Ernest Lawrence Ernest Orlando Lawrence ( August 8 , 1901 – August 27 , 1958 ) was an American scientist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron . He is also known for his work on uranium - isotope separation for the Manhattan Project , and for founding the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory . A graduate of the University of Minnesota , Lawrence completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in physics at Yale in 1925 . In 1928 , he was hired as an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of California , 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 . During World War II , Lawrence developed electromagnetic isotope separation at the Radiation Laboratory . It used devices known as calutron s , 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 . Early life . Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born in Canton , South Dakota on August 8 , 1901 . His parents , Carl Gustavus and Gunda ( née Jacobson ) Lawrence , were both the offspring of Norwegian immigrants who had met while teaching at the high school in Canton , where his father was also the superintendent of schools . He had a younger brother , John H . Lawrence . Growing up , his best friend was Merle Tuve , who would also go on to become a highly accomplished nuclear physicist . Lawrence attended St . Olaf College in Minnesota , but he transferred to the University of South Dakota after his first year . He completed his bachelor ' s degree in 1922 , and his Master of Arts ( M . A . ) degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1923 under the supervision of William Francis Gray Swann . For his master ' s thesis , Lawrence built an experimental apparatus that rotated an ellipsoid through a magnetic field . Lawrence followed Swann to the University of Chicago , and then to Yale University , where Lawrence completed his Doctor of Philosophy ( Ph . D . ) degree in physics in 1925 as a Sloane Fellow , writing his doctoral thesis on the photoelectric effect in potassium vapour . He was elected a member of Sigma Xi , and , on Swann ' s recommendation , received a National Research Council fellowship . Instead of using it to travel to Europe , he remained at Yale University with Swann as a researcher . With Jesse Beams from the University of Virginia , Lawrence continued to research the photoelectric effect . They showed the photoelectrons appeared within 2 x 10 seconds of the photons striking the photoelectric surface — close to the limit of measurement at the time . By reducing the emission time by switch the light source on and off rapidly , the spectrum of energy emitted became broader , in conformance with Werner Heisenberg ' s uncertainty principle . Lawrence received offers of assistant professorships from the University of Washington and the University of California at a salary of $ 3 , 500 per annum . Yale promptly matched the offer of the assistant professorship , but at a salary of $ 3 , 000 . Lawrence chose to stay at the more prestigious Yale , but found that the appointment without having first been an instructor was resented by some of his fellow faculty , and did not necessarily lift his social status among people unimpressed by his South Dakota immigrant background . In 1928 , Lawrence was hired as an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of California , and two years later he became a full professor , becoming the youngest professor at the University of California . Robert Gordon Sproul , who became President of the University of California the day after Lawrence became a professor , was a member of the Bohemian Club , and he sponsored Lawrence ' s membership in 1932 . Through this club , Lawrence met William Henry Crocker , Edwin Pauley , and John Francis Neylan . They were influential men who helped him obtain money for his energetic nuclear particle investigations . There was great hope for medical uses to come from the development of particle physics , and this led to much of the early funding for advances Lawrence was able to obtain . While at Yale , Lawrence met Mary ( Molly ) Blumer , the eldest of four daughters of George Blumer , the Dean of the Yale School of Medicine . They became engaged in 1931 , and were married on May 14 , 1932 , at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven , Connecticut . They had six children : Eric , Margaret , Mary , Robert , Barbara and Susan . Molly ' s sister Elsie married Edwin McMillan in 1941 . Lawrence named his son Robert after theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer , his closest friend in Berkeley . The developments of the cyclotron . The invention that brought Lawrence to international fame started out as a sketch on a scrap of a paper napkin . While sitting in the library one evening , Lawrence glanced over a journal article by Rolf Widerøe , and was intrigued by one of the diagrams . This depicted a device that produced high - energy particles required for atomic disintegration by means of a succession of small " pushes . " The device depicted was laid out in a straight line using increasingly longer electrodes . Lawrence saw that such a particle accelerator would soon become too long and unwieldy for his university laboratory . In pondering a way to make the accelerator more compact , Lawrence decided to set a circular accelerating chamber between the poles of an electromagnet . The magnetic field would hold the charged protons in a spiral path as they were accelerated between just two semicircular electrodes connected to an alternating potential . After a hundred turns or so , the protons would impact the target as a beam of high - energy particles . Lawrence excitedly told his colleagues that he had discovered a method for obtaining particles of very high energy without the use of any high voltage . He initially worked with Niels Edlefsen . Their first cyclotron