Karl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton (born September 14, 1887 in Wooster , Ohio , † June 22, 1954 in New York , NY ) was an American physicist . He was the eldest brother of the physicist Arthur Holly Compton . From 1930 to 1948 he was President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Compton graduated from Wooster University and received his PhD in physics from Princeton University in 1912 . There he was a student of Owen Willans Richardson . He was then an instructor at Reed College in Portland (Oregon) and from 1915 Associate Professor and 1919 Professor at Princeton. In 1927 he became head of research at the Palmer Laboratory and in 1929 head of the physics faculty. From 1930 to 1948 he was President of MIT (and then President of MIT Corporation until his death). He successfully led MIT through the Great Depression and World War II when it cooperated closely with the military, particularly in radar research. From 1933 to 1935 he was on the Scientific Advisory Board of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and from 1940 he was on the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), which was merged into the Office of Scientific Research and Development in 1941 . There he led the radar collaboration with Great Britain. He was also on the committee for synthetic rubber and from 1945 in the Interim Committee of Harry Truman , who advised him in terms of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.
He was an experimental physicist and dealt with electronics and spectroscopy.
In 1927 he was president of the American Physical Society . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (since 1924) and the American Philosophical Society (since 1923) and President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . In 1951 he became an officer of the Legion of Honor . He received the Rumford Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1931 , of which he became a member in the same year, and the Presidential Medal for Merit in 1946 .
In 1970 the lunar crater Compton was named after him and his brother.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Compton (moon crater) in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS
William Barton Rogers | John Daniel Runkle | William Barton Rogers | Francis Amasa Walker | James Crafts | Henry Smith Pritchett | Arthur Amos Noyes | Richard Cockburn Maclaurin | Elihu Thomson | Ernest Fox Nichols | Elihu Thomson | Samuel Wesley Stratton | Karl Taylor Compton | James R. Killian | Julius Stratton | Howard Wesley Johnson | Jerome Wiesner | Paul Edward Gray | Charles Marstiller Vest | Susan Hockfield | L. Rafael Reif
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Compton, Karl Taylor |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 14, 1887 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wooster , Ohio |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 22, 1954 |
| Place of death | new York |