George B. Pegram
George B. Pegram | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | August 12, 1958 | (aged 81)
Citizenship | United States |
Education | Duke University (AB) Columbia University (PhD) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physics |
Institutions | Columbia University |
Thesis | Secondary radioactivity in the electrolysis of thorium solutions (1903) |
Doctoral students | John R. Dunning |
George Braxton Pegram (October 24, 1876 – August 12, 1958) was an American physicist who played a key role in the technical administration of the Manhattan Project. He graduated from Trinity College (now Duke University) in 1895, and taught high school before becoming a teaching assistant in physics at Columbia University in 1900. He was to spend the rest of his working life at Columbia, taking his doctorate there in 1903 and becoming a full professor in 1918. His administrative career began as early as 1913 when he became the department's executive officer. By 1918, he was Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences but he resigned in 1930 to relaunch his research activities, performing many meticulous measurements on the properties of neutrons with John R. Dunning. He was also chairman of Columbia's physics department from 1913 to 1945.
Returning to administration as Dean in 1936, Pegram met
After the war Pegram helped found the Brookhaven National Laboratory. He served as vice president of the university 1949 to 1950.
Early life
George Braxton Pegram was born in Trinity, North Carolina, one of the five children of William Howell Pegram, a professor of chemistry at Trinity College (now Duke University), and Emma, daughter of Braxton Craven, the college's founder and first president. He had two brothers and two sisters, all of whom graduated from Trinity College. His upbringing in the academic atmosphere of the campus left him with an appetite for careful methodical work and an inherent diplomacy.[1]
Pegram graduated from Trinity College with a Bachelor of Arts (AB) degree in 1895, and became a high school teacher.[1] He entered Columbia University in 1900, becoming an assistant in physics.[2] He published his first two papers, on radioactive materials, the following year, and wrote his 1903 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis on "Secondary radioactivity in the electrolysis of thorium solutions".[1][3] It was published in the Physical Review that year.[4] During the summer break in 1905, he worked for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey on measuring the Earth's magnetic field at its observation stations.[5]
In those days, promising American scholars in physics would normally further their education overseas. Pegram was awarded a
Early career
On returning to the United States in 1909, Pegram was appointed an assistant professor at Columbia. He became an associate professor in 1912, and a full professor in 1918.[8] He became the head of the physics department on the death of William Hallock in 1913, and held this position until 1945. He also became acting Dean of Columbia's School of Mines, Engineering, and Chemistry in 1917, and was its dean from 1918 until 1930. During World War I he served on the administrative board of the Student Army Training Corps at Columbia. Classes commenced on October 1, 1918, with some 2,500 students. He was also dean of the US Army Radio School, US Army School of Photography, and US Army School of Explosives there, and was Director of Research of the United States Army Signal Corps.[9]
In 1917 and 1918, Pegram served on a committee established by the
Tired of administrative work, which kept him away from his research, Pegram asked Butler to relieve him of the position of dean in 1930.
Pegram's research focus remained on radioactivity. In 1929, he had recruited a graduate student, John R. Dunning, from Nebraska Wesleyan University, who built a linear amplifier.[13] In 1935 and 1936 Dunning was able construct a cyclotron using many salvaged parts to reduce costs and funding from industrial and private donations.[14] James Chadwick's discovery of the neutron in 1932 sparked a flurry of research into neutrons by Pegram and Dunning.[13] Between 1933 and 1936, they would work together on two dozen papers, all on neutrons. He also collaborated with Harold Urey on separating oxygen isotopes.[15] This period came to an abrupt end when Howard Lee McBain died suddenly on May 7, 1936, and Pegram became dean again on January 1, 1937.[8]
A sympathetic administrator proved vital to building up the physics department at Columbia. Pegram hired
Manhattan Project
The discovery of
In March 1939, Fermi, Szilard and
Initially, Fermi and Anderson had used a tank of water as a
We went to Dean Pegram, who was then the man who could carry out magic around the University, and we explained to him that we needed a big room. He scouted around the campus and we went with him to dark corridors and under various heating pipes and so on, to visit possible sites for this experiment and eventually a big room was discovered in Schermerhorn Hall.[32]
By September 1941, they had built a uranium and graphite cube 8 feet (2.4 m) high there.[32]
The Advisory Committee on Uranium was placed under
In August 1942 the United States Army took over the effort, which became the
Later life
Despite its early involvement and important role, the Manhattan Project had not been kind to Columbia. Arthur Compton had concentrated nuclear reactor research at the University of Chicago in 1942. After the war, scientists there had access to the research reactors at the government-sponsored Argonne National Laboratory, and Fermi and Urey were lured away to Chicago. When the war ended in August 1945, the Physics Department at Columbia had five vacant chairs. Filling them would be no easy task. Physicists were hailed as heroes, and every major university was eager to recruit the best ones to build up their departments. They were offered high salaries, and when they left they often took their students and post-doctoral assistants with them. Even the quintessential New Yorker Rabi was tempted to leave rather than return to Columbia from his wartime work at the MIT Radiation Laboratory.[40] He offered to stay, but one condition:
I [Rabi] went to the chairman, Dean Pegram, a very fine person, a brilliant man. He was on most important committees of the university. He also had been chairman of the Physics Department for some twenty years. I said to him, "I'll come back, but I have to be the chairman. I have to work this out, and I have to work this out in my way. Well, he did it. He was my patron, actually, and I asked him to vacate his job. I don't think the department would have elected me necessarily. But Pegram was a very powerful man, and he was so universally respected that he just had to suggest it in his way and it was done.[16]
Rabi felt that to compete with the University of Chicago, Columbia needed to have access to a research reactor too; but the cost was greater than Columbia could afford without collaborating with other institutions, government assistance, or both. On January 16, 1946, Pegram convened a meeting of representatives of 16 different colleges, universities, hospitals and research institutions like the
Getting agreement on this required all of Pegram's negotiating talents, as
Although no longer chairman of the Physics Department, Pegram remained the dean until 1949. He also chaired Columbia's Committee on Government-Aided Research from 1945 to 1950 and again from 1951 to 1956, and vice president of the university 1949 to 1950, when
Pegram died in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania on August 12, 1958.[47] His papers are in the Columbia University Library.[48]
Notes
- ^ a b c Embrey 1970, p. 359.
