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Ernest Lawrence

Ernest Lawrence
Head and shoulders of a man wearing rimless glasses, and a dark suit and tie
Lawrence in 1939
Born Ernest Orlando Lawrence
(1901-08-08)August 8, 1901
Canton, South Dakota, United States
Died August 27, 1958(1958-08-27) (aged 57)
Palo Alto, California, United States
Residence Berkeley, California
Nationality American
Fields Physics
Institutions University of California
Yale University
Alma mater University of South Dakota, B.A.
University of Minnesota, M.A.
Yale University, Ph.D.
Thesis The Photoelectric Effect in Potassium Vapor as a Function of the Frequency of the Light (1924)
Doctoral advisor William F.G. Swann
Doctoral students Edwin McMillan
Chien-Shiung Wu
Milton S. Livingston
Kenneth Ross MacKenzie
John Reginald Richardson
Known for Invention of the cyclotron
Manhattan Project
Notable awards Hughes Medal (1937)
Elliott Cresson Medal (1937)
(1938)
Nobel Prize in Physics (1939)
Duddell Medal and Prize (1940)
Holley Medal (1942)
Medal for Merit (1946)
Officer de la Legion d'Honneur (1948)
William Procter Prize (1951)
Faraday Medal (1952)
Enrico Fermi Award (1957)
Sylvanus Thayer Award (1958)
Spouse Mary K. "Molly" (Blumer) Lawrence (1910–2003)
(m. 1932–1958, his death)
Children 2 sons, 4 daughters
Signature

Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was a pioneering American nuclear scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is also known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, as well as for founding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

A graduate of the University of South Dakota and University of Minnesota, Lawrence obtained a PhD in physics at Yale in 1925. In 1928, he was hired as an associate professor of physics at the University of California, becoming the youngest full professor there two years later. In its library one evening, Lawrence was intrigued by a diagram of an accelerator that produced high-energy particles. He contemplated how it could be made compact, and came up with an idea for a circular accelerating chamber between the poles of an electromagnet. The result was the first cyclotron.

Lawrence went on to build a series of ever larger and more expensive cyclotrons. His Radiation Laboratory became an official department of the University of California in 1936, with Lawrence as its director. In addition to the use of the cyclotron for physics, Lawrence also supported its use in research into medical uses of radioisotopes. During World War II, Lawrence developed electromagnetic isotope separation at the Radiation Laboratory. It used devices known as calutrons, a hybrid of the standard laboratory mass spectrometer and cyclotron. A huge electromagnetic separation plant was built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which came to be called Y-12. The process was inefficient, but it worked.


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