John Randall

Who was John Randall?

Sir John Turton Randall, DSc, FRS, FRSE was a British physicist and biophysicist, credited with radical improvement of the cavity magnetron, an essential component of centimetric wavelength radar, which was one of the keys to the Allied victory in the Second World War. It is also the key component of microwave ovens. He also led the King's College London team which worked on the structure of DNA; his deputy, Professor Maurice Wilkins, shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, together with James Watson and Francis Crick of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, for the determination of the structure of DNA. His other staff included Rosalind Franklin, Raymond Gosling, Alex Stokes and Herbert Wilson, all involved in research on DNA.