Birth of Ernest Lawrence

Ernest Lawrence was born on 8 August 1901 in Canton. An American nuclear physicist, Lawrence invented the cyclotron, a circular particle accelerator that uses a magnetic field to accelerate particles to high energies, and for it he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939. He founded the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, which later became the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and played an important role in the Manhattan Project by developing electromagnetic isotope separation at Oak Ridge. After the war he advocated the development of the hydrogen bomb, and helped to create the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The element lawrencium is named in his honor.

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