Blackwell, Donald Eustace

As a staff member at the Solar Physics Observatory in Cambridge in the 1950s, Donald Blackwell carried out important research on the solar corona, the granulation of the solar surface and the zodiacal light. In 1960 he became the 18th Savilian Professor of astronomy at Oxford University, where he successfully built up the Department of Astrophysics. His laboratory studies to improve the quality of atomic data needed for compositional analysis of stars have proved very influential in enabling reliable investigations of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy.