Oliver Cecil Simpson

Oliver Cecil Simpson, a division director at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) for many years, died in Westmont, Illinois, on 21 January 2002, about two weeks after suffering a massive stroke at home that left him in a coma.

Simpson was born in Wilderness, Missouri, on 6 December 1909. He earned a BS degree in chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1930. He continued graduate studies at Illinois and was awarded a PhD in physical chemistry in 1934. His doctoral thesis was “A Molecular Ray Study of the Magnetic Moment of the Oxygen Molecule.” He then became an assistant in the laboratory of molecular physics at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he worked with Otto Stern. In 1939, he was appointed assistant professor of physics at Carnegie and, in 1943, associate professor.

During the early years of World War II, Simpson directed a National Defense Research Committee program on high-speed stress/strain phenomena involved in ballistic and armor penetration problems. He also directed civilian pilot training at Carnegie (he was licensed to fly small planes) and participated in studies using a wind tunnel to develop stall warning devices for airplanes. Early in 1944, he was recruited by the Metallurgical Laboratory (Manhattan District Project) at the University of Chicago because of his skill in crafting glass vacuum systems and his experience with molecular beams. There, he worked with Thomas Phipps, his PhD thesis adviser, to determine, using Knudsen cells, the vapor pressure of plutonium and its compounds. He subsequently used the same equipment to determine the vapor pressure of americium.

After the detonation of the atomic bomb and the end of the war, most of the senior professional staff left the Metallurgical Laboratory and returned to academia or their positions in industry. However, Simpson remained as leader of the group that determined vapor pressures. With the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1946, the Metallurgical Laboratory became ANL. Simpson became associate director of its chemistry division section C-II, which encompassed radiation effects studies, spectroscopy, and his own research interests. Not long afterward, funding was secured for a cyclotron for isotope and radiation effects studies, and Simpson became its project director. He held that position simultaneously with that of associate division director and as leader of his own research group. He designed the cyclotron’s shielding and specified beam control by magnetic resonance. The machine produced a very stable beam with the highest beam current of any cyclotron at that time. Later, a Van de Graaff machine for radiation chemistry and radiation damage studies and a Cockcroft–Walton machine for radiation damage studies were installed in the cyclotron building.

On 1 July 1959, ANL established the solid-state science division within the organizational structure of the laboratory and appointed Simpson as its director. In his letter of appointment, ANL Director Normal Hillberry wrote, “Rather than wait for the ideal in facilities and budgetary support, we believe it is better to make a positive start, even in a modest fashion, and to expand, thereafter, on the basis of the division’s record of achievement.” The division started with a small core of groups and individuals from section C-II of the chemistry division. Simpson augmented the staff with visitor programs and with other staff when funds became available. He believed strongly that the best research was done by individual investigators or small groups.

Within a few years, Simpson had more research in progress than could be reported to the review committee in a single session, resulting in each group’s reporting to the review committee only in alternating years. The research encompassed more subjects than there is room to list. However, Simpson’s support for a search for alternative neutron sources for diffraction and scattering studies should be mentioned because it led to the Zing experiments at the Zero Gradient Synchrotron proton accelerator in 1973 and 1975 to evaluate spallation sources, and the realization of the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source in 1981. Construction of a building to house the solid-state science division was authorized in 1967 and the building was first occupied in 1969. Simpson served as director of the solid-state division until he retired in 1975. He then became a consultant, maintaining an office at ANL, but he desisted from participating in management of the division.

A volume of mementos presented to Simpson on his retirement is replete with letters from those still in the division and from former members. They expressed their appreciation for his management and for encouraging their independence in research, supporting it morally and materially, and being available to them both professionally and personally. Some of his colleagues noted that the research environment he maintained was finer than they had experienced in their academic institutions. Even before the Atoms for Peace initiative in 1955, when much previously secret research was declassified, Simpson urged his colleagues to publish what they could and to report their work at professional society meetings.

Simpson was a very methodical and moral man. The depth of his knowledge, which encompassed chemistry and physics, and his experience exceeded what any successor could possess. He spanned the prehistory and whole existence of ANL: shepherding two divisions; overseeing the planning, funding, construction, and occupation of the lab’s 60-inch cyclotron and solid-state science division buildings; participating in the planning of the chemistry building; and dealing with the several funding agencies for ANL from their inception.

In the decade after he retired, national interests changed and funding for the research in the division declined. Older members of the division were persuaded to retire, others were terminated, and half of the theoretical staff left. A few were supported by a project to build a photon source. The rest were incorporated into the material science and technology division that was renamed the material science division.

During his retirement, Simpson became interested in programming numerical problems on his home computer, and he developed some innovative methods for multiple precision arithmetic on personal computers.