Reginald Richardson
John Reginald Richardson (* 1912 in Edmonton , Alberta , Canada ; † November 25, 1997 in Fremont (California) ) was a Canadian-American physicist who dealt with particle accelerators , in particular the further development of cyclotrons .
Richardson first grew up in Vancouver until the family immigrated to the United States in 1922. He studied physics at UCLA and received his doctorate in nuclear physics from Berkeley University under Ernest Orlando Lawrence in 1937. After a year at the University of Michigan , he became an assistant professor at the University of Illinois , where he worked on the newly established cyclotrons . From 1942 he worked on electromagnetic isotope separation for the Manhattan Project in Berkeley and Oak Ridge (Calutron). After the discovery phase stabilization and the synchrotron principle by Weksler and Edwin McMillan , he belonged to a group of physicists who had the concept for the first time in 1946 transpose in a cyclotron in Berkeley (with the possibility Edward Lofgren , Ken MacKenzie, Fred Schmidt, Byron Wright, Bernard Peters). In 1946 he also set up a cyclotron group for nuclear physics experiments at UCLA, for which a cyclotron from Berkeley was brought there and converted into a synchro-cyclotron.
In 1950 he belonged to a group that first implemented the ideas of Llewellyn Thomas on a larger scale, which in 1938 provided azimuthally sectored magnets in order to penetrate higher relativistic energy ranges with cyclotrons. This accelerated electrons up to half the speed of light. At that time the development was still a secret (and was only made public in 1955). Under the direction of Richardson, a 50 MeV Thomas cyclotron for protons was built at UCLA, which went into operation in 1962.
An even larger sector cyclotron with energies up to 520 MeV was built under Richardson's direction at TRIUMF in Vancouver. There Richardson was the director of the laboratory from 1971 to 1976 while he oversaw the construction of the cyclotron.
In 1991 he received the Robert R. Wilson Prize .
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ David Judd, John Jungerman, Elmer Kelly, Robert Pyle, Byron Wright, Robert Thornton
- ↑ In addition to the special sector-shaping of the magnet, 50 trimming coils had to be used for fine-tuning
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Richardson, Reginald |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Richardson, John Reginald (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Canadian-American physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Edmonton , Alberta , Canada |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 25, 1997 |
| Place of death | Fremont (California) |