was made out of brass , wire , and sealing wax and was only four inches in diameter — it could literally be held in one hand . It probably cost $ 25 in all . What Lawrence needed to develop the idea was capable graduate students to do the work . Edlefsen left to take up an assistant professorship in September 1930 , and Lawrence replaced him with M . Stanley Livingston and David H . Sloan , who he set to work on developing Widerøe ' s accelerator and Edlefsen ' s cyclotron respectively . Both had their own financial support . Hiring good people and paying them little or nothing would prove to be a sound business model . Both designs proved practical , and by May 1931 , Sloan ' s linear accelerator was able to accelerate ions to 1 MeV . Livingston had a greater technical challenge , but when he applied 1 , 800 V to his 11 - inch cyclotron on January 2 , 1931 , he got 80 , 000 - electron volt protons spinning around . A week later , he had 1 . 22 MeV with 3 , 000 V , more than enough for his PhD thesis on its construction . In what would be become a recurring pattern , as soon as there was the first sign of success , Lawrence started planning a new , bigger machine . Lawrence and Livingston drew up a design for a 27 - inch cyclotron in early 1932 . The magnet for the $ 800 11 - inch cyclotron weighed 2 tons , but Lawrence found a massive 80 - ton magnet for the 27 - inch that had originally been built during World War I to power a transatlantic radio link , but was now rusting in a junkyard in Palo Alto . In the cyclotron , he had a powerful scientific instrument , but this did not translate into scientific discovery . In April 1932 , John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton at the Cavendish laboratory in England announced that they had bombarded lithium with protons and succeeded in transmuting it into helium . The energy required turned out to be quite low — well within the capability of the 11 - inch cyclotron . On learning about it , Lawrence wired the Berkeley and asked for Cockcroft and Walton ' s results to be verified . It took the team until September to do so , mainly due to lack of adequate detection apparatus . Although important discoveries continued to elude Lawrence ' s Radiation Laboratory , mainly due to its focus on the development of the cyclotron rather than its scientific use , through his increasingly larger machines , Lawrence was able to provide crucial equipment needed for experiments in high energy physics . Around this device , he built what became the world ' s foremost laboratory for the new field of nuclear physics research in the 1930s . He received a patent for the cyclotron in 1934 , which he assigned to the Research Corporation . In February 1936 , Harvard University ' s president , James B . Conant , made attractive offers to Lawrence and Oppenheimer . In response , the Radiation Laboratory became an official department of the University of California on July 1 , 1936 , with Lawrence formally appointed its director , and the University agreed to make $ 20 , 000 a year available for its activities . Using the new 27 - inch cyclotron , the team at Berkeley discovered that every element that they bombarded with recently discovered deuterium emitted energy , and at the same range . They therefore postulated the existence of a new and hitherto unknown particle , and a possible source of limitless energy . William Laurence of " The New York Times " described Lawrence as " a new miracle worker of science " . At Cockroft ' s invitation , Lawrence was invited to the 1933 Solvay Conference , to give a presentation on the cyclotron . Lawrence ran into withering skepticism from James Chadwick , who suggested that what Lawrence ' s team was observing was contamination of their apparatus . After he returned to Berkeley , Lawrence mobilized his team to go painstakingly over the results in order to gather enough evidence to convince Chadwick . Meanwhile , at the Cavendish laboratory , Ernest Rutherford and Mark Oliphant found that deuterium fuses to form helium - 3 , which causes the effect that the cyclontroneers had observed . Not only was Chadwick correct in that they had been observing contamination , but they had overlooked another important discovery , of nuclear fusion . Leawrence pressed on with the creation of larger cyclotrons . The 27 - inch cyclotron was superseded by a 37 - inch cyclotron in June 1937 . In May 1939 , the 60 - inch cyclotron was started it . It was used to bombard iron and produced its first radioactive isotopes in June , and the first cancer patient received neutron therapy from it on November 20 . Lawrence was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in November 1939 " for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it , especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements " . He was the first at Berkeley to become a Nobel Laureate , and the first to be so honored while at a state - supported university . The award ceremony was held on February 29 , 1940 , in Berkeley , California due to World War II , in the auditorium of Wheeler Hall on the campus of the university . Lawrence received his medal from Carl E . Wallerstedt , Sweden ' s Consul General in San Francisco . Robert W . Wood wrote to Lawrence and presciently noted " As you are laying the foundations for the cataclysmic explosion of uranium . . . I ' m sure old Nobel would approve . " In March 1940 , Arthur Compton , Vannevar Bush , James B . Conant , Karl T . Compton , and Alfred Lee Loomis travelled to Berkeley to discuss Lawrence ' s proposal for a 184 - inch cyclotron with a 4 , 500 - ton magnet that was estimated to cost $ 2 . 65 million . The Rockefeller Foundation put up $ 1 . 