Ernest Orlando Lawrence

By: Jordan Lembke ♥

InFo

• Born August 8th, 1901 in Canton, South Dakota• Parents: Carl and Gunda Lawrence• Went to USD in 1919, got his B.A. in chemistry• Received his M.A. at the University of

Minnesota the following year.

InFo (continued)

• Spent a year at the University of Chicago and received his PhD from Yale in 1925.

• Continued at Yale for 3 years.• Was appointed Associate Professor of Physics

at the University of California in 1928.• Married Mary Kimberly Blumer in 1932. Had 6

kids.

• Made vital contributions to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.

• After the war he played a part in the attempt to obtain international agreement on the suspension of atomic-bomb testing.

• Was a member of the U.S. delegation at the 1958 Geneva Conference on this subject.

• Research centered on nuclear physics. • Early work was on ionization phenomena and

the measurement of ionization potentials of metal vapors.

• Invented the cyclotron in 1929.• Cyclotron: device for accelerating nuclear

particles to very high velocities without use of high voltages.

• 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 collaborated with him in studying medical and biological applications of the cyclotron

• His brother, Dr. John Lawrence, collaborated with him in studying medical and biological applications of the cyclotron

• 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 instrument was used to generate artificially cosmic particles called mesons

• later the studies were extended to antiparticles.

• inventor of method for obtaining time intervals as small as three billionths of a second

• Used to study the discharge phenomena of an electric spark.

• Devised a very precise method for measuring the e/m ratio of the electron

• Most of his work was published in The Physical Review and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

MEDALS

• Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Comstock Prize of the National Academy of Sciences, the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, the Duddell Medal of the Royal Physical Society, the Faraday Medal, and the Enrico Fermi Award

WORKS CITED • "Ernest Orlando Lawrence." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2010.

Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 19 Feb. 2010 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/332920/Ernest-Orlando-Lawrence

• Bellis, Mary. "Ernest Lawrence - Cyclotron ". February 19, 2010 http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllawrence.htm.

• "Ernest O. Lawrence (1901 - 1958)". National Science Foundation. February 19, 2010 http://www.atomicarchive.com/Bios/Lawrence.shtml.