Manhattan Project Scientists: Ernest Orlando Lawrence

Ernest Lawrence is perhaps best known for the invention of the cyclotron.

LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

Quick Facts

Significance:

Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of the cyclotron

Place of Birth:

Canton, SD

Date of Birth:

August 8, 1901

Place of Death:

Palo Alto, CA

Date of Death:

August 27, 1958

Place of Burial:

Oakland, CA

Cemetery Name:

Chapel of Memories Columbarium and Mausoleum

Born in Canton, SD in 1901, Ernest Lawrence received his PhD in physics from Yale University in 1925. In 1929 at the University of California- Berkeley, Lawrence invented what would become one of the most important contributions to the success of the Manhattan Project, the cyclotron. The cyclotron accelerated nuclear particles to a high velocity without using high voltage; these particles bombarded atoms of several different elements, often forming new elements. In 1939, Lawrence was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention. 

From 1943 to 1946, Lawrence developed and supervised the electromagnetic separation process at Berkeley and at Oak Ridge’s Y-12 Electromagnetic Separation Plant. Cyclotrons (now called calutrons as a combination of California University and cyclotron) were used at Y-12 to separate lighter uranium 235 from heavier uranium 238. This separated uranium was used as fuel for Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945. 

Lawrence was influential in the selection of J. Robert Oppenheimer to lead the Los Alamos laboratory and witnessed the Trinity test firsthand on July 16, 1945. After the war, Lawrence resumed his research and instruction at Berkeley and joined the Atomic Energy Commission, the civilian-controlled agency that superseded the Manhattan Project in 1947. Lawrence spent the majority of his post-war career advocating for “Big Science.” Ernest Lawrence died in Palo Alto, CA in 1958.