Background
Van De Graaff was born on December 20, 1901, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He was the son of Adrian Sebastian Van de Graaff, a jurist, and Minnie Cherokee Hargrove.
Van De Graaff was born on December 20, 1901, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He was the son of Adrian Sebastian Van de Graaff, a jurist, and Minnie Cherokee Hargrove.
Robert attended public school in Tuscaloosa from 1908 to 1918, studied mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama, where he received his B. S. degree in 1922 and his M. S. degree in 1923 and worked for a year as a research assistant for the Alabama Power Company.
Van de Graaff's interest in physics led him to continue his formal education. From 1924 to 1925, he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he attended lectures given by Marie Curie. In 1925, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University (Queen's College).
He received his B. S. degree in physics there in 1926 and his Ph. D. degree in 1928, the latter, under the direction of J. S. E. Townsend, for research on ion mobility. A fellowship from the International Education Board enabled him to remain at Oxford for an additional year.
Finally, a fellowship from the National Research Council in 1929, led Van de Graaff to return to the United States. At Princeton, where he chose to resume his research, the physicist Karl T. Compton encouraged him to build the first working models of his invention. In September 1931, Van de Graaff described the device at a meeting of the American Physical Society, and in November he demonstrated it publicly at the dinner held to celebrate the founding of the American Institute of Physics.
In the same year, Van de Graaff accepted an offer from Compton, then president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to join him as a research associate. In addition, Compton helped him to secure a patent on his invention and a grant from the Research Corporation to build a machine with spheres fifteen feet in diameter.
The new device was erected in 1932-1933, in an airship hangar at Round Hill, near South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, but difficulties with its operation in the open air led to its reconstruction in 1937-1938, in a pressurized chamber on the MIT campus. From the outset, the huge machine was popularly viewed as one of the classic "atom smashers" of the decade, and in the mid-1950's it was moved once again, this time to Boston's Museum of Science.
Meanwhile, Van de Graaff began pursuing the medical and industrial applications of his invention. The former arose primarily from his association with John G. Trump, an electrical engineer at MIT. In 1937, the first of his medical X-ray machines was ready for clinical use at the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital of the Harvard Medical School. Attention to the generator's industrial applications came during World War II.
Working at MIT under a contract from the Office of Scientific Research and Development, he directed the High Voltage Radiographic Project, which developed X-ray machines for the nondestructive testing of naval ordnance. After the war, Van de Graaff returned to nuclear-physics research. A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1945 enabled him and his MIT coworkers, including W. W. Buechner, to build a more compact and more powerful Van de Graaff accelerator, which they used for an important experimental program. Trump decided to manufacture the device commercially and therefore established the High Voltage Engineering Corporation (HVEC) on December 19, 1946.
Denis M. Robinson was appointed president; Trump, technical director; and Van de Graaff, chief physicist. Financial backing from the American Research and Development Corporation enabled the company to start operating in early 1947. Initially, it emphasized X-ray machines for medical purposes rather than accelerators for nuclear research. An unexpectedly strong postwar demand for Van de Graaff accelerators for studies of nuclear structure led Van de Graaff to increase his participation at HVEC.
Following Luis W. Alvarez's discovery of the energy-doubling principle in 1951, the company decided to develop a new generation of research machines, tandem Van de Graaff accelerators, which proved highly successful. The effect on Van de Graaff's career was equally pronounced.
In 1960, he resigned his position as associate professor of physics at MIT, which he had held since 1934, to devote all his efforts to serving as HVEC's chief scientist, and at the time of his death in Boston, he was engaged in designing a machine that could accelerate very heavy nuclei, including uranium nuclei.
Van De Graaff is noted for his design and construction of high-voltage Van de Graaff generators. The unifying theme of Van de Graaff's career was the development of his invention as a technique for accelerating any desired element in a precisely controlled fashion to ever-higher energies and intensities. In the course of his career, Van de Graaff authored and coauthored numerous scientific articles and received numerous patents, including one for the insulating-core transformer. His work with Van de Graaff generators brought him several awards, notably 1947, Duddell Medal of the Physical Society of Great Britain and 1966, Tom W. Bonner Prize of the American Physical Society. A crater on the far side of the moon is named after him.
While abroad, Van de Graaff had become interested in designing a device that could accelerate electrons, protons, or heavier atomic nuclei to high energies. After considering a variety of approaches, he came up with the invention now known as the Van de Graaff generator.
He realized that if an electrical charge was sprayed onto a moving belt and then carried inside an insulated metal sphere and deposited there, the charge would accumulate on the sphere's outer surface. Applying the generator's high voltages to a suitably designed vacuum tube would turn the device into a particle accelerator.
Robert's courteous manners and the strength of his physical intuition combined to make him an effective leader of the teams engaged in that work. Although not inclined by temperament to promote his ideas aggressively, he consistently won the support of those who were willing to make sure he received adequate resources.
Beginning in the 1940's, however, his personal participation was often limited by back pain arising from a high school football injury.
On August 12, 1936, Van De Graaff married Catherine Boyden; they had two children.
12 May 1859 - 18 May 1922
12 November 1866 - 24 November 1941
September 7, 1893 – January 2, 1938 Was a college football player. He was an advocate for an airport in Tuscaloosa.
September 6, 1891 – March 14, 1936 Was a college football player and coach. He played halfback for the Alabama Crimson Tide football of the University of Alabama. After football, he practiced law.
October 25, 1895 – April 26, 1977 Was an American football player, coach, and college athletics administrator.
8 May 1912 - 6 December 1972
