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By the early 1930s, Compton had become interested in [[cosmic ray]]s. At the time, their existence was known but their origin and nature remained speculative. Their presence could be detected using a "bomb" containing compressed air or argon gas by measuring its electrical conductivity. Trips to Europe, India, Mexico, Peru and Australia gave Compton the opportunity to measure cosmic rays at different altitudes and latitudes. Along with other groups who made observations around the globe, they found that cosmic rays were 15 per cent more intense at the poles than at the equator. Compton attributed this to the effect of cosmic rays being made up principally of charged particles, rather than photons as [[Robert Millikan]] had suggested, with the latitude effect being due to [[Earth's magnetic field]].{{sfn|Compton|1967|pp=157–163}}
By the early 1930s, Compton had become interested in [[cosmic ray]]s. At the time, their existence was known but their origin and nature remained speculative. Their presence could be detected using a "bomb" containing compressed air or argon gas by measuring its electrical conductivity. Trips to Europe, India, Mexico, Peru and Australia gave Compton the opportunity to measure cosmic rays at different altitudes and latitudes. Along with other groups who made observations around the globe, they found that cosmic rays were 15 per cent more intense at the poles than at the equator. Compton attributed this to the effect of cosmic rays being made up principally of charged particles, rather than photons as [[Robert Millikan]] had suggested, with the latitude effect being due to [[Earth's magnetic field]].{{sfn|Compton|1967|pp=157–163}}


==Manhattan==
==Wartime activities==
In April 1941, along with [[Vannevar Bush]], head of the wartime [[National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), created a special committee headed by Compton to report on the NDRC uranium program. Compton's report, which was submitted in May 1941, foresaw the prospects of developing [[radiological weapon]]s, [[nuclear propulsion]] for ships, and [[nuclear weapons]] using [[uranium-235]] or the recently-discovered [[plutonium]].{{sfn|Hewlett|Anderson|1962|pp=36-38}} In October he wrote another report on the practicality of am atomic bomb. He worked with [[Enrico Fermi]] on calculations of the [[critical mass]] of uranium-235, discussed the prospects for [[uranium enrichment]] with [[Harold Urey]], and spoke with [[Eugene Wigner]] about how plutonium might be produced in a [[nuclear reactor]], and with [[Robert Server]] about how the plutonium produced in a reactor might be separated from uranium. His report, submitted in November, stated that a bomb was feasible, although he was more conservative about its destructive power than [[Mark Oliphant]] and his British colleagues.{{sfn|Hewlett|Anderson|1962|pp=46-49}}
⚫
In 1941, along with [[Vannevar Bush]], head of the wartime [[Office of Scientific Research and Development]] (OSRD), and [[Ernest Lawrence]], the inventor of the [[cyclotron]], Compton helped to take over the then-stagnant American program to develop an [[atomic bomb]]. Compton was placed in charge of the OSRD's [[S-1 Uranium Committee|S-1 Committee]] charged with investigating the properties and manufacture of [[uranium]]. In 1942, Compton appointed [[Robert Oppenheimer]] as the Committee's top theorist. When the Committee's work was taken over by the [[Army]] in the summer of 1942, it became the [[Manhattan Project]].

⚫
and [[Ernest Lawrence]], the inventor of the [[cyclotron]], Compton helped to take over the then-stagnant American program to develop an [[atomic bomb]]. Compton was placed in charge of the OSRD's [[S-1 Uranium Committee|S-1 Committee]] charged with investigating the properties and manufacture of [[uranium]]. In 1942, Compton appointed [[Robert Oppenheimer]] as the Committee's top theorist. When the Committee's work was taken over by the [[Army]] in the summer of 1942, it became the [[Manhattan Project]].


