Ernest Lawrence - The Nobel Prize in Physics 1939
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Nuclear Engineering Physics |
| Special Topic(s): |
History of Technology |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Reference - Article/Document |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
Organization:Nobelprize.com |
| Description: | Nobel Prize biography. Exerpt: "In 1928 he was appointed Associate Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and two years later he became Professor, being the youngest professor at Berkeley. In 1936 he became Director of the University's Radiation Laboratory as well, remaining in these posts until his death. During World War II he made vital contributions to the development of the atomic bomb, holding several official appointments in the project. After the war he played a part in the attempt to obtain international agreement on the suspension of atomic-bomb testing, being a member of the U.S. delegation at the 1958 Geneva Conference on this subject. Lawrence's research centred on nuclear physics. His early work was on ionization phenomena and the measurement of ionization potentials of metal vapours. In 1929 he invented the cyclotron, a device for accelerating nuclear particles to very high velocities without the use of high voltages. The swiftly moving particles were used to bombard atoms of various elements, disintegrating the atoms to form, in some cases, completely new elements. Hundreds of radioactive isotopes of the known elements were also discovered. His brother, Dr. John Lawrence, who became Director of the University's Medical Physics Laboratory, collaborated with him in studying medical and biological applications of the cyclotron and himself became a consultant to the Institute of Cancer Research at Columbia. Larger and more powerful versions of the cyclotron were built by Lawrence. In 1941 the instrument was used to generate artificially the cosmic particles called mesons, and later the studies were extended to antiparticles." |
| Rating: | No Rating |
| Related Resources | |
| References: |
Berkeley Cyclotron |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | October 2007 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1939/lawrenc |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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