Gerard O’Neill

It’s the birthday of Gerard O’Neill, who was born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. After serving in the US Navy in World War II, O’Neill studied physics at Swarthmore College and earned a PhD in particle physics at Cornell University. His first job was at Princeton, where, in 1956, he devised a new method to boost the energy reached by a particle collider: Store some of the particles in a large ring-like container and then release them a few seconds later to smash into particles flying in the opposite direction. Nine years later, his proposal was first implemented at SLAC. Other facilities adopted the idea. Starting in 1969, O’Neill’s primary research interest shifted to space colonization. With his students he worked out -- in detail -- the feasibility of creating vast, self-sustaining space colonies. In a 1974 article for Physics Today he wrote: “New ideas are controversial when they challenge orthodoxy, but orthodoxy changes with time, often surprisingly fast. It is orthodox, for example, to believe that Earth is the only practical habitat for Man, and that the human race is close to its ultimate size limits. But I believe we have now reached the point where we can, if we so choose, build new habitats far more comfortable, productive and attractive than is most of Earth.”

Date in History: 6 February 1927