15 million to get the project started . World War II and the Manhattan Project . After the outbreak of World War II in Europe , Lawrence became drawn into military projects . He helped recruit staff for the MIT Radiation Laboratory , where American physicists developed the cavity magnetron invented by Oliphant ' s team in Britain . The name of the new laboratory was deliberately copied from Lawrence ' s laboratory in Berkeley for security reasons . He also became involved in recreating staff for underwater sound laboratories to develop techniques for detecting German submarines . Meanwhile , work continued at Berkeley with cyclotrons . In December 1940 , Glenn Seaborg and Emilio Segré used the cyclotron to bombard with deuterons uranium - 238 producing a new element , Neptunium - 238 , which decayed by beta emission to form plutonium - 238 . The discovery of plutonium was kept secret until a year after the end of World War II after the discovery that one of its isotopes , plutonium - 239 , could undergo nuclear fission in a way that might be useful in an atomic bomb . In September 1941 , Oliphant met with Lawrence and Oppenheimer at Berkeley , where they showed him the site for the new 184 - inch cyclotron . Oliphant in turn took the Americans to task for not following up the recommendations of the British MAUD Committee , which advocated a program to develop an atomic bomb . Lawrence had already thought about the problem of separating the fissile isotope uranium - 235 from uranium - 238 , a process known today as uranium enrichment . Separating uranium isotopes was difficult because the two isotopes have very nearly identical chemical properties , and could only be separated gradually using small mass differences . Separating these isotopes with a mass spectrometer was one of the technologies developed to produce weapon - grade uranium - 235 , so Lawrence began converting his old 37 - inch cyclotron into a giant mass spectrometer . It was on Lawrence ' s recommendation that the director of the Manhattan Project , Brigadier General Leslie R . Groves , Jr . , appointed Oppenheimer as head of the Los Alamos Laboratory . Electromagnetic isotope separation was developed by Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory . It used devices known as calutron s , a hybrid of two laboratory instruments , the mass spectrometer and cyclotron . The name was derived from the words " California " , " university " and " cyclotron " . On November 1943 , Lawrence ' s team at Berkeley was bolstered by twenty nine British scientists including Oliphant . In the electromagnetic process , a magnetic field deflected charged particles according to mass . The process was neither scientifically elegant nor industrially efficient . Compared with a gaseous diffusion plant or a nuclear reactor , an electromagnetic separation plant would consume more scarce materials , require more manpower to operate , and cost more to build . Nonetheless , the process was approved because it was based on proven technology and therefore represented less risk . Moreover , it could be built in stages , and would rapidly reach industrial capacity . Responsibility for the design and construction of the electromagnetic separation plant at Oak Ridge , Tennessee , which came to be called Y - 12 , was assigned to Stone & Webster . The design called for five first stage processing units , known as Alpha racetracks , and two units for final processing , known as Beta racetracks . In September 1943 Groves authorized construction of four more racetracks , known as Alpha II . When the plant was started up for testing on schedule in October 1943 , the 14 - ton vacuum tanks crept out of alignment because of the power of the magnets , and had to be fastened more securely . A more serious problem arose when the magnetic coils started shorting out . In December Groves ordered a magnet to be broken open , and handfuls of rust were found inside . Groves then ordered the racetracks to be torn down and the magnets sent back to the factory to be cleaned . A pickling plant was established on - site to clean the pipes and fittings . Tennessee Eastman was hired to manage Y - 12 . Y - 12 initially enriched the uranium - 235 content to between 13 % and 15 % , and shipped the first few hundred grams of this to Los Alamos laboratory in March 1944 . Only 1 part in 5 , 825 of the uranium feed emerged as final product . The rest was splattered over equipment in the process . Strenuous recovery efforts helped raise production to 10 % of the uranium - 235 feed by January 1945 . In February the Alpha racetracks began receiving slightly enriched ( 1 . 4 % ) feed from the new S - 50 thermal diffusion plant . The next month it received enhanced ( 5 % ) feed from the K - 25 gaseous diffusion plant . By April 1945 K - 25 was producing uranium sufficiently enriched to feed directly into the Beta tracks . On July 16 , 1945 , Lawrence observed the Trinity nuclear test of the first atomic bomb with Chadwick and Charles A . Thomas . Few were more excited at its success than Lawrence . The question of how to use the now functional weapon on Japan became an issue for the scientists . While Oppenheimer favored no demonstration of the power of the new weapon to Japanese leaders , Lawrence felt strongly that a demonstration would be wise . Nonetheless , when a uranium bomb was used without warning in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima , Lawrence felt great pride in his accomplishment . Lawrence hoped that the Manhattan Project would develop improved calutrons and construct Alpha III racetracks , but they were judged to be uneconomical . The Alpha tracks were closed down in September 1945 . Although performing better than ever , they could not compete with K - 25 and the new K - 27 , which commenced operation in January 1946 . In December , the Y - 12 plant was closed , thereby cutting the Tennessee Eastman payroll from 8 , 600 to 1 , 500 and saving $ 2 million a month . Staff numbers at the Radiation laboratory fell from 1 , 086 in May 1945 to 424 by the end