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 Chicago University 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 later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.