Landmarks of an Extraordinary Life1901: Ernest Orlando Lawrence is born, August 8, Canton, South Dakota. 1922: Earns B.S. in chemistry, University of South Dakota. 1923: Earns M.A. in physics, University of Minnesota. 1925: Earns Ph.D. in physics, Yale University. 1928: An assistant professor of physics at Yale, Lawrence is recruited as associate professor by the University of California. 1929: Conceives the principle of the cyclotron. 1930: At 29 becomes UC’s youngest professor; his student, Edlefsen, builds a working model of the cyclotron, and Lawrence describes the principle to the National Academy of Sciences. 1931: In August, his student Livingston’s 11-inch version of the cyclotron accelerates protons to 1.1 MeV. That month UC President Sproul gives Lawrence the former Civil Engineering Test Facility on campus ("a shack") for use as a radiation laboratory. 1932: Marries Mary "Molly"
Blumer in New Haven, Connecticut in May; eventually they have six children. 1933:Attends the distinguished Solvay Congress in Brussels, the only American invited that year and only the eighth ever; he announces that deuterons are unstable, but later retracts this. 1934: Lawrence’s "fruitful error" regarding deuterium inspires Alvarez’s unexpected discovery, using the 60-inch cyclotron, that tritium (hydrogen-3) is not stable — but helium-3 is. 1935: Lawrence’s younger brother John, a medical doctor, joins the laboratory and initiates research in nuclear medicine. 1936: The Radiation Laboratory is officially established within the UC Physics Department with Lawrence as director; in Italy, Segrè examines an "invaluable gift" of material irradiated by the 27-inch cyclotron and discovers the first artificial element, later named technetium. 1937: Seaborg earns Ph.D., joins the Rad Lab and "puts the chemistry in nuclear chemistry." 1939: Lawrence wins the Nobel Prize for the invention of the cyclotron and his work on artificial radioactivity. 1940: Using cyclotrons, Kamen and Ruben discover carbon-14; McMillan and Abelson discover neptunium; Seaborg, McMillan, Kennedy, and Wahl discover plutonium; the foundation of the 184-Inch Cyclotron is poured in a cow pasture above the UC campus. 1941: The Radiation Laboratory turns to defense work . 1946: The 184-Inch Cyclotron is completed as the Synchro-Cyclotron. 1947: Calvin uses carbon-14 as tracer to study photosynthesis. 1948: The 184-Inch Synchro-Cyclotron produces muons and pions artificially; Alvarez invents the proton linac. 1950: Anger invents the scintillation camera ("Anger camera"); Lawrence and Alvarez establish a research facility at Livermore Naval Air Station to convert uranium to plutonium with proton linacs. 1952: The Livermore site of the Radiation Laboratory is established as the nation’s second weapons laboratory. (Later the Berkeley site excludes classified research.) 1953: Glaser, inspired by bubbles in a glass of beer, invents the bubble chamber and detects cosmic-ray muons. 1954: The Bevatron is completed and Alvarez’s liquid-hydrogen version of the bubble chamber is installed. 1955: At the Bevatron, Segrè, Chamberlain and others discover the antiproton; many other subatomic particles are detected. 1957: The SuperHILAC is commissioned for heavy-ion research. 1958: Eisenhower assigns Lawrence
as technical advisor to nuclear test-ban talks in Geneva, which he attends
despite illness.
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