2020-08-27 Thu

A pioneer American nuclear scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born on August 8, 1901. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, as well as for founding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Lawrence held many different positions during the Manhattan Project. He recruited staff for the MIT Radiation Laboratory and underwater sound laboratories to develop techniques to detect German submarines. Lawrence's cyclotrons at Berkeley were used by other Manhattan Project scientists to discover new elements that could undergo nuclear fission, and he converted another cyclotron for the purpose of uranium enrichment.

He is a winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of the cyclotron, the first particle accelerator to achieve high energies. Chemical element number 103 was named lawrencium in his honor after its discovery at Berkeley in 1961.

Lawrence will always be remembered as the inventor of the cyclotron, but more importantly, he should be remembered as the inventor of the modern way of doing science. To honor him commemorative stamp was issued in 1991 by the postal department of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Image Source: colnect.com