Ernest Orlando Lawrence,
Laboratory Founder

"Ernest was born grown up." His mother said this so often that it became a family cliche, anticipated whenever Gunda Lawrence spoke of her eldest son. She said it before he was ten, and again when he won the Nobel Prize at 38; it was her response when questioned about his youthful enthusiasm at 50 -- without thought of the contradiction in terms. It was her explanation of the inscrutable. It would have served had she heard the scholar whose business it was to assess the brilliant, call him "Perhaps the only real genius I've ever known," and as readily for the summation of a successful businessman: "The most normal egghead I ever saw!" Nor did it surprise her that a President of the United States called him a "statesman." Of course he was a genius, and as normal as any successful American -- an American genius.

An American genius: of immigrant stock, rural, prairie, small-town schools, and Midwest universities until graduate work in the East; all in America, at a time when the luster of Cambridge or Gottingen was important in physics. Then, in so short a time, he created his own bailiwick in the Far West, a center to which physicists of every enlightened nation gravitated, the while remaining a "regular fellow," at ease and at home with dignitaries, scientists, politicians, military men, students, and Rotarians; courageous, optimistic, in a hurry, and as extroverted and happy as the normal American male is supposed to be. A success in the true Horatio Alger genre.

-- from An American Genius, the Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence, by Herbert Childs

Ernest Orlando Lawrence (1901-1958) founded this Laboratory in 1931. Lawrence invented the cyclotron, spawning a historic revolution in particle physics that revealed the basic building blocks of the universe. His legacy includes this laboratory, which is part of the network of national laboratories that followed. Additionally, Lawrence was an early and ardent proponent of the then unconventional concept of interdisciplinary science, promoting collaboration among scientists in different fields. He brought together large teams of engineers and scientists from a broad spectrum of disciplines, focusing them on a collective project. Today, Lawrence is remembered for pioneering this style of research. Historians call this period the beginning of "big science."

It was an event that occurred in 1919 that destined Lawrence's course. A British scientist, Ernest Rutherford, undertook an early study of nuclear transformations. Rutherford discovered that nuclear particles induce more transformations as they travel faster. If a machine could be invented to increase the number and speed of the particles, the field of study could rapidly advance; lacking such a device, nuclear physicists remained largely stymied.

Lawrence joined the faculty at the University of California in Berkeley in 1928, intending to study photoelectricity. But in 1929, he read about a method for generating the fast particles sought by Rutherford and realized how to engineer such a device. That year, Lawrence designed a machine that worked much like a swing, gradually increasing the speed of the moving particles with each cycle. He made use of the ability of a magnetic field to bend charged particles, allowing the particle to make repeated passes through the same accelerating field, gaining energy on each cycle. In January, 1931, he and M. Stanley Livingston designed the first successful cyclotron, launching a Golden Age in physics. Now housed in the Smithsonian, the first atom splitter measured only 5 inches across; successive cyclotrons have had an immense impact on 20th century science.

In the 1930s, America entered into the grip of the Great Depression, but Lawrence refused to allow his vision to die. Despite economic conditions, the 1930s were a decade of discovery in nuclear physics and scientists immigrated to America. Attracted by Lawrence's expertise, many were drawn to his nascent scientific mecca. Lawrence also attracted funding, private grants from philanthropists and scarce government money. The financial support and the great minds came to Lawrence's lab in order to take part in research that many believed had unfathomable potential.

Of course, some disagreed. Albert Einstein said inducing particles to collide with a cyclotron was a long shot, commenting: "You see, it is like shooting birds in the dark, in a country where there are only a few birds."

In 1939, Lawrence was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his development of the cyclotron. It was the first of nine Nobel Prizes awarded to scientists here. Lawrence's tenure as director of the Laboratory (1931-1958) ended with his death.

To Lawrence, science was an adventure on the frontier of inquiry. This passion for discovery, perhaps Lawrence's greatest legacy, remains the driving force of the laboratory that today is named the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.