William W. Havens Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 31, 1920 |
| Died | June 29, 2004 (aged 84) |
| Alma mater | City College of New York Columbia University |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Manhattan Project Columbia University |
| Thesis | Slow neutron cross sections of indium, gold, silver, antimony, lithium and mercury as measured with a neutron beam spectrometer (1946) |
| Doctoral advisor | John R. Dunning |
| Doctoral students | |
William Westerfield Havens Jr. (March 31, 1920 – June 29, 2004) was an American physicist.
A graduate of City College of New York and Columbia University, Havens worked with James Rainwater on the construction of a neutron spectrometer, which became the subject of his doctoral thesis. During World War II he worked on the Manhattan Project, the effort to create the first atomic bombs, in its Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratories.
Havens was awarded his doctorate in 1946 after his thesis was declassified. He spent the rest of his career at Columbia University, where he became a full professor in 1955, and was its director of nuclear science and engineering from 1961 to 1977. He was part of the US delegation at the United Nations Atoms for Peace Conferences in Geneva in July and August 1955 and in September 1958, and became a consultant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1962. He retired from Columbia in 1985, and from then until 1990 was the first full-time CEO of the American Physical Society.