Background
He was born in Santa Cruz, California, but would have been born in China if his father, a missionary under the American Board of Missions, had not returned temporarily to the United States for safety during the Boxer Rebellion.
He was born in Santa Cruz, California, but would have been born in China if his father, a missionary under the American Board of Missions, had not returned temporarily to the United States for safety during the Boxer Rebellion.
After spending the first nine years of his life China, Milton moved with his family to Claremont, California where he completed his elementary and secondary education and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Pomona College in 1924.
While at Pomona, Milton was competed successfully in athletics competitions, and became quite a good ventriloquist and magician and belonged to the International Brotherhood of Magicians. After graduating from college, he worked at several jobs before starting graduate work in physics at University of California Berkeley where he received his Master of Arts degree in 1934, with a thesis on "The recombination of ions in pure oxygen as a function of pressure and temperature." He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1936. In 1937, Milton accepted a position as an "instructor in physics" at the then "Branch of the College of Agriculture at Davis" where he remained until his retirement as professor of physics in 1968.
From 1942 to 1946, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he helped in that gigantic effort to develop and improve the radar systems which were of major importance in enabling the Allied Forces to overcome the German and Japanese aggressors.
In 1948, with César Lattes, he was the first to artificially produce pions, using the 184 inches (4,700 mm) cyclotron at University of California Berkeley. He spent the 1955-1956 year at the University of Peshawar in Pakistan.
