Ernest Lawrence

Ernest Lawrence
Lawrence in 1939
Born	Ernest Orlando Lawrence (1901-08-08)August 8, 1901 Canton, South Dakota, U.S.
Died	August 27, 1958(1958-08-27) (aged 57) Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Education	St. Olaf College University of South Dakota (BA) University of Minnesota (MA) University of Chicago Yale University (PhD)
Known for	Cyclotron Calutron Chromatron Manhattan Project
Spouse	Mary K. Blumer ​ (m. 1932)​
Children	6
Relatives	John H. Lawrence (brother)
Awards	See list Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1934) Hughes Medal (1937) Elliott Cresson Medal (1937) Comstock Prize in Physics (1938) Nobel Prize in Physics (1939) Duddell Medal and Prize (1940) Holley Medal (1942) Medal for Merit (1946) Officer de la Legion d'Honneur (1948) William Procter Prize (1951) Faraday Medal (1952) Enrico Fermi Award (1957) Sylvanus Thayer Award (1958)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley Yale University
Thesis	The Photoelectric Effect in Potassium Vapor as a Function of the Frequency of the Light  (1924)
Doctoral advisor	William Francis Gray Swann
Doctoral students	See list Milton S. Livingston Kenneth Ross MacKenzie Edwin McMillan John Reginald Richardson Sam Ruben Robert R. Wilson Chien-Shiung Wu
Signature

Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. 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.

A graduate of the University of South Dakota and University of Minnesota, Lawrence obtained a PhD in physics at Yale in 1925. In 1928, he was hired as an associate professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, becoming the youngest full professor there two years later. In its library one evening, Lawrence was intrigued by a diagram of an accelerator that produced high-energy particles. He contemplated how it could be made compact, and came up with an idea for a circular accelerating chamber between the poles of an electromagnet. The result was the first cyclotron.

Lawrence went on to build a series of ever larger and more expensive cyclotrons. His Radiation Laboratory became an official department of the University of California in 1936, with Lawrence as its director. In addition to the use of the cyclotron for physics, Lawrence also supported its use in research into medical uses of radioisotopes. During World War II, Lawrence developed electromagnetic isotope separation at the Radiation Laboratory. It used devices known as calutrons, a hybrid of the standard laboratory mass spectrometer and cyclotron. A huge electromagnetic separation plant was built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which came to be called Y-12. The process was inefficient, but it worked.

After the war, Lawrence campaigned extensively for government sponsorship of large scientific programs, and was a forceful advocate of "Big Science", with its requirements for big machines and big money. Lawrence strongly backed Edward Teller's campaign for a second nuclear weapons laboratory, which Lawrence located in Livermore, California. After his death, the Regents of the University of California renamed the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory after him. Chemical element number 103 was named lawrencium in his honor after its discovery at Berkeley in 1961.