Cambridge 3b 472
__________________
First name(s) RALPH HOWARD
Last name FOWLER
Birth year 1889
Birth quarter 1
Mother's maiden name Dewhurst
District Epping
County Essex
Country England
Volume 4A
Page 324
Record set England & Wales Births 1837-2006
__________________
He and Eileen had four children, from a search for all children born with a surname of Fowler and mother’s maiden name of Rutherford born between 1921 and 1930 and then discarding a birth in Northumberland:
Forename(s) DoB Location
Peter H Q1 of 1923 Cambridge dist
Elizabeth R Q4 of 1925 Cambridge dist
Eliot P Q1 of 1927 Cambridge dist
Ruth E Q4 of 1930 Chesterton dist, Cambs
__________________
In 1939 he was with some acquaintances in The Wardens Lodgings of Winchester College, Winchester, Winchester M.B., Hampshire:
First name(s) Last name(s) DOB Sex Occupation Marital status Schedule Schedule Sub Number
Harold T Baker 22 Jan 1877 Male Warden Acting Bursor Single 102 1
Herbert Chitty 13 Jan 1863 Male Steward Of Manners Married 102 2
Florence E Craig 22 Dec 1894 Female Housekeeper Single 102 3
Edna E Spanner 11 Aug 1907 Female General Maid Single 102 4
Harold W G Mould 03 Aug 1919 Male School Porter Single 102 5
William C D Dampier 27 Dec 1867 Male Fellow Of Trinity College Cambridge Married 102 6
Ralph H Fowler 17 Jan 1889 Male University Proffesor Cambridge Widowed 102 7
William L Hichens 01 May 1874 Male Company Director Married 102 8
Ref: RG101/2360D/009/38
___________________
Hid death index from FreeBMD - not on FindMyPast:
Surname First name(s) Age District Vol Page
Deaths Sep 1944 (>99%)
Fowler Ralph H 55 Cambridge 3b 472
__________________
Will notes for Prof Sir Ralph Howard Fowler
His probate index:
FOWLER sir Ralph Howard knight of Cromwell House Trumpington Cambridgeshire died 28 July 1944 Probate Peterborough 2 January to Leslie Eric Cook civil servant and Cecil Graham Traquair Morison student.
Effects £15507 1s. 2d.
_____________________
Not sure who the executors were.
_____________________
FOWLER sir Ralph Howard knight of Cromwell House Trumpington Cambridgeshire died 28 July 1944 Probate Peterborough 2 January to Leslie Eric Cook civil servant and Cecil Graham Traquair Morison student.
Effects £15507 1s. 2d.
_____________________
Not sure who the executors were.
_____________________
DNB Main notes for Prof Sir Ralph Howard Fowler
Fowler, Sir Ralph Howard (1889–1944), mathematical physicist and weapons researcher, was born at Fedsden, Roydon, Essex, on 17 January 1889, the elder son of Howard Fowler, of Glebelands, Burnham, Somerset, and his wife, Frances Eva, daughter of George Dewhurst, cotton merchant, of Manchester. Like his father, who had represented England at rugby, Fowler demonstrated wide-ranging athletic ability. His sister Dorothy played golf for England in 1921–8. His younger brother was killed on the Somme.
Fowler was educated at home by a governess, then at a preparatory school at Horris Hill. He was elected in 1902 to a scholarship at Winchester College, of which he was to become a member of staff before the First World War, and a fellow in 1933. During this period his family moved from Essex to Norfolk. From Winchester he won an entrance scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first class in part one of the mathematical tripos in 1909, and became a wrangler in part two in 1911 with special credit in schedule B. He was awarded a Rayleigh prize for mathematics in 1913, and the Adams prize in 1924. He represented Cambridge at golf in 1912.
After taking his degree Fowler began research in pure mathematics, at which he was exhaustive rather than brilliant. His work on the behaviour of solutions of second-order differential equations led to his election into a prize fellowship at Trinity in 1914. During the war, however, Fowler turned his attention to applied mathematics and theoretical physics, which gave him full scope both for his true mathematical powers and for his strong practical inclinations. On the outbreak of war Fowler obtained a commission in the Royal Marines; he was severely wounded in the Gallipoli campaign. While convalescing in England he began a notable collaboration with Archibald Vivian Hill, the first great influence in his career. With him at Whale Island, Portsmouth, Fowler organized the anti-aircraft experimental section of the munitions inventions department of the Ministry of Munitions. Later he became its assistant director, was promoted captain, and appointed OBE in 1918. Some of his joint researches with other members of the section in anti-aircraft gunnery afterwards became classics in ballistics. An account entitled 'The aerodynamics of a spinning shell' (PTRS 221 A, 1920–21 and 222, 1921–22) had a considerable influence on naval gunnery in the Second World War.
