Thomas Lydwell Eckersley FRS

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 (27 December 1886–15 February 1959) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 theoretical physicist

Theoretical physics

Theoretical physics is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena...

 and engineer

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

.

Eckersley was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He was educated at Bedales School

Bedales School

Bedales School is a co-educational independent school situated in Hampshire, in the south east of England. Founded in 1893 by John Haden Badley in reaction to the limitations of conventional Victorian schools, today the school is one of the most expensive in the UK, charging £9,985 per term for a...

, University College, London, where he gained a degree in engineering, and Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, where he gained a second degree in mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

. In 1919 he joined the Marconi Company

Marconi Company

The Marconi Company Ltd. was founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 as The Wireless Telegraph & Signal 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

Radio waves

Radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum longer than infrared light. Radio waves have frequencies from 300 GHz to as low as 3 kHz, and corresponding wavelengths from 1 millimeter to 100 kilometers. Like all other electromagnetic waves,...

 reflected downwards from the Heaviside layer and how they interfered with direction finding

Direction finding

Direction finding refers to the establishment of the direction from which a received signal was transmitted. This can refer to radio or other forms of wireless communication...

 equipment.

Family

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 engineer Peter Eckersley.

In 1920, Eckersley married author Barry Pain

Barry Pain

Barry Eric Odell Pain was an English journalist, poet and writer.-Biography:Born in Cambridge, Barry Pain was educated at Sedbergh School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He became a prominent contributor to The Granta...

's, daughter Eva Amelia.