Thomas Eckersley


Thomas Lydwell Eckersley FRS was an English theoretical physicist and engineer.

Education and early life

Eckersley was born in Gibraltar. He was educated at Bedales School, University College, London, where he gained a degree in engineering, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a second degree in mathematics.

Career and research

In 1919 he joined the Marconi Company as a theoretical research engineer and stayed there for the remainder of his career. He devoted most of his career to research into radio waves reflected downwards from the Heaviside layer and how they interfered with direction finding equipment.

Awards and honours

Eckersley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1938

Personal life

Eckersley's mother Rachel was the fifth child of Victorian biologist Thomas Henry Huxley renowned for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Eckersley's younger brother was the BBC's first Chief Engineer Peter Eckersley. In 1920, Eckersley married author Barry Pain's, daughter Eva Amelia.