Samuel C. Collins

Samuel Collins is a redirect to this article. For other people, see Sam Collins .

Samuel Cornette Collins (born September 28, 1898 in Democrat , Kentucky , † June 19, 1984 in Washington, DC ) was an American physicist who dealt with low-temperature physics.

Life

Collins graduated from the University of Tennessee with a bachelor's degree in 1920 and a master's degree in 1924, and received his PhD from the University of North Carolina in 1927 . He taught at Carson-Newman College , the University of Tennessee, Tennessee State Teachers College, and the University of North Carolina before moving to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1930 , where he did research in physical chemistry with FG Keyes. During the Second World War he developed an oxygen generator for breathing devices in airplanes. Then he was back at MIT (Department of Mechanical Engineering), where he became a professor in 1949.

His attempts to generate low temperatures began in the 1930s, but were interrupted by the war. In 1946 he built the Collins Helium Cryostat at MIT for the liquefaction of helium . The apparatus was relatively simple in design and enabled many universities and institutes to produce liquid helium cheaply and practically for experiments in low-temperature physics without using hydrogen or nitrogen for pre-cooling. It had two cylinders and worked on a modified Claude process. About 1 liter of liquid helium per hour could be generated with a commercially available compressor. Before that, every laboratory had to develop its own device for producing liquid helium and was also dependent on potentially dangerous liquid hydrogen. The Collins cryostat was mass-produced by Arthur D. Little. Collins graduate student Howard McMahon, who had worked with him on gas liquefaction processes, later became president of Arthur D. Little.

In 1949 he founded the Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory at MIT. In 1964 he developed a compact (transportable) heart-lung machine with surgeons at West Roxbury Hospital near Boston .

Membership and Honors

In 1951 he received the John Price Wetherill Medal , in 1958 the Kamerlingh-Onnes Gold Medal, in 1965 the Rumford Prize and in 1968 the gold medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers . He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences (1969). A Cryogenic Engineering Conference award is named after him ( Samuel C. Collins Award ), and he was also the first award winner. He received honorary degrees from the University of North Carolina and the University of St Andrews .

Fonts

• Helium liquefiers and carriers, Handbuch der Physik , Volume 14, 1956
• The Helium Cryostat, The Review of Scientific Instruments, Volume 18, 1947, p. 157
• with RL Cannada: Expansion machines for low temperature processes, Oxford University Press 1958
• Helium refrigerator and liquefier, in KD Timmerhaus, Advances in Cryogenic Engineering, Volume 11, 1965, pp. 11-15
• Helium liquefier, Science, Vol. 116, 1952, pp. 289-294

Web links

• Obituary at MIT
• Joseph L. Smith, 50 years of Helium liquefaction at the MIT Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory, pdf

Individual evidence

1. ↑ List of the Rumford Prize winners ( memento of the original from October 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ Collins Reversing exchangers , Chemical Engineering, Volume 53, 1946, p. 106
3. ↑ Liquid hydrogen and nitrogen were necessary for pre-cooling in order to reach the inversion temperature of helium, below which the Joule-Thomson effect could be exploited
4. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 ( PDF ). Retrieved September 29, 2015