Eugene Theodore Booth, Jr. (28 September 1912 – 6 March 2004) was an American

nuclear physicist Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

. He was a member of the historic Columbia University team which made the first demonstration of nuclear fission in the United States. During the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

, he worked on

gaseous diffusion Gaseous diffusion is a technology used to produce enriched uranium by forcing gaseous uranium hexafluoride (UF6) through semipermeable membranes. This produces a slight separation between the molecules containing uranium-235 (235U) and uranium-2 ...

for

isotope separation Isotope separation is the process of concentrating specific isotopes of a chemical element by removing other isotopes. The use of the nuclides produced is varied. The largest variety is used in research (e.g. in chemistry where atoms of "marker" n ...

. He was the director of the design, construction, and operation project for the 385-Mev synchrocyclotron at the Nevis Laboratories, the scientific director of the SCALANT Research Center, and dean of graduate studies at Stevens Institute of Technology. Booth was the scientific director of the SCALANT Research Center, in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

Education

He was born on 28 September 1912 in

Rome, Georgia Rome is the largest city in and the county seat of Floyd County, Georgia, United States. Located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, it is the principal city of the Rome, Georgia metropolitan area, Rome, Georgia, metropolitan statisti ...

Booth studied physics at the

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

, where he received his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

(1932),

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

(1934), and

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

(1937) degrees. In 1934, he was a

Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...

.Eugene T. Booth
– University of Georgia, Rhodes Scholar recipient, 1934.''Physicist Booth, Who Built Columbia’s Cyclotron, Dies'', ''Columbia University Record: News in Brief'
(26 March 2004)

Career

Booth joined

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

faculty as a lecturer. He also helped professor

John R. Dunning John Ray Dunning (September 24, 1907 – August 25, 1975) was an American physicist who played key roles in the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs. He specialized in neutron physics, and did pioneering work in gaseous diffusio ...

with his cyclotron construction and research. Thus began Booth’s lengthy professional collaboration with Dunning.Herbert L. Anderson
John Ray Dunning 1907 – 1975
' in ''Biographical Memoir'' 163-186 (National Academy of Sciences, 1989). In December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to ''

Naturwissenschaften ''The Science of Nature'', formerly ''Naturwissenschaften'', is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Springer Science+Business Media covering all aspects of the natural sciences relating to questions of biological significance. I ...

'' reporting they had detected the element

barium Barium is a chemical element with the symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is the fifth element in group 2 and is a soft, silvery alkaline earth metal. Because of its high chemical reactivity, barium is never found in nature as a free element. Th ...

after bombarding

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

with

neutrons The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons behave ...

; simultaneously, they communicated these results to

Lise Meitner Elise Meitner ( , ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who was one of those responsible for the discovery of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. While working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute on rad ...

. Meitner, and her nephew

Otto Robert Frisch Otto Robert Frisch FRS (1 October 1904 – 22 September 1979) was an Austrian-born British physicist who worked on nuclear physics. With Lise Meitner he advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fission (coining the term) and firs ...

, correctly interpreted these results as being

nuclear fission Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radio ...

. Frisch confirmed this experimentally on 13 January 1939. In 1944, Hahn received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission. Some historians have documented the history of the discovery of nuclear fission and believe Meitner should have been awarded the Nobel Prize with Hahn. Even before it was published, Meitner’s and Frisch’s interpretation of the work of Hahn and Strassmann crossed the Atlantic Ocean with Niels Bohr, who was to lecture at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. Isidor Isaac Rabi and Willis Lamb, two

physicists working at Princeton, heard the news and carried it back to Columbia. Rabi said he told Fermi; Fermi gave credit to Lamb. It was soon clear to a number of scientists at Columbia that they should try to detect the energy released in the nuclear fission of uranium from neutron bombardment. On 25 January 1939, Booth was a member of the experimental team at Columbia University which conducted the first nuclear fission experiment in the United States, which was done in the basement of

Pupin Hall Pupin Physics Laboratories , also known as Pupin Hall, is home to the Columbia University Physics Department, physics and astronomy departments of Columbia University in New York City. The building is located on the south side of 120th Street (Man ...

; the other members of the team were

Herbert L. Anderson Herbert Lawrence Anderson (May 24, 1914 – July 16, 1988) was an American nuclear physicist who was Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. He contributed to the Manhattan Project. He was also a member of the team which made the firs ...

Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and ...

G. Norris Glasoe G. Norris Glasoe (29 October 1902 – May 1987) was an American nuclear physicist. He was a member of the Columbia University team which was the first in the United States to verify the European discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium via ne ...

, and

Francis G. Slack Francis Goddard Slack (November 1, 1897 – February 2, 1985) was an American physicist. He was a physics teacher, researcher, and administrator in academia who was renowned for placing equal emphasis on teaching and on research. Education Slack wa ...

.Bederson, Benjamin ''The Physical Tourist: Physics in New York City'', ''Physics in Perspective'' Volume 5, 87-12
(2003)
. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Booth was a member of Columbia’s scientific staff in the Division of War Research. During the

, Dunning conducted pioneering work at Columbia University on

to separate uranium isotopes; others working on the project included Booth, Henry A. Boorse, Willard F. Libby,

Alfred O. C. Nier Alfred Otto Carl Nier (May 28, 1911 – May 16, 1994) was an American physicist who pioneered the development of mass spectrometry. He was the first to use mass spectrometry to isolate uranium-235 which was used to demonstrate that 235U could unde ...

, and

. After World War II, Booth was director of the project for the design, construction, and operation of a 385-

MeV In physics, an electronvolt (symbol eV, also written electron-volt and electron volt) is the measure of an amount of kinetic energy gained by a single electron accelerating from rest through an Voltage, electric potential difference of one volt i ...

Synchrocyclotron A synchrocyclotron is a special type of cyclotron, patented by Edwin McMillan in 1952, in which the frequency of the driving RF electric field is varied to compensate for relativistic effects as the particles' velocity begins to approach the spe ...

at the Nevis Laboratories in Irvington-on-the-Hudson. The project was a collaborative effort of

, the

United States Atomic Energy Commission The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President H ...

, and the

Office of Naval Research The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to plan ...

. He died on 6 March 2004

Legacy

A middle school in Woodstock, Georgia named after his father E.T. Booth was opened at 6550 Putnam Ford Drive, in Woodstock, his home town.

Honors

*1941 — Fellow of the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

*Citation from the

for his accomplishments in nuclear physics.

Selected publications

* * * * * * * * * * *E. T. Booth, M. W. Johnson, R. W. Schubert, H. C. Beck, W. E. Hovemeyer, W. F. Goodell, Jr. ''Cyclotron Report: 1950 - 1951'', Report Number NP-3045, 52 pages (1950). Institutional citation: Nevis Cyclotron Labs., Columbia University.

Notes

External links

Eugene T. Booth
– Photograph, American Institute of Physics {{DEFAULTSORT:Booth, Eugene T. 20th-century American physicists American nuclear physicists American Rhodes Scholars Fellows of the American Physical Society Manhattan Project people 1912 births 2004 deaths Columbia University faculty University of Georgia alumni Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford People from Briarcliff Manor, New York People from Rome, Georgia Scientists from New York (state)