Samuel K. Allison
Samuel King Allison (born November 13, 1900 in Chicago , † September 15, 1965 ibid) was an American physicist who was involved in the Manhattan Project and construction of the first nuclear reactor ( Chicago Pile ).
Life
Allison studied mathematics and chemistry from 1917 at the University of Chicago with a bachelor's degree in 1921 and received his doctorate there in 1923 under William Draper Harkins . As a post-doctoral student he was at Harvard University until 1925 and at the Carnegie Institution in 1925/26 . From 1926 to 1930 he last taught as an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley . From 1930 he was back at the University of Chicago, where he became professor of physics in 1942. In 1935 he was on a Guggenheim fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge with John Cockcroft .
Allison was director of the Enrico Fermi Institute from 1946 to 1957 and from 1963 to 1965 .
He died of an aneurysm while attending a conference in Culham, England .
In the 1930s he investigated the Compton effect , initially as part of William Duane's efforts to refute it. Instead, they confirmed Compton, which resulted in a book with this one.
During the Second World War he was involved in the Manhattan Project and was director of the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago from June 1943. From November 1944 he was in Los Alamos, where he was on a supervisory committee to oversee the construction of the plutonium bomb. At the Trinity test in July 1945, he spoke the countdown. In 1946 he received the Medal of Merit for his work on the atomic bomb project . After the war he campaigned for civilian control of nuclear energy. In 1946 he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences . Since 1927 he was a fellow of the American Physical Society .
From 1960 to 1963 he was the physics committee of the National Research Council and from 1962 to 1965 its committee for nuclear physics.
James Cronin is one of his PhD students .
Fonts
- with Arthur Compton: X-rays in Theory and Experiment, Van Nostrand 1935
literature
- Roger H. Hildebrand: Obituary in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 76, 1999, 1–17 (English) (PDF file)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Allison, Samuel K. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Allison, Samuel King (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 13, 1900 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chicago |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 15, 1965 |
| Place of death | Chicago |