John Currie Gunn

Sir John Currie Gunn CBE FRSE (13 September 1916 – 26 July 2002) was an influential Scottish mathematician and physicist.

Early life and education

Gunn was born at 19 Kelvinside Gardens East, Glasgow, the son of Richard Robertson Gunn, a tailor and clothier, and his wife, Jane Blair, née Currie.

Gunn attended Glasgow Academy school and subsequently studied at Glasgow University where he was awarded the Logan Prize as Best Arts Student of the Year in 1937. He graduated with a degree in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Gunn went on to further study at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he conducted research in theoretical physics. His research led him to the development of counter and firing systems for mines, which were used during World War II. As a scholar of St. John’s College, Cambridge, he completed Parts II and III of the Mathematics Tripos examinations.

Career

Just before World War II began, Gunn worked for three months with the thermodynamicist R.H. Fowler. He worked in the Admiralty scientific service from 1940 to 1945. He was part of a team of scientists and engineers led by Harrie Massey based first at Teddington, and then at the Admiralty Mining Establishment attached to HMS Vernon at Portsmouth. He was involved in researching countermeasures against German magnetic mines and in the development of a range of British non-contact mines. The team included many young physicists who would go on to make major scientific contributions, among them Francis Crick.

John Currie

John Currie may refer to:

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John Currie (artist)

John Currie (ca. 1884 – 11 October 1914) was an English painter. Born in Staffordshire, the illegitimate son of an Ulster-Scottish father who was a 'navvy' working on the railways and an English mother, he worked as an artist in the Potteries, painting ceramics, before going to the Royal College of Art in 1905, and later becoming Master of Life Painting at Bristol. He married in 1907. In the summer of 1910 he briefly attended the Slade School of Art, where he joined the 'Neo-Primitive' group that included fellow Slade students Mark Gertler, C.R.W. Nevinson, Edward Wadsworth, Stanley Spencer and Adrian Allinson. The contemporary art collector Michael Sadleir described him as 'blazing with genius'; others likened him to a character in a Dostoevsky novel.

Shortly before the start of World War I he travelled to France, painting for a time in Brittany. Currie had previously abandoned his wife and young son to begin a long and tempestuous affair with an attractive though unintelligent Irish model, Dolly Henry. (In full, Dorothy Eileen Henry, though sometimes written O'Henry). This ended with Currie shooting her dead at her Chelsea apartment; he then turned the gun on himself, and died in hospital a few days later. A fictionalized account of this event appears in Gilbert Cannan's 1916 novel Mendel. Currie's colleague, the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, remarked, 'He was a great painter, and a magnificent fellow.'

John Currie (athletic director)

John Currie is the current athletic director at Kansas State University. He took over for departed Bob Krause on June 7, 2009. Currie received a five-year contract at a base salary of $350,000 per year with incentives to be agreed upon. He was the former Executive Associate Athletics Director at the University of Tennessee before coming to Manhattan.

Currie joined the Tennessee staff in 1997 as Executive Director of the Volunteer Athletic Scholarship Fund. Following a two-year stint as Assistant Athletics Director at Wake Forest University.

He began his professional career at Wake Forest in 1993 as a Deacon Club intern before being named Assistant Deacon Club Director in 1994, a position he held until 1997.

Currie earned his masters in sports management from Tennessee in 2003 and is a 1993 Wake Forest graduate. He and his wife Mary Lawrence, have three children, Jack, Virginia and Mary-Dell.

References

Currie

Coordinates: 55°53′45″N 3°18′27″W / 55.895956°N 3.307439°W / 55.895956; -3.307439

Currie (Scottish Gaelic: Currach) is a suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland, situated 7 miles south west of the city centre. A former village within the County of Midlothian, it lies to the south west of the city, between Juniper Green (NE) and Balerno (SW) on the Lanark Road. Administratively, Currie falls within the jurisdiction of the City of Edinburgh Council. It gives its name to a civil parish.

In 2001 the population of Currie was 8,550 and it contained 3,454 houses.

Etymology

There is no accepted derivation of the name Currie but it is possibly from the Scottish Gaelic word curagh/curragh, a wet or boggy plain, or from the Brythonic word curi, a dell or hollow. The neighbouring suburb of Balerno derives its name from Scottish Gaelic, whilst the nearby Pentland Hills derive their name from Brythonic, so either is possible.

History

The earliest record of a settlement in the Currie area is a Bronze Age razor (1800 BC) found at Kinleith Mill and the stone cists (500 BC) at Duncan's Belt and Blinkbonny. There are a few mentions of this area in mediaeval and early modern documents. One of the first is when Robert of Kildeleith became Chancellor of Scotland in 1249. Kildeleith means Chapel by the Leith, and survives today as Kinleith. Robert the Bruce gave Riccarton as a wedding present in 1315 and in 1392 the land passed to the family of Bishop Wardlaw. In 1612 the land went to Ludovic Craig, a Senator of the College of Justice. In 1818 it passed to the female line and became the property of the Gibson-Craigs.

Currie (surname)

Currie is a surname in the English language. The name has numerous origins.

Etymology

In some cases it originated as an habitational name, derived from Currie in Midlothian, Scotland. In other cases it originated as a habitational name, derived from Corrie, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. A third origin for the surname is that it originated as a Scottish spelling of the Irish surname Curry, a surname which has several origins. A fourth origin of the surname, particularly on Arran, is as an Anglicised form of the Scottish Gaelic MacMhuirich. The Hebridean MacMhuirich evolved in such a way that the forms McVurich and McCurrie first appeared in the 17th century, and by the 18th century Currie is found on Islay, and on Uist by the 19th century. Another origin of the surname is from Curry, in Somerset, England. In some cases the name may also be derived from the Old French curie, which means "kitchen".

Early forms of the surname include: æt Curi, in about 1075; and de Cury, in 1212. Both forms are derived from the place name in Somerset. Other early forms include: atte Curie, in SRS 1327; and atte Corye. Early forms of the surname, derived from a Scottish place name, is de Curry, in 1179; and de Curri, in 1210. An early form of the surname, when derived from MacMhuirich is M'Currie and Currie, in the early 18th century.

Currie (disambiguation)

Currie is a suburb of Edinburgh.

Currie may also refer to:

Surname

Places

Rugby

See also