Background

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born on August 8, 1901, in Canton, South Dakota, United States. His parents, Carl Gustavus and Gunda Regina Jacobson, were the children of Norwegian immigrants, his father being a Superintendant of Schools.

Ernst Orlando had a younger brother named John Hundale Lawrence, who grew up to become a physician. He later became well-known for his pioneering work in the field of nuclear medicine.

According to his mother, Ernst was ‘born grown up’. He was also incessantly curious, very persistent and full of enthusiasm. Ernst’s best friend was Merle Tuve, who later became a famous nuclear physicist. Together the two children built their own shortwave radio transmitting station.

Education

Ernst Lawrence had his early education at Canton High School. After passing out from there, he first enrolled at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, and studied there for one year only. In 1919, he shifted to the University of South Dakota and passed out from there in 1922 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry.

While studying chemistry at the University of Dakota, Lawrence was noticed by Dean Lewis E. Akeley. He tutored Lawrence in private. Under his influence, Lawrence began to take interest in physics and after graduation, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota with physics and received his Master of Arts in 1923.

During this period, Lawrence was highly influenced by William Francis Gray Swann, who was noted for his work in cosmic rays and high energy physics. After earning his master’s degree, Ernst followed Swann first to the University of Chicago and then to Yale University.

In 1925, Lawrence received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Yale. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the photoelectric effect in potassium vapor. He then received a National Research Council Fellowship on the recommendation of Swann and continued working at Yale.

Career

In 1925, Ernst Lawrence started his career as a National Research Fellow at Yale University. In 1927, he was made an Assistant Professor at Yale. Although by this time he had received better offers from the University of Washington and the University of California he chose to remain at Yale.

Ultimately in 1928, Lawrence shifted to the University of California, Berkeley as an Associate Professor of Physics. Here he continued his research on photoelectricity and together with his students published a number of papers in this field. However, very soon he diverted to a very different branch.

In 1929, while sitting in a library one evening Lawrence came across a design that interested him a great deal. Very soon, he, along with his two students, invented a circular particle accelerator that could speed up nuclear particles to very high velocity without using high voltage. Known as a cyclotron, the device opened scope for many new developments.

In 1930, Lawrence was made a full professor by the University of California. Incidentally, he was the youngest man to hold such a post. Lawrence continued with his research in nuclear physics and concentrated on building larger and more powerful cyclotrons. By 1932, his team was able to disintegrate lithium using a cyclotron at Berkeley Laboratory. Subsequently, heavier metals began to be disintegrated there. Moreover, using the cyclotron the scientists could accurately measure binding energies of the nuclei and also the reaction energy. These experiments paved the way for faster growth of nuclear physics.

In February 1936, Harvard University made him an attractive offer. To retain Lawrence, the University of California agreed to improve the infrastructure. Until then, Lawrence and his team had been working in an old building. The Radiation Laboratory, with all modern amenities, was officially established on July 1, 1936, with Lawrence as its Director.

While the University agreed to provide a yearly grant of $20,000, Lawrence cut costs by staffing his laboratory with graduate students, junior faculties, and others willing to work for anything. He treated each employee as a team member and at the same time, concentrated on building bigger and bigger cyclotrons.

By May 1939, Lawrence had built a 60-inch cyclotron. He then bombarded iron particles to produce the first radioactive isotopes in June. Along with nuclear research, he also encouraged research into the use of isotopes for therapeutic purposes. In this, he worked closely with his brother John Hundale Lawrence.

Once World War II started, Lawrence got involved in military projects. In 1940, he helped to establish a Radiation Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the same time, he became personally involved with the Manhattan Project, which was set up with the aim of developing an atomic bomb. In 1941, he became involved in an anti-submarine warfare program and placed many of his students at the underwater sound laboratories. At the same time, his Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley began to work 24 hours a day. He built bigger and stronger cyclotrons, one of which was used to produce meson artificially. He also concentrated on perfecting Calutron, which was used to separate Uranium-235 from ordinary uranium. Once that was done, the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley worked overtime to produce Uranium-235 needed for making the Hiroshima bomb.

As World War II ended Lawrence began his campaign for government sponsorship of large scientific projects. In this, he was successful to a large extent. When in 1946, the 186-inch cyclotron came into operation he once again started taking active participation in experiments, using deuteron stripping to discover nitrogen-17.

