Background
Patterson, Arthur Lindo was born on July 23, 1902 in Nelson, New Zealand. Son of Arthur Henry and Nellie Tweeddale (Slack) Patterson.
Patterson, Arthur Lindo was born on July 23, 1902 in Nelson, New Zealand. Son of Arthur Henry and Nellie Tweeddale (Slack) Patterson.
Bachelor of Science (honours), McGill University, 1923. Master of Science, 1924, Doctor of Philosophy, 1928.
Shortly afterwards the family moved to Montreal, Canada and later to London, England. In 1920 Patterson moved to Canada for college at McGill University, Montreal. Firstly he concentrated on Mathematics and but then changed his major to Physics.
He received his bachelor"s degree in 1923 and a master"s in 1924.
His master"s thesis was on the production of hard X-rays by interaction of radium β rays with solids. From 1924 to 1926 he worked in London in the laboratory of West. H. Bragg, where he learnt the art of crystal structure analysis.
In 1926 Patterson moved to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-institut of Fibrous Materials Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem, where he worked on the X-ray crystallography of cellulose fibres. In Berlin he had the fortune to meet the scientific elite of the time, which included Max von Laue, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Walther Nernst, Hans Bethe, Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Peter Pringsheim.
In 1927 he returned to McGill, finishing his work for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1928.
From 1933 to 1946, Patterson was a visiting researcher in the laboratory of Bertram Eugene Warren (1902–1991) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. lieutenant was during this time that he published his famous function, now called the Patterson function, which subsequently developed into an extremely important theoretical tool in X-ray crystal structure analysis, especially when one or more heavy atoms are present in the structure. From 1936 to 1949, he taught at Bryn Mawr College, and from 1949 to 1966, he was a faculty member at the Institute for Cancer Research, now the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. His work led to some of the first important contributions to the theory of particle-size line broadening.
Member United States of America National Committee on Crystallography 1948-1955, 57—, Chairman of Commission, 1948-1950. Member Executive Committee International Union Crystallography, 1948-1954. Member division physical science National Research Council.
1957-1962.
Fellow American Physical Society, Physical Society London, Mineral. Society American, New York Academy Science. Member American Society for X-ray and Electron Diffraction (vice president 1948, president 1949), American Crystallographic Association.
Married Elizabeth Lincoln Knight, September 14, 1935.