My father, Dines Pontoppidan, belonged to an old family of clergymen and was himself a minister. My mother, whose maiden name was Oxenbøl, was the daughter of a government official. They had sixteen children. One of the middle ones in the flock, I was born on July 24, 1857, in the small Jutland town of…

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Charles Glover Barkla was born on June 7, 1877 at Widnes, Lancashire, England, where his father, J.M. Barkla, was Secretary to the Atlas Chemical Company. He was educated at the Liverpool Institute and entered University College, Liverpool, in 1894 to study mathematics and physics, the latter under Oliver Lodge. He graduated with First Class Honours…

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The following account of Barkla’s work is by Professor G. Granqvist, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics of When X-rays fall on any substance, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, they cause a secondary radiation. That was discovered by Sagnac in 1897 and it has since then been studied by a long series of investigators.…