Ernest Lawrence

Born on 8 August 1901 in Canton, South Dakota, Ernest Lawrence was a Nobel Prize–winning physicist who invented the cyclotron. Lawrence earned his PhD in physics in 1925 from Yale University. His rise in academia was meteoric: In 1928 he accepted a position as associate professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley; in 1930 he became the youngest professor at Berkeley; and in 1936 he became director of the Radiation Laboratory. It was in 1929 that he developed the cyclotron, a powerful particle accelerator that was instrumental in the production of fissionable isotopes. Ten years later he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements.” Lawrence became known as the “Atom Smasher.” During World War II, he was called on to serve with the Manhattan Project and helped develop the atomic bomb. Later, however, as a member of the US delegation at the 1958 Geneva Conference, he worked to suspend atomic bomb testing. He died soon afterward, on 27 August 1958, following a flare-up of chronic colitis. Although Lawrence lived only to the age of 57, he won almost every major award in his field, founded both the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and helped usher in the era of “big science.” (Photo credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Segrè Collection)

Date in History: 8 August 1901