Ernest Orlando Lawrence
was born on 8th August, 1901, at Canton, South Dakota (United
States). His parents, Carl Gustavus and Gunda (née Jacobson)
Lawrence, were the children of Norwegian immigrants, his father
being a Superintendant of Schools. His early education was at
Canton High School, then St. Olaf College. In 1919 he went to the
University of South
Dakota, receiving his B.A. in Chemistry in 1922. The
following year he received his M.A. from the University of Minnesota.
He spent a year at University of Chicago doing physics and was awarded his
Ph.D. from Yale
University in 1925. He continued at Yale for a further three
years, the first two as a National Research Fellow and the third
as Assistant Professor of Physics. In 1928 he was appointed
Associate Professor of Physics at the University of
California, Berkeley, and two years later he became
Professor, being the youngest professor at Berkeley. In 1936 he
became Director of the University's Radiation Laboratory as well,
remaining in these posts until his death.
During World War II he made vital contributions to the
development of the atomic bomb, holding several official
appointments in the project. After the war he played a part in
the attempt to obtain international agreement on the suspension
of atomic-bomb testing, being a member of the U.S. delegation at
the 1958 Geneva Conference on this subject.
Lawrence's research centred on nuclear physics. His early work
was on ionization phenomena and the measurement of ionization
potentials of metal vapours. In 1929 he invented the cyclotron, a
device for accelerating nuclear particles to very high velocities
without the use of high voltages. The swiftly moving particles
were used to bombard atoms of various elements, disintegrating
the atoms to form, in some cases, completely new elements.
Hundreds of radioactive isotopes of the known elements were also
discovered. His brother, Dr. John Lawrence, who became Director
of the University's Medical Physics Laboratory, collaborated with
him in studying medical and biological applications of the
cyclotron and himself became a consultant to the Institute of
Cancer Research at Columbia.
Larger and more powerful versions of the cyclotron were built by
Lawrence. In 1941 the instrument was used to generate
artificially the cosmic particles called mesons, and later the
studies were extended to antiparticles.
Lawrence was a most prolific writer: during 1924-1940 his name
appeared on 56 papers (an average of 31/2
papers a year), showing his exceptional breadth of interest. He
was also the inventor of a method for obtaining time intervals as
small as three billionths of a second, to study the discharge
phenomena of an electric spark. In addition he devised a very
precise method for measuring the e/m ratio of the
electron, one of the fundamental constants of Nature. Most of his
work was published in The Physical Review and the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Among his many awards may be mentioned the Elliott Cresson Medal
of the Franklin
Institute, the Comstock Prize of the National Academy of
Sciences, the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society, the Duddell
Medal of the Royal Physical Society, the Faraday Medal, and the
Enrico Fermi Award. He was decorated with the Medal for Merit and
was an Officer of the Legion of Honour. He held honorary
doctorates of thirteen American and one British University
(Glasgow). He was a member or fellow of many American and foreign
learned societies.
Lawrence married Mary Kimberly Blumer, daughter of the Emeritus
Dean at Yale
Medical School, in May 1932. They had six children. His
recreations were boating, tennis, ice-skating, and music. He died
on 27th August, 1958, at Palo Alto, California.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1965
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.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1939
Ernest Lawrence