Lawrence was keen on developing a more powerful hydrogen bomb and played a key role in the United States' decision to embark on such a project. It was because of his intervention in 1952 that a second nuclear weapon laboratory was set up at Livermore; the first one being located Los Alamos. Most of the key scientists at Livermore were his students from Berkeley. He spent his remaining years taking a keen interest in the affairs of this new laboratory. Today, it is known as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Achievements

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  Ernst Orlando Lawrence is best known for his invention of cyclotrons. Until the invention of the synchrotron in 1950, they were the most powerful particle accelerator. Even today, they are being used all over the world for the production of particle beams in physics and nuclear medicine. In addition, Lawrence invented a method for obtaining time intervals of three billionths of a second and another method for measuring the e/m ratio of the electron.
  
  Lawrence was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. In 1937, he received Elliott Cresson Medal from the Franklin Institute and the Hughes Medal from the Royal Society. In 1938, he was awarded the Comstock Prize in Physics by the National Academy of Sciences and in 1940, the Duddell Medal and Prize by the Royal Physical Society. Besides, he also received the Holley Medal in 1942, the William Procter Prize in 1951, Faraday Medal in 1952, and the Enrico Fermi Award from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1957.
  
  Immediately after his death, the two nuclear research sites he helped to build were renamed as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 1959, the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award was established in his memory. In 1961, Chemical element number 103, discovered at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was named in his honor as lawrencium.

Works

More photos

• publication

  • The New Frontiers in the Atom 1941

Religion

Ernest Lawrence was baptized Lutheran.

Politics

Lawrence was a Republican despite the fact that he voted for Franklin Roosevelt.

Views

In 1934, Lawrence received the patent for his cyclotron. However, he never took any royalty from it. Instead, he assigned it to the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, which had funded much of his early work. He had repeatedly said, "Patent-consciousness might turn back the pages of progress."

Quotations: "I am mindful that scientific achievement is rooted in the past, is cultivated to full stature by many contemporaries and flourishes only in favorable environment. No individual is alone responsible for a single stepping stone along the path of progress, and where the path is smooth progress is most rapid. In my own work this has been particularly true."

"The day when the scientist, no matter how devoted, may make significant progress alone and without material help is past. This fact is most self-evident in our work. Instead of an attic with a few test tubes, bits of wire and odds and ends, the attack on the atomic nucleus has required the development and construction of great instruments on an engineering scale."

Membership

Ernest Lawrence was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, the Indian National Science Academy, and the National Academy of Sciences.

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  Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences , Sweden

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  American Academy of Arts and Sciences , United States

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  Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union , Soviet Union

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  Indian National Science Academy , India

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  National Academy of Sciences , United States

Personality

According to his mother's recollections, even though Lawrence was "born grown-up," he never outgrew his boyish enthusiasm. He was always of a happy disposition and life to him seemed to be one thrill after another, but he was also always persistent and insistent.

Physical Characteristics: At the end of his life Lawrence was inflicted with chronic ulcerative colitis. He was also overworked. In spite of that when President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked him to go to Geneva to help negotiate a proposed Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union he agreed.

Unfortunately, he became ill at Geneva and was brought back to California after initial treatment. Surgery revealed that he had many other complications. He died on August 27, 1958, in Palo Alto, California.

Interests

• boating, ice-skating

• Politicians

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt

• Sport & Clubs

  tennis

Connections

In 1932, Ernst Lawrence married Mary Kimberly (Molly) Blumer. He first met her in 1926, while he was working as a National Research Fellow at the University of Yale. Her father was the Dean of Yale School of Medicine. Since she was only sixteen years old then, they could not get married immediately. Meanwhile, he shifted to California and got involved in his experiments. Ultimately, they got engaged in 1931 and got married the next year. The couple had six children: Eric, Margaret, Mary, Robert, Barbara, and Susan.

Father:

Carl Gustavus Lawrence

Mother:

Gunda Regina Jacobson

Brother:

John Hundale Lawrence

Wife:

Mary Kimberly Blummer

Son:

Eric Lawrence

Daughter:

Margaret Lawrence Norman

Daughter:

Mary Lawrence Prud'homme

Son:

Robert Lawrence

Daughter:

Barbara Lawrence Petit

Daughter:

Susan Lawrence

Friend:

Julius Oppenheimer

Friend:

Merle Tuve

colleague:

Enrico Fermi

References

• An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Father of the Cyclotron
  1968
• Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller
  2013
• An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Father of the Cyclotron
  2018
• Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex
  2015