- ^ "George Pegram". Array of Contemporary American Physicists. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved May 31, 2015.
- ^ "Secondary radioactivity in the electrolysis of thorium solutions". Columbia University. Retrieved May 31, 2015.
- .
- ^ Embrey 1970, p. 360.
- ^ Embrey 1970, pp. 363–367.
- ^ Embrey 1970, pp. 368–371.
- ^ a b c "Pegram named Dean of University – Physicist chosen by trustees to head higher faculties". Columbia Daily Spectator. Vol. 60, no. 53. December 10, 1936. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
- ^ a b Embrey 1970, pp. 372–376.
- ^ Embrey 1970, pp. 376–377.
- ^ Embrey 1970, pp. 380–383.
- ^ a b Rigden 1987, pp. 66–69.
- ^ a b c Embrey 1970, pp. 382–384.
- ^ Broad, William J. (December 20, 2007). "Columbia's Historic Atom Smasher Is Now Destined for the Junk Heap". The New York Times. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
- ^ Embrey 1970, pp. 406–407.
- ^ a b Rigden 1987, p. 181.
- ^ Persico 2001, p. 40.
- ^ Segrè 1970, p. 100.
- ^ Lanouette & Silard 1992, pp. 182–183.
- ^ Rhodes 1986, pp. 267–270.
- ^ Jones 1985, p. 8.
- ^ Rhodes 1986, pp. 260–264.
- ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 13–14.
- ^ a b Rhodes 1986, p. 288.
- ^ Rhodes 1986, p. 293.
- ^ Embrey 1970, p. 378.
- ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 15.
- ^ Lanouette & Silard 1992, pp. 209–210.
- ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 20.
- ^ a b c Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 22.
- ^ Lanouette & Silard 1992, p. 195.
- ^ a b c Embrey 1970, p. 385.
- ^ Jones 1985, p. 25.
- ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 25.
- ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, p. 44.
- ^ Jones 1985, pp. 33–35.
- ^ Jones 1985, p. 44.
- ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 128–129, 135–136.
- ^ a b Embrey 1970, pp. 389–390.
- ^ Rigden 1987, pp. 180–183.
- ^ Crease 1999, pp. 12–15.
- ^ Crease 1999, pp. 15–17.
- ^ Crease 1999, pp. 30–33.
- ^ Weart 1990, pp. 710–711.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved March 15, 2023.
- ^ "George Pegram". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved March 15, 2023.
- ^ "G. B. Pegram , Physicist, Is Dead. Vice President Emeritus of Columbia. Directed Work That Led to Atom Bomb". The New York Times. August 13, 1958. Retrieved August 6, 2008.
- ^ "George Braxton Pegram papers, 1903–1958". Columbia University. Retrieved May 31, 2015.
References
- Crease, Robert P. (1999). Making Physics: a Biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1946–1972. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. OCLC 39556440.
- Embrey, Lee Anna (1970). "George Braxton Pegram 1876–1958" (PDF). Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences. 41: 357–407. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
- OCLC 637004643.
- Jones, Vincent (1985). Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb (PDF). Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History. OCLC 10913875. Archived from the original(PDF) on October 7, 2014. Retrieved August 25, 2013.
- Lanouette, William; Silard, Bela (1992). Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard: The Man Behind The Bomb. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. OCLC 25508555.
- OCLC 56686431.
- OCLC 25508555.
- OCLC 14931559.
- OCLC 118467.
- OCLC 645032326.