Ernest Lawrence

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Ernest Lawrence Lawrence (August 8, 1901-58) was a pioneering American nuclear scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron.

He is best known for his contributions to the Manhattan Project's uranium-isotope separation, as well as the establishment of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Lawrence obtained a PhD in physics at Yale in 1925 as a graduate of the University of South Dakota and University of Minnesota.

He was recruited as an associate professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1928, and became the youngest full professor two years later.

Lawrence was intrigued by a diagram of an accelerator that made high-energy particles in its library one evening.

He considered how it could be made compact, and came up with the idea of a circular accelerating chamber between an electromagnet poles.

The result was the first cyclotron. Lawrence went on to produce a line of ever larger and more expensive cyclotrons.

In 1936, Lawrence became the University of California's chief, and His Radiation Laboratory became a department.

Lawrence also approved the use of the cyclotron for physics and its use in research into medical uses of radioisotopes.

Lawrence developed electromagnetic isotope separation at the Radiation Laboratory during World War II.

It used calutrons, a sythesis of the traditional laboratory mass spectrometer and cyclotron.

At Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a large electromagnetic separation plant was installed, which was later identified as the Y-12.

The procedure was inefficient, but it worked. Lawrence advocated heavily for government support of large scientific research programs during the war and was a leading promoter of "Big Science" with its demands for large machines and big budgets.

Lawrence endorsed Edward Teller's fight for a second nuclear weapons laboratory, which Lawrence found in Livermore, California.

The Regents of the University of California renamed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory after him after his death.

Since its discovery at Berkeley in 1961, chemical element number 103 was named lawrencium in his honour.

Early life

Ernest Lawrence was born in Canton, South Dakota, on August 8, 1901. Carl Gustavus and Gunda Lawrence, both the offspring of Norwegian immigrants who had been working at the high school in Canton, where his father was also the superintendent of schools. He had a younger brother, John H. Lawrence, who would become a scientist, and was a pioneer in the field of nuclear medicine. Merle Tuve, his best friend as a child, went on to become a top physicist who would later go on to become a very gifted physicist.

Lawrence attended the public schools of Canton and Pierre, then enrolled at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, but then transferred to the University of South Dakota in Vermillion after a year. He obtained his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1922 and his Master of Arts (M.A.). William Francis Gray Swann earned a degree in physics at the University of Minnesota in 1923 under his guidance. Lawrence developed an experimental device that turned an ellipsoid in a magnetic field for his master's thesis.

Lawrence went from University of Chicago to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where Lawrence earned his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in physics in 1925 as a Sloane Fellow, focusing on the photoelectric effect in potassium vapor. He was elected a member of Sigma Xi and received a National Research Council fellowship on Swann's recommendation. He remained at Yale University with Swann as a scholar rather than using it to travel to Europe, as was customary at the time.

Lawrence continued to study the photoelectric effect with Jesse Beams from the University of Virginia. Photoelectrons appeared within 2 x 109 seconds of the photons striking the photoelectric surface, probably close to the time's measurement limit. The emission time could be reduced by shifting the light source on and off rapidly, expanding the range of energy sent a broader direction, in accordance with Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

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Early career

Lawrence received assistant professorships from the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of California between 1926 and 1927, earning a total salary of $3,500 per annum. Yale matched the assistant professorship's job right away, but at a salary of $3,000. Lawrence opted to remain at the more prestigious Yale, but some of his peers disapproved the appointment, and in the eyes of some, it did not compensate for his South Dakota immigrant history.

Lawrence was hired as an associate professor of physics at the University of California in 1928 and became a full professor two years later, becoming the university's youngest professor. Robert Gordon Sproul, who became a professor the day after Lawrence Lawrence, was a member of the Bohemian Club, and he sponsored Lawrence's membership in 1932. Lawrence's friendship with William Henry Crocker, Edwin Pauley, and John Francis Neylan was introduced through this club. They were influential men who aided him in obtaining funds for his enthralling nuclear particle experiments. There was a lot of hope for medical uses as a result of particle physics's invention, and it resulted in a substantial share of the early funding for advancements Lawrence was able to obtain.

Lawrence was at Yale and met Mary Kimberly (Molly) Blumer, George Blumer's eldest of four children, dean of Yale School of Medicine. They first met in 1926 and became engaged in 1931 in 1931, and were married on May 14, 1932 at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut. They had six children: Eric, Margaret, Mary, Robert, Barbara, and Susan. Lawrence named his son Robert after Berkeley's closest friend, Robert Oppenheimer, who was a theoretical physicist. Elsie McMillan, Molly's sister, married Edwin McMillan in 1941, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951.

Post-war career

Lawrence lobbied vigorously for government funding of large research projects following the war. He was a vocal promoter of Big Science with its calls for big machines and large budgets, and in 1946, he requested that the Radiation Laboratory conduct more than $2 million for research. Groves approved the money but cut a number of initiatives, including Seaborg's proposal for a "hot" radiation center in Berkeley and John Lawrence's for the manufacture of medical isotopes, since this need could now be better met by nuclear reactors. The University of California, which was eager to abandon its wartime military obligations, was one of the obstacles. Lawrence and Groves were able to convince Sproul not to accept a contract extension. For every dollar expended by the University of California in 1946, the Manhattan Project spent $7 on physics.

