Samuel Devons was a renowned nuclear physicist, academic, and historian. Born in Bangor, Great Britain, on September 30, 1914, Devons enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge University at the age of 16. After graduating in 1935, he continued his studies there, earning a doctorate in 1939. During World War II, Devons served as a British intelligence officer in Germany working on defense projects before accepting a series of professorial appointments at Cambridge University, Imperial College, and the Universities of London and Manchester. In 1960, he moved to the United States to teach at Columbia University where he served as chairman of the Physics department from 1963-1967. An acclaimed scholar of physics, he specialized in the works of Franklin, Rabi, Volta, Rutherford, and Newton.

During the 1980s, Devons organized and served as president of the Joseph Priestley Society at Columbia. The group was created to promote collaborative interactions between high school science teachers and university faculty. Devons retired in 1984 but remained actively involved with the university, serving as Emeritus Professor and was widely recognized as the macebearer for its annual Commencement ceremonies. In the late 1990s, he founded the Emeritus Professors in Columbia (EPIC), which was devoted to fostering open dialogue and communication among current and former faculty members as an alternative to increasing administrative centralization.

Devons died of congestive heart failure at the age of 92 on December 6, 2006 in Manhattan.