Ernest Lawrence
8 August 1901 – 27 August 1958
Ernest Orlando Lawrence (1901-1958) was an American physicist who invented the cyclotron particle accelerator, for which he received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics. He founded the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, pioneering large-scale 'big science', and led the electromagnetic uranium-separation effort of the Manhattan Project. The element lawrencium and two national laboratories are named after him.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Ernest Lawrence.
- A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) Overlapped 57 years →
- Alice Paul (1885–1977) Overlapped 57 years →
- Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Overlapped 57 years →
- Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) Overlapped 57 years →
- Buster Keaton (1895–1966) Overlapped 57 years →
- C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Overlapped 57 years →
Life events
Lawrence was born to Norwegian-American parents; his father was an educator and school superintendent.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLawrence completed his doctorate with a dissertation on the photoelectric effect in potassium vapor.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLawrence became an associate professor of physics at Berkeley, and in 1930 became the university's youngest full professor.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLawrence conceived the cyclotron in 1929 and, with graduate student M. Stanley Livingston, built the first working model that accelerated protons in a spiral path using a magnetic field.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLawrence established the Radiation Laboratory, forerunner of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as a center for building ever-larger particle accelerators.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLawrence married Molly Blumer, daughter of the dean of the Yale School of Medicine; the couple had six children.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLawrence received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, the first Nobel for a Berkeley faculty member.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLawrence developed the calutron mass separators used at Oak Ridge to enrich uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLawrence died of complications from ulcerative colitis at the age of 57, shortly after falling ill while serving on a U.S. delegation in Geneva.
Source: en.wikipedia.org