a Bachelor of Music student at the University of Melbourne, at St James's Church of England in Ivanhoe on 13 February 1923. She did not complete her studies, but instead accompanied him to England, sailing on the SS Berrima. They had two sons; the first, Leon Henry Martin, born in Cambridge on 25 April 1924. When Gladys became pregnant again, she decided to return to Australia to be with her parents. Their second son, Raymond Leslie Martin, was born on 3 February 1926. Leon died on the return voyage to England on the SS Benalla in July 1926. Academic career Martin enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge, and continued his research into X-rays under Rutherford's supervision. He completed his PhD in 1926. The results of this work were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, and the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He was awarded an International Research Fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation, allowing him to stay on into 1927. He later recalled that: Martin applied for a position as a lecturer at the University of Melbourne in January 1927. He was successful, and returned to Australia in August 1927. His corner of the Cavendish Laboratory was taken over by Ernest Walton. Martin continued his research into X-rays, working with Laby, J. C. Bower and F. F. H. Eggleston. He won the David Syme Research Prize in 1934, for his investigation of the Auger effect, the emission of electrons after ionisation by X-rays. Work with the chemical element xenon gave important confirmation of Paul Dirac's quantum field theory. In 1937 he became an Associate Professor in Natural Philosophy, and second-in-charge of the Natural Philosophy Department. With the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Martin commenced projects at the request of the Australian Defence Forces, investigating a proximity fuse for the Australian Army and an acoustic communications system for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) that would allow an instructor and trainee pilot to converse with each other. He led a team that built a prototype Height and Range Finder No. 3, Mark IV, for the Army, but the Army cancelled the order in August 1941 when the prototype was nearly complete. In January 1942, he was seconded to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research's Radiophysics Laboratory in Sydney to develop secret valves for a Radio Direction Finder. He teamed up with Eric Burhop