Immediately after the [[Japan]]ese attack on [[Pearl Harbor]] on December 7, 1941, Compton gained support for consolidating [[plutonium]] research at the [[University of Chicago]] and for an ambitious schedule that called for producing the first atomic bomb in January 1945, a goal that was missed by only six months. "[[Metallurgical Laboratory]]" or "Met Lab" was the "cover" name given to Compton's facility. Its objectives were to produce [[chain reaction|chain-reacting]] "piles" of uranium to convert to plutonium, find ways to separate the plutonium from the uranium and to design a bomb. In December 1942, under the stands at the university's [[Stagg Field]], a team of Met Lab scientists directed by [[Enrico Fermi]] achieved a sustained chain reaction in the world's first [[nuclear reactor]]. Throughout the war, Compton would remain a prominent scientific adviser and administrator. In 1945, he served, along with Lawrence, Oppenheimer, and Fermi, as part of the Scientific Panel which recommended military use of the atomic bomb against Japan.<ref>[http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/interim-committee/interim-committee-recommendations_1945-06-16.htm Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Nuclear Weapons]. nuclearfiles.org (1945-06-16)</ref>
Immediately after the [[Japan]]ese attack on [[Pearl Harbor]] on December 7, 1941, Compton gained support for consolidating [[plutonium]] research at the [[University of Chicago]] and for an ambitious schedule that called for producing the first atomic bomb in January 1945, a goal that was missed by only six months. "[[Metallurgical Laboratory]]" or "Met Lab" was the "cover" name given to Compton's facility. Its objectives were to produce [[chain reaction|chain-reacting]] "piles" of uranium to convert to plutonium, find ways to separate the plutonium from the uranium and to design a bomb. In December 1942, under the stands at the university's [[Stagg Field]], a team of Met Lab scientists directed by [[Enrico Fermi]] achieved a sustained chain reaction in the world's first [[nuclear reactor]]. Throughout the war, Compton would remain a prominent scientific adviser and administrator. In 1945, he served, along with Lawrence, Oppenheimer, and Fermi, as part of the Scientific Panel which recommended military use of the atomic bomb against Japan.<ref>[http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/interim-committee/interim-committee-recommendations_1945-06-16.htm Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Nuclear Weapons]. nuclearfiles.org (1945-06-16)</ref>

Revision as of 12:54, 27 July 2013

Arthur Holly Compton
Born(1892-09-10)September 10, 1892
Wooster, Ohio, USA
DiedMarch 15, 1962(1962-03-15) (aged 69)
Berkeley, California, USA
NationalityUnited States
Alma materCollege of Wooster
Princeton University
Known forCompton effect
Compton length
Compton scattering
Compton wavelength
Compton shift
AwardsNobel Prize for Physics (1927)
Franklin Medal (1940)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsWashington University in St. Louis
University of Chicago
University of Minnesota
Forman Christian College
Doctoral advisorHerewald L. Cooke
Doctoral studentsWinston H. Bostick
Robert S. Shankland
Signature
Notes

Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his discovery of the Compton effect. He served as Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1945 to 1953.

Early life

Arthur Compton and Werner Heisenberg in 1929 in Chicago

Arthur Compton was born in Wooster, Ohio in 1892 to Elias and Otelia Catherine (née Augspurger) Compton.[1] She was named American Mother of the Year in 1939.[2] They were an academic family. Elias was dean of the University of Wooster (later The College of Wooster), which Arthur attended, and also became a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. Arthur's eldest brother, Karl, also attended Wooster, earned a PhD in physics from Princeton University in 1912, and was president of MIT from 1930 to 1948. His second brother Wilson likewise attended Wooster, earned his PhD in economics from Princeton in 1916 and was president of the State College of Washington, later Washington State University from 1944 to 1951.[3]

Compton was initially interested in astronomy, and took a photograph of Halley's Comet in 1910.[4] Around 1913, Compton devised a method for demonstrating the rotation of the Earth.[5] He graduated from Wooster that year with a Bachelor of Science degree. He then also entered Princeton, where he received his Master of Arts degree in 1914.[6] He then studied for his PhD in physics under the supervision of Herewald L. Cooke, writing his dissertation on "The intensity of X-ray reflection, and the distribution of the electrons in atoms".[7]

When he earned his PhD in 1916, Arthur, Karl and Wilson Compton became the first group of three brothers to earn PhDs from Princeton. Later, they would become the first three to simultaneously head American colleges.[3] They had a sister, Mary, who married a missionary, C. Herbert Rice, who became the principal of Forman Christian College in Lahore.[8]

Compton married Betty Charity McCloskey, as Wooster classmate and fellow graduate, in June 1916.[8] They had two sons, Arthur Alan and John Joseph Compton.[9] He became a physics instructor at the University of Minnesota, then spent two years a research engineer with the Westinghouse Lamp Company in Pittsburgh, where he worked on the development of the sodium-vapor lamp. During World War I he developed aircraft instrumentation for the Signal Corps.[8]

In 1919, Compton was awarded one of the first two National Research Council Fellowships that allowed students to study abroad. He chose to go to Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory in England. Working with George Paget Thomson, the son of J.J. Thomson, he studied the scattering and absorption of gamma rays.[10][11] He observed that the scattered rays were more easily absorbed than the original source.[6] Compton was greatly impressed by the Cavendish scientist, especially Ernest Rutherford, Charles Galton Darwin and Arthur Eddington, and he ultimately named his second son after J. J. Thomson.[11]

