Edward 'Taffy' Bowen
Pioneer of radar; radio astronomer
Edward George 'Taffy' Bowen was born on the 14th of January, 1911, in Swansea (Gendros or Cockett), south Wales, the youngest of four children of George Bowen, a tinplate worker, and Ellen Ann Bowen. Accounts differ on the exact Swansea district of his birth, with some sources citing Cockett and others Gendros. He attended Sketty Primary School before winning scholarships to the Municipal Secondary School and University College Swansea, graduating with a first-class honours degree in physics in 1930.
Bowen became a key figure in the development of radar, working with Robert Watson-Watt from the mid-1930s and helping to build the airborne and ground systems that contributed to victory in the Battle of Britain and the Battle of the Atlantic. He later emigrated to Australia, where he played a leading role in establishing radio astronomy through CSIRO, and also worked at the Woomera Rocket Testing Base and on cloud-seeding rainmaking experiments in the 1940s and 1950s. He was appointed CBE in 1962 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1975. Edward died on the 12th of August, 1991.