Two Nobel Laureates at St Anne's
A remarkable wedding in the history of St. Anne’s
Outside these doors on 11 August 1925, Cambridge physicist James Chadwick married Aileen Maud Stewart-Brown at St. Anne’s. Standing beside the couple at the church’s main entrance were best man Pyotr Kapitza (Chadwick's close friend and fellow physicist) and Aileen’s younger brother, Patrick Stewart-Brown, who served as page.
At the time, the discovery that would define Chadwick’s career still lay ahead: in 1932 he demonstrated the existence of the neutron, earning the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics. He was knighted in 1945 for his wartime atomic research and his leadership of the British scientific mission on the Manhattan Project.
More than half a century later, Kapitza would also be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, making that summer gathering at St. Anne's doors an extraordinary moment bringing together two future Nobel laureates.
St. Anne’s Main Entrance
Outside these doors on 11 August 1925, future Nobel laureate James Chadwick stood with his newly wedded wife, Aileen Stewart-Brown, accompanied by best man and fellow future Nobel winner, Pyotr Kapitza, as well as page Patrick Stewart-Brown.
Aileen was the elder daughter of Hamilton and Cesarine Stewart-Brown of Oakfield, Grassendale.
At the time of his marriage, Chadwick was already an accomplished experimental physicist working alongside Ernest Rutherford at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, but the discovery that would make his name still lay seven years ahead. In 1932, Chadwick demonstrated the existence of the neutron, transforming our understanding of the atomic nucleus. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1935.
That same year, Chadwick returned to Liverpool as Professor of Physics at the University of Liverpool, where he built an internationally important centre for nuclear research. During the Second World War he became a central figure in Britain’s atomic research and later led the British scientific mission working on the Manhattan Project. He was knighted in 1945.
A Liverpool family connection
Aileen’s connection with St. Anne’s went back well before her own wedding. Her paternal grandparents, Stewart Henry Brown and Emily Frances Sarah Birkett, had also been married at the church, and the family became well established in south Liverpool. By the time of Aileen’s marriage, her parents, Hamilton and Cesarine Stewart-Brown, were living at Oakfield in Grassendale.
There was another family connection to the ceremony itself. The marriage was conducted by the Rev. Stephen Leadley Brown, a cousin of the bride, while Aileen’s younger brother Patrick Stewart-Brown acted as page. James and Aileen also chose a significant date: 11 August was the wedding anniversary of Aileen’s parents, who had married exactly 28 years earlier.
Chadwick’s best man at St. Anne’s had an equally remarkable career. Pyotr Kapitza, a Russian physicist and another member of Rutherford’s circle at Cambridge, became one of the twentieth century’s leading experimental physicists.
In 1978, more than half a century after standing beside Chadwick at his wedding in Aigburth, Kapitza too received the Nobel Prize in Physics, for his pioneering work in low-temperature physics.
The wedding therefore occupies a remarkable place in St. Anne’s history. On an August day in 1925, a future discoverer of the neutron married a young woman whose family had longstanding connections with the church, while another future Nobel laureate stood beside him as best man.
James Chadwick (right) with his best man, Pyotr Kapitza, August 1925. Both men would later receive the Nobel Prize in Physics: Chadwick in 1935 and Kapitza in 1978.
Source: Charles D. King, Chadwick, Liverpool and the Bomb, reproducing Hartcup & Allibone, Cockcroft and the Atom, p. 33.