Edwin McMillan | |
|---|---|
 McMillan in 1951 | |
| Born | Edwin Mattison McMillan September 18, 1907 |
| Died | September 7, 1991 (aged 83) El Cerrito, California, U.S. |
| Education | California Institute of Technology (BS, MS) Princeton University (PhD) |
| Known for | Discovery of neptunium, the first transuranium element Synchrocyclotron |
| Awards | Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1951) Atoms for Peace Award (1963) National Medal of Science (1990) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Chemistry |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley Berkeley Radiation Laboratory |
| Thesis | Deflection of a Beam of HCI Molecules in a Non-Homogeneous Electric Field (1933) |
| Doctoral advisor | Edward Condon |
Edwin Mattison McMillan (September 18, 1907 – September 7, 1991) was an American physicist credited with being the first to produce a transuranium element, neptunium. For this, he shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Glenn Seaborg.
A graduate of California Institute of Technology, he earned his doctorate from Princeton University in 1933, and joined the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory where he discovered oxygen-15 and beryllium-10. During World War II, he worked on microwave radar at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, and then on sonar at the Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory. In 1942 he joined the Manhattan Project, the wartime effort to create atomic bombs, and helped establish its Los Alamos Laboratory where the bombs were designed. He led teams working on the gun-type nuclear weapon design, and also participated in the development of the implosion-type nuclear weapon.
McMillan co-invented the synchrotron with Vladimir Veksler, and after the war he returned to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory to build them. He was appointed associate director of the Radiation Laboratory in 1954 and promoted to deputy director in 1958. He became director upon the death of lab founder Ernest Lawrence later that year, and remained director until his retirement in 1973.