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About Richard Makinson
- Richard Elliss Bodenham Makinson (5 May 1913 – 15 January 1979), also R.E.B.
- or Dick Makinson, was an Australian physicist known for his contributions to solid-state physics and amorphous semiconductors. Makinson was born in Burwood a suburb in the Inner West of Sydney.
- He first enrolled at North Sydney Boys High School and later completed secondary education at Sydney Church of England Grammar (Shore) School.
- He graduated with first-class honours in physics from the University of Sydney in 1935.
- Later he traveled to England where he was awarded a PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge in 1939.Makinson contributed to the understanding of thermal conductivity in crystals.
- His work in this area is cited in the classical book Introduction to Solid State Physics by Charles Kittel.
- He also contributed to the physics of amorphous semiconductors.
- This research is cited in the book Quantum Electron Theory of Amorphous Conductors.During the Cold War, Makinson was suspected of communist sympathies and explicitly denounced by noted anti-communist William Wentworth.
- As a result, he was denied a number of teaching positions, including a research chair at Sydney University, where he taught from 1939 to 1968.Makinson was a friend and colleague of John Clive Ward and assisted in the creation of the physics program at Macquarie University where he obtained a position in 1968.
- In the late 1970s he was a supporter of the Macquarie science reform movement.Makinson died of cancer, at Wahroonga, a northern suburb of Sydney, in 1979.
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