Thomas Alty

Thomas Alty FRSE FIP FRSC LLD (1899–1982) was a Scottish physicist and university administrator who became Chancellor of Rhodes University in South Africa.

He was born in Liverpool on 10 September 1899.^[1]

He studied Science at Liverpool University then did postgraduate studies at Cambridge University. In 1924 he began lecturing in Physics at Durham University. In 1925 aged only 25 he was made a Professor of Physics at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. In 1934 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.^[2]

In 1935 he returned to Britain as Professor of Applied Physics at Glasgow University. In 1936 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Edward Taylor Jones, John Walton, Sir Edward Battersby Bailey and John Graham Kerr. He resigned and was re-elected in 1942. His second proposers were Edward Hindle, Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker, James Pickering Kendall and James Ritchie.^[3]

In 1948 he left Britain again to become a Master at Rhodes University in South Africa in 1951 becoming both Principal and Vice Chancellor.^[4] Glasgow University gave him an honorary doctorate (LLD) in 1953.

He died in Birmingham in England on 2 May 1982.^[5]