Ernest Lawrence Nobel
FEB 29, 2016
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031163
On this day in 1940, nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics at a ceremony in Berkeley, California. He did not attend the usual ceremony in Sweden because of World War II. Lawrence invented the cyclotron, a high-energy particle accelerator that enabled unprecedented studies of atomic nuclei. During the war he was involved with the Manhattan Project. Element 103, lawrencium, is named after him, as are the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories in California.
Date in History: 29 February 1940
© 2016 American Institute of Physics
