Edwin McMillan manner of death natural causes
Later life
In June 1945, McMillan's thoughts began to return to cyclotrons. Over time they had gotten larger and larger. A 184-inch cyclotron was under construction at the Radiation Laboratory, but he realised that a more efficient use could be made of the energy used to accelerate particles. By varying the magnetic field used, the particles could be made to move in stable orbits, and higher energies achieved with the same energy input. He dubbed this the "phase stability principle", and the new design a "synchrotron". Unknown to McMillan, the synchrotron principle had already been invented by Vladimir Veksler, who had published his proposal in 1944. McMillan became aware of Veksler's paper in October 1945. The two began corresponding, and eventually became friends. In 1963 they shared the Atoms for Peace Award for the invention of the synchrotron. In 1964, McMillan received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.The phase stability principle was tested with the old 37-inch cyclotron at Berkeley after McMillan returned to the Radiation Laboratory in September 1945. When it was found to work, the 184-inch cyclotron was similarly modified. He became a full professor in 1946. In 1954 he was appointed associate director of the Radiation Laboratory. He was promoted to deputy director in 1958. On the death of Lawrence that year, he became director, and he stayed in that position until his retirement in 1973. The laboratory was renamed the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in 1958. In 1970, it split into the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and McMillan became director of the former.McMillan was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1947, serving as its chairman from 1968 to 1971. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1952. He served on the influential General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1954 to 1958, and the Commission on High Energy Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics from 1960 to 1967.  He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962. After his retirement from the faculty at Berkeley in 1974, he spent 1974–75 at CERN, where he worked on the g minus 2 experiment to measure the magnetic moment of the muon. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1990.McMillan suffered the first of a series of strokes in 1984. He died at his home in El Cerrito, California, from complications from diabetes on September 7, 1991. He was survived by his wife and three children. His gold Nobel Prize medal is in the National Museum of American History, a division of The Smithsonian, in Washington DC.
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