Edwin Mattison McMillan
was born on 18th September, 1907, at Redondo Beach, California.
He is the son of Dr. Edwin Harbaugh McMillan, a physician, and
his wife, Anne Marie McMillan, née Mattison, who both
came from the State of Maryland and were both of English and
Scottish descent. The boy spent his early years in Pasadena,
California, and obtained his education in that state.
McMillan attended the California Institute of Technology, obtaining a
B.Sc. degree in 1928, and taking his M.Sc. degree a year later,
then transferring to Princeton
University for Ph.D. in 1932. The same year he entered the
University of
California at Berkeley as a National Research Fellow. The
thesis he submitted for Ph.D. was in the field of molecular
beams, and the problem he undertook as a National Research Fellow
was the measurement of the magnetic moment of the proton by a
molecular beam method. After two years on this work and one as a
research associate he became a Staff Member of the Radiation
Laboratory under Professor E.O. Lawrence, studying
nuclear reactions and their products, and helping in the design
and construction of cyclotrons and other equipment, and a member
of the Faculty in the Department of Physics at Berkely, being
appointed Instructor in 1935, Assistant Professor in 1936,
Associate Professor, 1941, and Professor in 1946.
During the Second World War, McMillan was on leave from November,
1940, to September, 1945, engaged on national defence research,
serving (1940-1941) in the Radiation Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; (1941-1942) U. S. Navy Radio and Sound
Laboratory, San Diego; (1942-1945) Manhattan District, Los
Alamos.
It was during 1945 that he had the idea of "phase stability"
which led to the development of the synchroton and
synchro-cyclotron; these machines have already extended the
energies of artificially accelerated particles into the region of
hundreds of MeV and have made possible many important
researches.
McMillan returned to the University of California Radiation
Laboratory as Associate Director from 1954-1958, when he was
raised to Deputy Director and finally Director, in the same
year.
In 1951 he received the 1950 Research Corporation Scientific
Award, and in 1963 he shared the Atoms for Peace Award with
Professor V. I. Veksler.
Professor McMillan is a Fellow of the American Physical Society
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the
National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical
Society, and from 1954-1958 he served on the General Advisory
Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1960 he was
appointed to the Commission on High Energy Physics of the
International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.
An honorary doctorate in science was awarded to him by the
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1961, and by Gustavus Adolphus
College in 1963.
While serving in the Faculty of Physics at Berkeley, McMillan
married Elsie Walford Blumer, a daughter of Dr. George Blumer,
Dean Emeritus of the Yale Medical School. There are three
children of the marriage - Ann Bradford (1943), David Mattison
(1945) and Stephen Walker (1949).
From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1942-1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Edwin M. McMillan died on September 7, 1991.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1951
Edwin M. McMillan
