Supervision of the Observatory was handed to the department of Geography, to ensure the continuity of the meteorological record, which had been uninterrupted since 1841. E.F. Baxter was employed as a seismologist until 1937.
The number of Physics students has exploded. The Dawson Building requires an extension. They plan to add more lecture halls, labs and small rooms for post Graduates to occupy. It had been thought that Chemistry would attract the most students, but initially it was Physics, so most of the new building was used for Physics labs. The teaching system had found its feet - examination results began to fit a bell curve as expected.
The new buildings were well planned but not warm. In 1926, C.W. Gibby described the Dawson Building as 'remarkable for its external simplicity and ugliness, and for deficient internal heating'. One story describes students taking an exam, being allowed every half hour to go to the front and warm their hands over a row of Bunsen Burners.
Prior to the Second World War, there were plenty of applicants to the scientific courses in Durham, but numbers were not matched by funding. When this became apparent, the number of students briefly plateaued.
This year, a Milne-Shaw seismograph was installed in the now empty Almucantar house. Astronomy was waning to a close.
The observatory was redecorated and rearranged, in an attempt to reinvigorate astronomy. The work was paid for by selling the old Fraunhofer and other equipment. When E.F. Baxter compiled an inventory in 1947, only some instrument parts were still in the observatory, including the wooden tube of the Fraunhofer.
In the first ten years of the department, 118 publications were made.
The three sections of the University were organised into the Durham division and the Newcastle division. Each with their own council and academic board. Eight new boards of faculties were created.
This decision was in alignment with the requests of the Science department, and somewhat maligned by the arts. Masson resigned as head of science department. The new joint board split into smaller separate departments for each field of study.
In this year, Dr. A. Gluckauf was appointed to complete the meteorological requirements in the Observatory. Once the Second World War started, being a foreign national, he was no longer legally allowed to continue the work, and was replaced by a number of deputies, with intentions to find a more permanent solution later.
The physics teaching staff increases from two to three. Construction of second story commenced for the Dawson building, but progress was halted when the Second World War broke out. For the following years, the shell of the first floor was used for storage and training the University Air Squadron.
During the war, Durham provided six-month science courses to RAF cadets. The most successful candidates were invited to return to the university after the war, which many chose to do. In later sessions, there were around a hundred cadets in attendance. The courses began with only mathematics and physics, but continued with chemistry and botany.
Bursaries were provided by the government to teach 'The Principles of Radio'. A two-year honours degree was introduced in high frequency electrical studies.
The University's class sizes were getting crowded in the 1940s, as the demand for student places grew
