Thomas Lauritsen (November16, 1915October16, 1973) was an American nuclear physicist best known for his abilities at designing and (with his own hands) building experimental facilities and instrumentation for experimental nuclear physics; and as the longtime co-author of a periodic compilation of nuclear data. Except for brief periods abroad, his career was entirely at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

, mostly as a professor of physics. In 1969 he was elected as a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

William A. Fowler, he designed and built a pressurized Van de Graaff electrostatic accelerator that operated continuously and productively from 1939 until 1979. In 1939, Lauritsen traveled to the

Niels Bohr Institute The Niels Bohr Institute () is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics, and biophysics. Overview The institute was foun ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

, where he built a duplicate of the Caltech accelerator and collaborated on research with

Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (, ; ; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and old quantum theory, quantum theory, for which he received the No ...

and the latter's son,

Aage Bohr Aage Niels Bohr (; 19 June 1922 – 8 September 2009) was a Danish nuclear physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975 with Ben Roy Mottelson and James Rainwater "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and p ...

. Tommy and Aage became lifelong friends and collaborators. After the German invasion of Denmark in 1940, his return to the United States with his new Danish wife, Else Chievitz (the daughter of Danish resistance leader Ole Chievitz), was hastily arranged. Tommy returned to Denmark for a year in 1952-53 (as a

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...

lecturer) and another year in 1963-64. Lauritsen's principal research interest was in the nuclear spectroscopy of the light nuclei, particularly in areas of importance to astrophysics. His most lasting contribution to nuclear physics was the creation of a review publication, "Energy Levels of Light Nuclei" (with later co-authors including notably Fay Ajzenberg-Selove) that was issued first in 1948 and in updated versions for many years after. In the 1960s Lauritsen become involved in many governmental advisory activities to DOD, ARPA, IDA, AEC (now DOE), and

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party * National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political g ...

. His collected papers and several oral history interviews are in the Caltech archives."Lauritsen, Thomas (Nuclear Physicist)", Caltech Archives Catalog
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lauritsen, Thomas 1915 births 1973 deaths American nuclear physicists California Institute of Technology faculty Danish emigrants to the United States