Daniel Joseph Bradley, Irish Physicist, Born

Daniel Joseph Bradley FRS FInstP MRIA (18 January 1928 – 7 February 2010) was an Irish physicist, and Emeritus Professor of Optical Electronics, at Trinity College, Dublin.

Born on 18 January 1928, he was one of four surviving children of John and Margaret Bradley, Lecky Road, Derry. He left school to work as a telegraph boy but returned to education at St Columb’s College. Having trained as a teacher at St Mary’s College, Belfast, Northern Ireland, he qualified in 1947.

While teaching in a primary school in Derry he studied for a degree in mathematics as an external student of the University of London, and was awarded a degree in 1953.

Moving to London where he taught mathematics in a grammar school, he decided to register for an evening course at Birkbeck College. His first choice was mathematics but as he already had a degree in the subject the admissions staff suggested that he should study physics, which they said was “a bit like mathematics”.

In 1957, after four years of part-time study, he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in physics by Birkbeck, achieving the highest marks in his final exams in the University of London overall. He next joined Royal Holloway College as an assistant lecturer and simultaneously enrolled as a PhD student, working on Fabry–Pérot interferometer etalon-based high-resolution spectroscopy supervised by Samuel Tolansky, and received a PhD in 1961.