Lee DuBridge

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Lee DuBridge (at the central table, left) is received by Nicolae Ceaușescu (1969).

Lee Alvin DuBridge (born September 21, 1901 in Terre Haute , Indiana , † January 23, 1994 in Duarte , California ) was an American physicist, President of Caltech and influential science advisor in the United States.

DuBridge grew up in modest circumstances, studied at Cornell College and the University of Wisconsin – Madison , where he received his master’s degree in 1924 and his doctorate in 1926. He was then at Caltech with Robert Millikan (with a grant from the National Research Council) and from 1928 Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis (and in 1933 Associate Professor). In 1934 he became a professor at the University of Rochester , where he was from 1938 to 1942 Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and also head of the physics faculty.

In 1941 he was founding director of the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , which he led until 1945. This is where the radar technology was developed. It was there that he began working for many years as a scientific advisor to both the US Navy and the US Army. In 1955 he was on the cover of Time (subtitled Senior Statesman of Science ).

From 1946 to 1969 he was President of Caltech. In 1969 he retired.

His early work dealt with the photoelectric effect , which resulted in two books. In Rochester he switched to nuclear physics and built a cyclotron with SW Barnes (which reached energies of 5 MeV and operated from 1936).

In 1969/70 he was chairman of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). In 1947 he was president of the American Physical Society , a fellow of which he had been since 1931. He was both on the Council (Board of Trustees) of the Rockefeller Foundation (1956-1967) and the Rand Corporation (1948 to 1961) and a scientific advisor at General Motors . Since 1942 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society and since 1943 of the National Academy of Sciences . In 1946 DuBridge was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 1958 to 1964 he was on the National Science Board.

Honors and family

He received the US Medal of Merit, the Vannevar Bush Award and the Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom from the British King. He was a twenty-eight honorary doctor. The asteroid (5678) DuBridge was named after him. The same applies to the DuBridge Range , a mountain range in the East Antarctic Victoria Land .

He had been married since 1925 and had a daughter and a son.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ DuBridge, Arthur Hughes Photoelectric Phenomena , 1932, DuBridge New Theories of the Photoelectric Effect , 1935
  2. ^ Member History: Lee A. DuBridge. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 23, 2018 .
  3. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved October 11, 2015
personal data
SURNAME DuBridge, Lee
ALTERNATIVE NAMES DuBridge, Lee Alvin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and science organizer
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Terre Haute , Indiana
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1994
Place of death Duarte , California