Anthony L. Turkevich

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Anthony Leonid Turkevich (born July 23, 1916 in Manhattan , New York City , † September 7, 2002 in Lexington , Virginia) was an American radio chemist . He was the first to succeed in determining the composition of the lunar surface using an Alpha Scattering Spectrometer during Surveyor 5's mission in 1967 .

Life

Anthony L. Turkevich was born as one of three children of the future Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America, Leonty Turkevich , in the house of the then bishop near the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas on East 97th Street. He completed his chemistry studies at Dartmouth College in 1937 with a bachelor's degree. He moved to Princeton University , where he received his doctorate in this subject in 1940 with a thesis on the structures of small molecules at JY Beach.

During the Second World War he worked as part of the Manhattan project on gas diffusion and on the measurement of radioactive fallout . His prediction of the explosive power of the Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the most accurate. After the war, his calculations, carried out at ENIAC with Nicholas Metropolis and Stanley Frankel , showed that a hydrogen bomb could be produced. In addition to his continued involvement in the development of nuclear weapons in Los Alamos and on the Eniwetok Atoll , he led secret investigations into the progress made by the Soviet Union in the field of nuclear technology. He developed a method for measuring the global spread of gases. In 1950, together with Enrico Fermi , he calculated the elements that must have been created during the Big Bang . From 1946 until his retirement in 1986 he taught at the University of Chicago . In 1958 and 1959 he took part in the American delegation at the Geneva Conferences, which sought a moratorium on nuclear tests.

Before the Apollo 11 moon landing , NASA launched several unmanned lunar probes to explore the lunar surface. An Alpha Scattering Spectrometer developed by Turkevich was on board Surveyor 5, which went down on September 11, 1967 in the subsequent landing area of ​​Apollo 11, the Mare Tranquillitatis . This box with an edge length of about 15 cm was lowered onto the lunar surface and irradiated the lunar surface with subatomic particles from capsules containing the radioactive element curium . From observing how these particles were scattered from the lunar surface, Turkevich and his team concluded that the lunar surface resembled volcanic basalt rock with a high proportion of titanium, similar to that found on the Hudson River . Due to the high titanium content, the results were initially generally questioned, but the examination of the rock samples brought from the Apollo 11 mission later confirmed Turkevich's predictions. Two other lunar probes, Surveyor 6 and Surveyor 7, were equipped with a comparable spectrometer and carried out these investigations in November 1967 and January 1968 at other landing sites.

For the missions of Mars Pathfinder , the Alpha Scattering Spectrometer was further developed into an Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer, which carried out comparable investigations on rock formations with names like Scooby-Doo and Yogi on Mars. This showed that the Martian surface is similar to the earth's surface in terms of its composition, except for the different proportions of the various chemical elements. Similar experiments will also be involved in future Mars explorations.

In a further experiment, he was able to use the double beta decay of uranium- 238 to prove that neutrinos must have a certain mass.

Turkevich left behind his wife Ireene, whom he married in September 1948 and with whom he had a son, Leonid, and a daughter, Darya Carney.

Honors

In 1962, Turkevich received the EO Lawrence Memorial Award from the United States Atomic Energy Commission . In 1967 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . For his contributions to the peaceful use of nuclear energy , he and five other winners received the Atoms for Peace Award on May 14, 1969 . Also in 1969 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1971 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth College, in 1972 he received the Award for Nuclear Applications from the American Chemical Society and in 1988 the Boris Pregel Award from the New York Academy of Sciences . He was also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society .

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award - Anthony L. Turkevich. United States Department of Energy , accessed March 9, 2017 .
  2. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Book of Members ( PDF ). Retrieved April 21, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Turkevich, Anthony L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Turkevich, Anthony Leonid (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Manhattan , New York City
DATE OF DEATH September 7, 2002
Place of death Lexington , Virginia