Tony Skyrme

Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme (/skɜːrm/; 5 December 1922, Lewisham – 25 June 1987) was a British scientist who worked on the atom.

Birth

He was born in Lewisham , a suburb of London. His father was a bank clerk. He first went to a school in Lewisham, but was so good at maths that he was given a scholarship (free place) to Eton college.

Education

There he was also good at math and won prizes in the subject. He got a place at Cambridge University and again was better than his fellow students leaving with the best degree, a first class degree.

Works

When he left Cambridge in 1943 World War Two was at its height and he was told by the government to work on atomic energy under another scientist Rudolf Peierls to help win the war.

When America began to secretly build the atomic bomb these two men and a few other Britons went to America to help them achieve their goal. Tony Skyrme did important work towards the two atomic bombs that ended the war.

He then worked back in Britain on studying atoms. He used a way of understanding how atoms work by inventing an atom sized thing called a skyrmion. It is still used today to understand atoms.