Other names Willie Coutts Name William Coutts | Died 1946 | |
Born 1885 Kinghorn, Fife Occupation Scottish physicist and military scientist | ||
Prof William Barron Coutts FRSE (1885–1946) was a Scottish physicist specialising in military science. He was generally referred to simply as Willie Coutts.
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Life
He was born at the family home of Green Croft in Kinghorn, Fife on 26 May 1885, the son of Robert Alexander Coutts, a bank accountant, and his wife, Elizabeth Martin Barron. He attended Kirkcaldy High School until 1903.
Originally accepted to study Latin and Mathematics at Edinburgh University in 1904, after limited success in these fields he transferred to study Natural Philosophy (physics) as part of a broader Science degree, but again with only partial success. However, he graduated MA in Science in 1909. He began teaching at George Heriot's School in Edinburgh thereafter. He was awarded a further BSc (Pure) by his alma mater in 1912. During this period in Edinburgh he lived in a flat at 125 Warrender Park Road. In 1913 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposers being Ralph Allan Sampson, John Brown Clark, Cargill Gilston Knott and James Robert Milne.
In the First World War he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery on 24 November 1915, serving in Gibraltar in the role of coastal defence.
During the war he had begun to specialise in trajectory paths, range-finding and optics and obtained a post as a senior lecturer at the Artillery College within the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich near London. After the war (from 1919) he was awarded a full Professorship in Military Science, a role which he continued until 1946, shortly before he died.
In 1926 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, his address then being given as 74 Vanburgh Park, Blackheath, London.
He died at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford on 16 December 1946.
Family
He was married to Isabella Muirhead Allen (1884–1973). She was from Chorlton near Manchester in England.