Ernest Lawrence and the Cyclotron.
On August 8 1901 pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born. He was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the cyclotron. He is also known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project and for founding the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Ernest Lawrence grew up in South Dakota. His parents were offsprings of Norwegian immigrants and taught at the high school in Canton, South Dakota. His mother, Gunda, remembered his enormous curiosity when he was still a child. Apparently, the two-year-old Lawrence managed to light a fire with matches and burn down all of his clothes. His mother further remembered that "was always of a happy disposition and life to him seemed to be one thrill after another, but he was also always persistent and insistent!". With his high school friends, Lawrence a very early short-wave radio transmitting station and later applied his experiences to the acceleration of protons . Lawrence enrolled at the University of South Dakota and sold kitchenware to farming households in order to finance his education. This training was later helpful, when Lawrence to sell scientific projects to government officials and funding agencies. After earning his Bachelor degree the young physicist enrolled at the University of Minnesota in order to finish his master studies and he moved to Yale where Lawrence his Ph.D in 1925. Before even turning 27 years old, Lawrence an associate professor position at Berkeley where he became the institution's youngest full professor three years later . In 1936 he became Director of the University's Radiation Laboratory as well, remaining in these posts until his death . It is assumed that while reading a scientific paper by Rolf Widerøe about a device that produced high-energy particles, he was inspired to work on a more compact accelerator that would fit into the Berkeley laboratories. The very first cyclotron he constructed was apparently only 10cm in diameter and consisted of brass, wire, and sealing wax. In this period, Lawrence his research group built a bigger machine. Lawrence provided the equipment needed for experiments in high energy physics and he received his patent for the cyclotron in 1934 which he assigned to the Research Corporation. He was invited to the 1933 Solvay Conference to give a presentation on the cyclotron and Lawrence the apparatus to a 37-inch cyclotron in June 1937 Two years later, it was used for the first time to bombard iron and produce its first radioactive isotopes. In the same year, the first cancer patient received neutron therapy from the cyclotron. Ernest Lawrence was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1939 and was the first at Berkeley to become a Nobel Laureate. The scientists was also known as an incredibly prolific writer. Most of his work was published in. The Physical Review and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He was decorated with numerous awards and prizes including Medal for Merit and he held honorary doctorates of thirteen American and one British University, the University of Glasgow . Ernest Orlando Lawrence passed away on August 27 1958. At yovisto, you may be interested in a video lecture on Particle Accelerators at Berkeley University by Professor Norman.