Background
Gunn was born on May 12, 1897, in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Ross Delano Aldrich Gunn, a physician, and Lora A. Conner.
Gunn was born on May 12, 1897, in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Ross Delano Aldrich Gunn, a physician, and Lora A. Conner.
While still in high school Gunn built a wireless receiver and one of the first long-range radio stations in Ohio. He then enrolled at Oberlin College in 1915 and later transferred to the University of Michigan, from which he received a B. S. in electrical engineering in 1920. He completed his M. S. in 1921 at Michigan and was awarded a doctorate from Yale in 1926. While at Yale he was an instructor in engineering physics and in charge of the high-frequency laboratory.
From 1927 until 1947, Gunn worked at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D. C. He began as a research physicist and in 1938 was named superintendent of the mechanics and electricity division and in 1943 and 1946, respectively, superintendent of the aircraft electrical division and superintendent of the physics division. In 1944 Gunn became technical director of the Army-Navy Precipitation Project, which studied ice-crystal formation on airplanes. In 1944 Gunn joined the United States Weather Bureau as director of physical research and served as assistant chief of the bureau for technical services during 1955-1956. From 1958 until his death, he was on the physics faculty at American University. Gunn held forty-five patents, among them a frequency-selective transformer that aided the development of pilotless aircraft, an improved altimeter, and a vacuum-tube modulation system later used in television. While at the Weather Bureau he developed a theory that air contamination reduced the possibility of rain. He anticipated later work in plate tectonic theory by his study of mountain building and the relationship between mountains and oceanic deeps. As superintendent of the mechanics and electricity division he developed the idea that earned him the title "father of the nuclear submarine. " Uranium fission seemed to Gunn to be the answer to submarine propulsion, a problem upon which the division was then working. On March 20, 1939, he proposed the idea of a fission chamber for a submarine and received $1, 500 for the initial research. The main problem concerned separating the lighter U-235 isotopes from heavier uranium isotopes. Gunn and his colleague, Dr. Phillip H. Abelson, had solved the separation problem by the early stages of World War II. California representative Charles S. Gubser in 1963 introduced a resolution in the United States House of Representatives to honor Gunn and Ableson as the true fathers of the nuclear submarine. The resolution had a lukewarm reception. Many supporters of Admiral Hyman Rickover felt the resolution was intended as a slight to him. His contribution to the separation of isotopes of uranium was cited by Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal and earned him a Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 1945. Gunn served as a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the C. F. Kettering Foundation, and the Geophysical Union. He died in New York, on October 15, 1966.
Member of the Uranium Committee, director of the United States Air Force-Weather Bureau Cloud Physics Project (1947-1949), member of the Air Force's Scientific Advisory Board (1948-1953)
On September 8, 1923, Gunn married Gladys Jeannette Rowley; they had four children.