Mark Oliphant

Sir Marcus Mark Laurence Elwin Oliphant, AC, KBE, FRS, FAA was an Australian physicist and humanitarian who played an important role in the first experimental demonstration of nuclear fusion and also the development of nuclear weapons.

Marcus Mark Laurence Elwin Oliphant was born onOctober 1901 in Kent Town, a suburb of Adelaide. His father was Harold George Baron Oliphant, a civil servant with the South Australian Engineering and Water Supply Department and parttime lecturer in Economics with the Workers Educational Association. His mother was Beatrice Edith Fanny Oliphant, ne Tucker, an artist. He was named after Marcus Clarke, the Australian author, and Laurence Oliphant, the British traveller and mystic. Most people called him Mark this became official when he was knighted in 1959. He had four younger brothers, Roland, Keith, Nigel and Donald. His parents were theosophists, and as such were opposed to eating meat. Marcus became a lifelong vegetarian while a boy, after witnessing the slaughter of pigs on a farm. He was found to be completely deaf in one ear and he needed glasses for severe astigmatism and shortsightedness.

Source: Wikipedia