In 1919 Fowler returned to Cambridge. In 1920 he was appointed lecturer in mathematics at Trinity, and came under the second great influence in his life, Sir Ernest Rutherford, whose daughter, Eileen Mary, he married in 1921. She died in 1930, leaving two daughters and two sons, the elder of whom was Peter Howard Fowler, himself a distinguished physicist. The Fowler family lived at Trumpington, and Fowler also had a country house at Ashmore, Wiltshire, in his beloved west country. Fowler became a prolific researcher in the domains of statistical mechanics and atomic physics. His early collaboration with Charles Galton Darwin resulted in the publication of his Adams prize essay as the exhaustively detailed book Statistical Mechanics (1929). He was elected FRS in 1925 and was awarded a royal medal by the society in 1936. He delivered the Bakerian lecture in 1935. He was elected first Plummer professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge in 1932. In 1938 he was appointed director of the National Physical Laboratory, but a heart attack prevented his taking up the appointment and he retained the Plummer chair.
Before the outbreak of war in 1939 Fowler became involved with an Admiralty committee to consider the influence that air power might have on the navy. He was soon sent to Canada to co-ordinate war research there with war research in Britain; he later extended these activities to the United States, and was instrumental in establishing what became the British central scientific office in Washington, DC. For the success of this mission he was knighted in 1942. In spite of failing health he became a member of the Admiralty scientific advisory board, and chaired powerful Admiralty committees. With E. A. Milne he compared the destructive power of armour-piercing and high-explosive projectiles.
Fowler, a man of great personal charm, was remembered by contemporaries as a mathematical physicist of amazing quickness and versatility of mind. His most original work was his paper 'On dense matter' (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 87, 1926, 114), wherein he characterized white dwarf stars in terms of quantum statistics. Astronomical interests prompted his work on Emden's differential equation (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 91, 1931). However, he was at his best as a collaborator, and was renowned for critical insight and infectious enthusiasm. Fowler finally succumbed to his heart condition and died on 28 July 1944 at his home, Cromwell House, Trumpington; he was cremated in Cambridge on 2 August of that year.
Sources
E. A. Milne,
Obits. FRS, 5 (1945–8), 61–78
C. G. Darwin, Cambridge Review (14 Oct 1944), 6–8
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (29 July 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (3 Aug 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (5 Aug 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (17 Aug 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (12 Sept 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
E. A. Milne, Nature, 154 (1944), 232–3
Google PreviewWorldCat
S. Zuckerman, From apes to warlords (1978)
Google PreviewWorldCat
_____________________
Fowler was educated at home by a governess, then at a preparatory school at Horris Hill. He was elected in 1902 to a scholarship at Winchester College, of which he was to become a member of staff before the First World War, and a fellow in 1933. During this period his family moved from Essex to Norfolk. From Winchester he won an entrance scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first class in part one of the mathematical tripos in 1909, and became a wrangler in part two in 1911 with special credit in schedule B. He was awarded a Rayleigh prize for mathematics in 1913, and the Adams prize in 1924. He represented Cambridge at golf in 1912.
After taking his degree Fowler began research in pure mathematics, at which he was exhaustive rather than brilliant. His work on the behaviour of solutions of second-order differential equations led to his election into a prize fellowship at Trinity in 1914. During the war, however, Fowler turned his attention to applied mathematics and theoretical physics, which gave him full scope both for his true mathematical powers and for his strong practical inclinations. On the outbreak of war Fowler obtained a commission in the Royal Marines; he was severely wounded in the Gallipoli campaign. While convalescing in England he began a notable collaboration with Archibald Vivian Hill, the first great influence in his career. With him at Whale Island, Portsmouth, Fowler organized the anti-aircraft experimental section of the munitions inventions department of the Ministry of Munitions. Later he became its assistant director, was promoted captain, and appointed OBE in 1918. Some of his joint researches with other members of the section in anti-aircraft gunnery afterwards became classics in ballistics. An account entitled 'The aerodynamics of a spinning shell' (PTRS 221 A, 1920–21 and 222, 1921–22) had a considerable influence on naval gunnery in the Second World War.
In 1919 Fowler returned to Cambridge. In 1920 he was appointed lecturer in mathematics at Trinity, and came under the second great influence in his life, Sir Ernest Rutherford, whose daughter, Eileen Mary, he married in 1921. She died in 1930, leaving two daughters and two sons, the elder of whom was Peter Howard Fowler, himself a distinguished physicist. The Fowler family lived at Trumpington, and Fowler also had a country house at Ashmore, Wiltshire, in his beloved west country. Fowler became a prolific researcher in the domains of statistical mechanics and atomic physics. His early collaboration with Charles Galton Darwin resulted in the publication of his Adams prize essay as the exhaustively detailed book Statistical Mechanics (1929). He was elected FRS in 1925 and was awarded a royal medal by the society in 1936. He delivered the Bakerian lecture in 1935. He was elected first Plummer professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge in 1932. In 1938 he was appointed director of the National Physical Laboratory, but a heart attack prevented his taking up the appointment and he retained the Plummer chair.
