John David Lawson

Who was John David Lawson?

John David Lawson FRS was a British engineer and physicist.

He was born in Coventry and educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School before going on to St John's College, Cambridge, to study for the short Mechanical Sciences degree, including a special wartime radio course. He graduated BA in 1943 and then joined the Telecommunications Research Establishment, Malvern, where he was assigned to work on microwave antenna design as part of the ongoing work on development of radar.

At the end of the war Lawson continued to work at Malvern, although in 1947 he was made a member of the staff of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. He undertook experimental work with the new 30 MeV synchrotron.

In 1951 he was transferred to the General Physics Division of the AERE at Harwell. Lawson started to work on the klystron, a device for producing high-power microwaves, in a group led by Peter Thonemann who was also in charge of the ZETA fusion work. It was through Lawson's association with Thonemann that he became interested in the topic of nuclear fusion.

He was noted for his 1955 paper, published in 1957, "Some Criteria for a Power Producing Thermonuclear Reactor,", where he presented for the first time to the public his famous criterion: Lawson criterion.