The Photoelectric Effect in Potassium Vapor as a Function of the Frequency of the Light (1924)
Doctoral advisor
William Francis Gray Swann
Doctoral students
See list
Milton S. Livingston
Kenneth Ross MacKenzie
Edwin McMillan
John Reginald Richardson
Sam Ruben
Robert R. Wilson
Chien-Shiung Wu
Signature
Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, as well as for founding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
A graduate of the University of South Dakota and University of Minnesota, Lawrence obtained a PhD in physics at Yale in 1925. In 1928, he was hired as an associate professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, becoming the youngest full professor there two years later. In its library one evening, Lawrence was intrigued by a diagram of an accelerator that produced high-energy particles. He contemplated how it could be made compact, and came up with an idea for a circular accelerating chamber between the poles of an electromagnet. The result was the first cyclotron.
Lawrence went on to build a series of ever larger and more expensive cyclotrons. His Radiation Laboratory became an official department of the University of California in 1936, with Lawrence as its director. In addition to the use of the cyclotron for physics, Lawrence also supported its use in research into medical uses of radioisotopes. During World War II, Lawrence developed electromagnetic isotope separation at the Radiation Laboratory. It used devices known as calutrons, a hybrid of the standard laboratory mass spectrometer and cyclotron. A huge electromagnetic separation plant was built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which came to be called Y-12. The process was inefficient, but it worked.
After the war, Lawrence campaigned extensively for government sponsorship of large scientific programs, and was a forceful advocate of "Big Science", with its requirements for big machines and big money. Lawrence strongly backed Edward Teller's campaign for a second nuclear weapons laboratory, which Lawrence located in Livermore, California. After his death, the Regents of the University of California renamed the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory after him. Chemical element number 103 was named lawrencium in his honor after its discovery at Berkeley in 1961.
Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his...
ErnestLawrence Thayer (/ˈθeɪər/; August 14, 1863 – August 21, 1940) was an American writer and poet who wrote the poem "Casey" (or "Casey at the Bat")...
United States Department of Energy and administered by the UC system. ErnestLawrence, who won the Nobel prize for inventing the cyclotron, founded the Lab...
and Oppenheimer (both 2023). For his portrayal of nuclear physicist ErnestLawrence in the latter, Hartnett was awarded—alongside his co-stars—the Screen...
Ernest Larry Eves OOnt KC (born June 17, 1946) is a Canadian lawyer and former politician who served as the 23rd premier of Ontario from 2002 to 2003....
A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by ErnestLawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932...
Ernest O. Lawrence, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. But as an experimental physicist, Lawrence...
laboratory. The Livermore facility was co-founded by Edward Teller and ErnestLawrence, then director of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. LLNL is a research...
PhD from the University of Chicago in 1936, Alvarez went to work for ErnestLawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley...
accelerators. Rolf Widerøe, Gustav Ising, Leó Szilárd, Max Steenbeck, and ErnestLawrence are considered pioneers of this field, having conceived and built the...
The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award was established in 1959 in honor of a scientist who helped elevate American physics to the status of world leader in...
comedian, actor and writer Ernest Krausz (1931–2018), Israeli professor of sociology and President at Bar Ilan University ErnestLawrence (1901–1958), American...
director in 1958. He became director upon the death of lab founder ErnestLawrence later that year, and remained director until his retirement in 1973...
symbol Lr (formerly Lw) and atomic number 103. It is named in honor of ErnestLawrence, inventor of the cyclotron, a device that was used to discover many...
of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, ErnestLawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-6588-1...
subsequently led to the atomic bomb. Those attending this meeting included ErnestLawrence, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the S-1 Executive Committee heads, such as...
and used for separating the isotopes of uranium. It was developed by ErnestLawrence during the Manhattan Project and was based on his earlier invention...
an implied connection between livermorium and ErnestLawrence since the element is named for Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. "Chemistry : Periodic Table :...
of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, ErnestLawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC. New York...
of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, ErnestLawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: Henry Holt and Company. p. 48. ISBN 0-8050-6589-X...
cyclotron. They had a design for a 37-inch (940 mm) cyclotron provided by ErnestLawrence, but decided to build a 42-inch (1,100 mm) cyclotron instead. Bainbridge...
of the bomb: the tangled lives and loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, ErnestLawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: H.Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-6588-6. Rhodes...
fissionable material for weapons because of impurities". Conant consulted ErnestLawrence and Arthur Compton, who acknowledged that their scientists at Berkeley...
Manhattan Project. Later in the war, he worked on it with his friend ErnestLawrence at the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California, developing electromagnetic...
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