With wartime funds from the Manhattan Project, the 184-inch cyclotron was completed. It was designed as a synchrocyclotron and incorporated new Ed McMillan's new designs. On November 13, 1946, it was announced that it had been operating on November 13, 1946. Lawrence was involved in the experiments for the first time since 1935, working with Eugene Gardner in an unsuccessful attempt to produce newly discovered pi mesons with the synchrotron. In 1948, César Lattes found negative pi mesons using the apparatus they had built.

On January 1, 1947, the national laboratories' responsibility was transferred to the newly established Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Lawrence's plan for $15 million in 2005, which included a new linear accelerator and a new gigaelectronvolt synchrotron, which became known as the bevatron. The University of California's deal to manage the Los Alamos laboratory was set to come to an end on July 1, 1948, and several board members decided to relieve the university of any responsibility for operating a campus outside of California. Following lengthy talks, the university decided to extend the contract for four years and to appoint Norris Bradbury, who had previously worked as a researcher in October 1945. Lawrence got all the funds he had requested shortly after.

Lawrence, despite the fact that he voted for Franklin Roosevelt and later disapproved of Oppenheimer's attempts to unionize the Radiation Laboratory workers, a measure Lawrence characterized as "leftwandering conduct." Lawrence regarded political involvement as a waste of time that could have been better spent in scientific research and preferred that it be kept out of the Radiation Laboratory. Lawrence accepted the House Un-American Activities Committee's decisions as valid, but did not see them as representative of a systemic problem affecting academic freedom or human rights in the chilly Cold War environment of the postwar University of California. He was protective of people in his lab but also more concerned about the laboratory's reputation. He was compelled to defend Radiation Laboratory workers like Robert Serber, who were investigated by the University's Personnel Security Board. He gave staff character references in several situations. Lawrence, on the other hand, refused Robert Oppenheimer's brother Frank from the Radiation Laboratory, causing his break with Robert. Faculty members were also pushed away by an acrimonious loyalty campaign at the University of California. Lawrence refused to attend due to sickness, but a transcript in which he was critical of Oppenheimer was issued in his absence when hearings were held to remove Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance. Lawrence's achievement in creating a collaborative laboratory was marred by a lack of understanding and skepticism as a result of political tensions.

Lawrence was alarmed by the Soviet Union's first nuclear drill in August 1949. The correct reaction, he said, was an all-out attempt to produce a larger nuclear bomb: the hydrogen bomb. He suggested that accelerators rather than nuclear reactors be used to produce the neutrons needed to make the tritium, as well as plutonium, which was more difficult because higher energies were needed. Mark I, a prototype $7 million, 25 MeV linear accelerator, was first suggested for the construction of a Mark I, a prototype $7.5 million, 25 MeV linear accelerator, coded Materials Test Accelerator (MTA). He was soon discussing the Mark II, a new, also larger MTA that could produce tritium or plutonium from depleted uranium-238. Serber and Segrè attempted to solve the technical difficulties that made it impractical, but Lawrence dismissed them as unpatriotic.

Lawrence endorsed Edward Teller's call for a second nuclear weapons laboratory, which Lawrence suggested with the MTA Mark I at Livermore, California. Lawrence and Teller had to argue their case not only with the Atomic Energy Commission, which did not want it, but also with proponents who felt that Chicago was the more logical location for it. The new laboratory in Livermore was finally accepted on July 17, 1952, but the Mark II MTA was later cancelled. By this time, the Atomic Energy Commission had invested $45 million on the Mark I, which had started operations, but was mainly used to produce polonium for the nuclear weapons program. In contrast, the Cosmotron at the Brookhaven National Laboratory had produced a 1 GeV beam.

Lawrence received the Elliott Cresson Medal and the Hughes Medal in 1937, the Comstock Prize in Physics in 1938, the Dudley Medal in 1940, the Faraday Medal in 1951, and the Atomic Energy Commission's Enrico Fermi Award in 1957. He was made an Officer of the Legion d'Honneur in 1948 and was the first recipient of the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the US Military Academy in 1958.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered Lawrence to Geneva, Switzerland, to assist in negotiating a proposed Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. Lewis Strauss, the AEC's Chairman, had pressed for Lawrence's admission. Both men argued for the development of the hydrogen bomb, and Strauss was instrumental in raising funds for Lawrence's cyclotron in 1939. Strauss was keen to bring Lawrence as part of the Geneva delegation because Lawrence was known to encourage continuing nuclear testing. Lawrence decided to go, but he became sick while in Geneva, and was rushed back to Stanford University Hospital. Surgeons were able to resolve a portion of his large intestine, but they discovered other conditions, including severe atherosclerosis in one of his arteries. He died in Palo Alto Hospital on August 27, 1958, nine days after his 57th birthday. Molly did not want a public funeral but accepted a memorial service at Berkeley's First Congregationalist Church. Clark Kerr, the president of the University of California, delivered the eulogy.

The Regents of University of California renamed two of the university's nuclear research sites after Lawrence: the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, just 23 days after his death. In 1959, Ernest Orlando Lawrence Lawrence Award was established in his honor. After him, chemical element number 103, which was discovered at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1961, was named lawrencium. In 1968, Lawrence Hall of Science's public science education center was established in his honor. His papers are on display in the Bancroft Library at the University of California in Berkeley.

Lawrence's widow petitioned the University of California Board of Regents on several occasions to remove her husband's name from the Livermore Laboratory, which it denied each time. She lived in Walnut Creek, California, at the age of 92, outlived her husband by more than 44 years and died on January 6, 2003.

George B. Kauffman wrote that he wrote that he had to die:

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