of the year . Post - war career and legacy . After the war , Lawrence campaigned extensively for government sponsorship of large scientific programs . Lawrence was a forceful advocate of " Big Science " with its requirements for big machines and big money . In 1946 , Lawrence asked the Manhattan Project for over $ 2 million for research at the Radiation Laboratory . Groves approved the money , but cut a number of programs , including Seaborg ' s proposal for a " hot " radiation laboratory in densely populated Berkeley , and John Lawrence ' s for production of medical isotopes , because this need could now be better met from nuclear reactors . One obstacle was the University of California , which was eager to divest its wartime military obligations . Lawrence and Groves managed to persuade Sproul to accept a contract extension . Responsibility for the national laboratories passed to the newly created Atomic Energy Commission on 1 January 1947 . In 1947 , Lawrence asked for $ 15 million for his projects , which included a new linear accelerator and a new gigaelectronvolt synchrotron which became known as the bevatron . Unfortunately , University of California ' s contract to run the Los Alamos laboratory was due to expire on July 1 , 1948 , and some board members wished to divest the university of the responsibility for running a site outside California . After some negotiation , the university agreed to extend the contract for the Los Alamos National Laboratory for four more years , and to appoint Norris Bradbury , who had replaced Oppenheimer as its director on October 1945 , as a professor . The 184 - inch cyclotron was completed with wartime dollars from the Manhattan Project . It incorporated new ideas by Ed McMillan , and was completed as a synchrotron . It commenced operation on November 13 , 1946 . For the first time since 1935 , Lawrence actively participated in the experiments , working unsuccessfully with Eugene Gardner in an attempt to create recently discovered pi meson s with the synchrotron . César Lattes then used the apparatus they had created to find negative pi mesons in 1948 . In the chilly Cold War climate at the University of California , Lawrence was forced to defend Radiation Laboratory staff members like Robert Serber who were investigated by the University ' s Personnel Security Board . Lawrence barred Robert Oppenheimer ' s brother Frank Oppenheimer from the Radiation Laboratory , damaging his relationship with Robert . An acrimonious loyalty oath campaign drove away faculty members . Lawrence was alarmed by the Soviet Union ' s first nuclear test in August 1949 . The proper response , he concluded , was an all - out effort to build a bigger nuclear weapon : the hydrogen bomb . To create the tritium and the then - difficult to produce plutonium it required , Lawrence proposed to use accelerators to produce neutrons instead of nuclear reactors . He first proposed the construction of Mark - I , a prototype $ 7 million , 25 MeV linear accelerator , codenamed Materials Test Accelerator ( MTA ) , mainly used to produce polonium for the nuclear weapon program . He was soon talking about a new , even larger MTA known as the Mark II which could produce tritium orplutonium from depleted uranium - 238 . Serber and Segré attempted in vain to explain the technical problems that made it impractical , but Lawrence felt that they were being unpatriotic . Lawrence strongly backed Edward Teller ' s campaign for a second nuclear weapons laboratory , which Lawrence proposed to locate with the MTA Mark I at Livermore , California . Lawrence and Teller had to argue their case not only with the Atomic Energy Commission , which did not want it , and the Los Alamos National Laboratory , which was implacably opposed , but with proponents who felt that Chicago was the obvious site for the new laboratory . The new laboratory at Livermore was finally approved on July 17 , 1952 . The Mark II MTA was cancelled at the same time . By this time , the Atomic Energy Commission had spent $ 45 million on the Mark I , which had commenced operation . By this time the Brookhaven National Laboratory ' s Cosmotron was already in operation , and had generated a 1 GeV beam . For his service to his country , Lawrence received the Enrico Fermi Award from the Atomic Energy Commission in 1957 , and was the first recipient of the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy in 1958 . In July 1958 , President Eisenhower requested that Lawrence travel to Geneva , Switzerland , to help negotiate a proposed treaty with the Soviet Union to ban nuclear weapons testing . Despite suffering from a serious flare - up of his chronic ulcerative colitis , Lawrence decided to go , but he became ill while in Geneva , and was rushed to the hospital at Stanford University . Surgeons removed much of his large intestine , but found other problems , including severe atherosclerosis of the superior mesenteric artery . Large quantities of blood were transfused during and after surgery . The doctors did not believe that he regained consciousness , but Molly claimed that he had spoken to her . He died in Palo Alto Hospital on August 27 , 1958 . Molly did not want a public funeral , but agreed to a memorial service at the First Congregationalist Church in Berkeley . President Clark Kerr delivered the eulogy . Just 23 days after his death , the Regents of the University of California voted to rename two of the university ' s nuclear research sites after Lawrence : the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory . The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award was established in his memory in 1959 . Chemical element number 103 , discovered at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1961 , was named lawrencium in his honor . In 1968 the Lawrence Hall of Science public science education center was established in his honor .