ANALYSIS AND OPINION REMEMBERING PROFESSOR BRYAN TOZER
A life working with lasers
Following the passing of Professor Bryan Tozer, a pioneer in laser safety and founder of Lasermet, his son Paul Tozer looks back over his father’s 50 years of working with lasers
M
y father was born in Merseyside, North- West England,
and graduated in physics at Liverpool University, where he remained in order to do his PhD. At the time (mid 1950s), the university had a linear particle accelerator, one of the largest particle accelerators in the world, which he used for his research into plasma physics, producing his thesis entitled: ‘An investigation into some electron impact phenomena’. After a spell at Queen Mary
University as a research fellow, he took a job as a research physicist at the Central Electricity Generating Board’s (CEGB) research laboratories in Leatherhead, Surrey in 1961, subsequently taking the opportunity of a two-year job swap to the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada from 1966-68. At that time I was
two years old, and my sister was four. I have vivid memories of our time in Canada, although these are mostly to do with snow and icicles! These were the very early
Professor Tozer working for the UK Central Electricity Generating Board
10 Electro Optics November 2017
days of lasers. Lasers and laser components were not readily available. My father’s research group was building a q-switched ruby laser, and for this purpose he had to fly to Europe to pick up a ruby crystal and bring it back to Ottawa in his hand luggage, as the cost of the rod was about $10,000 and there was no other really secure way of shipping it. After construction had finished, they fired the laser, focusing it in mid air. This had the effect of ionising the air, which caused a reflection that went back into the ruby rod and put a bubble in it – thus rendering it useless for lasing purposes. Since this all took place in about a nano-second, my father used to tell me that he was the world’s fastest spender, achieving a spending rate of $10 trillion per second – in those days a trillion dollars was a lot of money! On returning to the UK in 1968, he transferred to the CEGB’s Marchwood Engineering Laboratories (MEL) where he eventually became section head. The department carried out physics research into aspects of electricity power generation. Among other things they were in charge
A hologram of a nuclear rod
Holographic camera beam delivery adjustment
of investigating alternative energy sources for electricity generation, including wave power, geothermal and solar power (wind energy generation was dealt with elsewhere). These were very fledgling projects in comparison to nowadays. Nuclear power was many times more relevant as a non-carbon polluting source of electricity. However, it had been discovered that the original Magnox reactors, which were
built in the UK during the 50s and 60s, had a problem with an unforeseen cause of internal corrosion of the reactor wall. The CEGB needed a way of measuring the corrosion on the inside of a nuclear reactor and MEL was tasked with solving this problem. Since it was impossible to go inside the reactor, optical measurement techniques seemed to be the only solution. My father and his colleagues
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