Before the outbreak of war in 1939 Fowler became involved with an Admiralty committee to consider the influence that air power might have on the navy. He was soon sent to Canada to co-ordinate war research there with war research in Britain; he later extended these activities to the United States, and was instrumental in establishing what became the British central scientific office in Washington, DC. For the success of this mission he was knighted in 1942. In spite of failing health he became a member of the Admiralty scientific advisory board, and chaired powerful Admiralty committees. With E. A. Milne he compared the destructive power of armour-piercing and high-explosive projectiles.
Fowler, a man of great personal charm, was remembered by contemporaries as a mathematical physicist of amazing quickness and versatility of mind. His most original work was his paper 'On dense matter' (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 87, 1926, 114), wherein he characterized white dwarf stars in terms of quantum statistics. Astronomical interests prompted his work on Emden's differential equation (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 91, 1931). However, he was at his best as a collaborator, and was renowned for critical insight and infectious enthusiasm. Fowler finally succumbed to his heart condition and died on 28 July 1944 at his home, Cromwell House, Trumpington; he was cremated in Cambridge on 2 August of that year.
Sources
E. A. Milne,
Obits. FRS, 5 (1945–8), 61–78
C. G. Darwin, Cambridge Review (14 Oct 1944), 6–8
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (29 July 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (3 Aug 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (5 Aug 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (17 Aug 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
The Times (12 Sept 1944)
Google PreviewWorldCat
E. A. Milne, Nature, 154 (1944), 232–3
Google PreviewWorldCat
S. Zuckerman, From apes to warlords (1978)
Google PreviewWorldCat
_____________________
Notes for Ralph Howard & Eileen Mary (Family)
Their marriage index:
First name(s) RALPH H
Last name FOWLER
Marriage quarter 4
Marriage year 1921
MarriageFinder RALPH H FOWLER married one of these people
Eileen M Rutherford
Spouse's last name Rutherford
District Cambridge
County Cambridgeshire
Country England
Volume 3B
Page number 1205
Record set England & Wales Marriages 1837-2005
___________________
and from the church register:
First name(s) EILEEN MARY
Last name RUTHERFORD
Birth year 1901
Marriage year 1921
Marriage day 6
Marriage month Dec
Spouse's first name(s) RALPH HOWARD
Spouse's last name FOWLER
Place CAMBRIDGE, ALL SAINTS
Groom's first name(s) Ralph Howard
Groom's last name FOWLER
Groom's marital status bac
Groom's age 32
Groom's occupation college lecturer
Groom's residence of Trinity College
Groom's father's first name(s) Howard
Groom's father's occupation gent
Bride's first name(s) Eileen Mary
Bride's last name RUTHERFORD
Bride's marital status sp
Bride's age 20
Bride's occupation [blank]
Bride's residence of Newnham Cottage Cambridge
Bride's father's first name(s) Ernest
Bride's father's occupation Professor
By licence or banns by special lic
County Cambridgeshire
Country England
Record set Cambridgeshire Marriages
___________________
First name(s) RALPH H
Last name FOWLER
Marriage quarter 4
Marriage year 1921
MarriageFinder RALPH H FOWLER married one of these people
Eileen M Rutherford
Spouse's last name Rutherford
District Cambridge
County Cambridgeshire
Country England
Volume 3B
Page number 1205
Record set England & Wales Marriages 1837-2005
___________________
and from the church register:
First name(s) EILEEN MARY
Last name RUTHERFORD
Birth year 1901
Marriage year 1921
Marriage day 6
Marriage month Dec
Spouse's first name(s) RALPH HOWARD
Spouse's last name FOWLER
Place CAMBRIDGE, ALL SAINTS
Groom's first name(s) Ralph Howard
Groom's last name FOWLER
Groom's marital status bac
Groom's age 32
Groom's occupation college lecturer
Groom's residence of Trinity College
Groom's father's first name(s) Howard
Groom's father's occupation gent
Bride's first name(s) Eileen Mary
Bride's last name RUTHERFORD
Bride's marital status sp
Bride's age 20
Bride's occupation [blank]
Bride's residence of Newnham Cottage Cambridge
Bride's father's first name(s) Ernest
Bride's father's occupation Professor
By licence or banns by special lic
County Cambridgeshire
Country England
Record set Cambridgeshire Marriages
___________________