John Lowke

John J Lowke was born in Tanunda, South Australia, on April 3, 1934, is married and lives in Sydney, Australia.

He was elected to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 1989. He graduated from the University of Adelaide with first class honors in Physics in 1955 and a PhD in 1962. He is currently an Adjunct Research Professor at the Future Industries Institute of the University of South Australia.

His employment includes: eleven years as Senior Physicist, then Fellow Scientist, at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories, Pittsburgh, USA; five years as a Senior Lecturer, then Reader, in the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Sydney; eight years as Chief, CSIRO Division of Applied Physics, Sydney, Australia.

His research interests are in the area of the theory of electrical discharges in gases. His papers on the theory of arc interruption resulted in his giving invited and Plenary papers at conferences on circuit interruption in Switzerland, Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. His more recent contributions on arc lamps, gas lasers, arc welding and lightning have also been widely quoted in text books on these subjects.