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Ernest Orlando Lawrence

Ernest Orlando Lawrence

(1901-1958)

Birthdate: August 8, 1901

Birthplace: Canton, South Dakota, USA

Education : Univ. of South Dakota, B.A., 1922; Univ. of Minnesota, M.A., 1923; Yale Univ., Ph.D., 1925

E.O. Lawrence was a prolific researcher and writer who led the way to many advances. He was an important part of the Atomic Bomb Project and the attempt to suspend atomic-bomb testing. Lawrence won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for the results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements."

The cyclotron permitted nuclear particle acceleration to very high energies. The particles were used to bombard atoms, leading to many new isotopes and elements - artificial transmutation.

Lawrence is the namesake of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both located in the San Francisco Bay area USA and of the element 103 - Lawrencium (formed by artificial transmutation).