Physics professor

Compton returned to the United States, where he was appointed Wayman Crow Professor of Physics, and Head of the Department of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis in 1920.[6] In 1922, he found that X-ray wavelengths increase due to scattering of the radiant energy by "free electrons". The scattered quanta have less energy than the quanta of the original ray. This discovery, known as the "Compton effect" or "Compton scattering" demonstrated the particle concept of electromagnetic radiation. It was a sensational discovery at the time, for the wave nature of light had been well-demonstrated, and the idea that it could have a dual nature was not easily accepted. It earned Compton the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927. Compton and Alfred W. Simon developed the method for observing at the same instant individual scattered X-ray photons and the recoil electrons. In Germany, Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger independently developed a similar method.[12]

In 1923 Compton moved to the University of Chicago as Professor of Physics,[6] where he would stay for the next 22 years. The following year he demonstrated that the scattering of 130,000-volt X-rays from elements up to sulfur was polarized, a result predicted by J. J. Thomson. The effort to prove Compton's interpretation of the Compton effect was wrong was spearheaded by William Duane from Harvard University. Duane carried out a series of experiments to disprove Compton, but merely would up accumulating evidence that Compton was correct. In 1924, Duane conceded that this was the case.[12]

Compton investigated the effect of X-rays on the sodium and chlorine nuclei in salt. He also used X-rays to investigate ferromagnetism, concluding that it was a result of the alignment of electron spins.[13] In 1926, he became a consultant for the Lamp Department at General Electric. In 1934, he returned to England as Eastman visiting professor at Oxford University. While there General Electric asked him to report on activities at General Electric Company plc's research laboratory at Wembley. Compton was intrigued by the possibilities of the research there into fluorescent lamps. His report prompted a research program in America, which developed the fluorescent lamp.[14][15]

Compton's first book, X-Rays and Electrons, was published in 1926. In it he showed how to calculate the densities of diffracting materials from their X-ray diffraction patterns.[13] He revised his book with the help of Samuel K. Allison to produce X-Rays in Theory and Experiment (1935). This work remained a standard reference for the next three decades.[16]

By the early 1930s, Compton had become interested in cosmic rays. At the time, their existence was known but their origin and nature remained speculative. Their presence could be detected using a "bomb" containing compressed air or argon gas by measuring its electrical conductivity. Trips to Europe, India, Mexico, Peru and Australia gave Compton the opportunity to measure cosmic rays at different altitudes and latitudes. Along with other groups who made observations around the globe, they found that cosmic rays were 15 per cent more intense at the poles than at the equator. Compton attributed this to the effect of cosmic rays being made up principally of charged particles, rather than photons as Robert Millikan had suggested, with the latitude effect being due to Earth's magnetic field.[17]

Manhattan

In April 1941, along with Vannevar Bush, head of the wartime [[National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), created a special committee headed by Compton to report on the NDRC uranium program. Compton's report, which was submitted in May 1941, foresaw the prospects of developing radiological weapons, nuclear propulsion for ships, and nuclear weapons using uranium-235 or the recently-discovered plutonium.[18] In October he wrote another report on the practicality of am atomic bomb. He worked with Enrico Fermi on calculations of the critical mass of uranium-235, discussed the prospects for uranium enrichment with Harold Urey, and spoke with Eugene Wigner about how plutonium might be produced in a nuclear reactor, and with Robert Server about how the plutonium produced in a reactor might be separated from uranium. His report, submitted in November, stated that a bomb was feasible, although he was more conservative about its destructive power than Mark Oliphant and his British colleagues.[19]

and Ernest Lawrence, the inventor of the cyclotron, Compton helped to take over the then-stagnant American program to develop an atomic bomb. Compton was placed in charge of the OSRD's S-1 Committee charged with investigating the properties and manufacture of uranium. In 1942, Compton appointed Robert Oppenheimer as the Committee's top theorist. When the Committee's work was taken over by the Army in the summer of 1942, it became the Manhattan Project.

Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Compton gained support for consolidating plutonium research at the University of Chicago and for an ambitious schedule that called for producing the first atomic bomb in January 1945, a goal that was missed by only six months. "Metallurgical Laboratory" or "Met Lab" was the "cover" name given to Compton's facility. Its objectives were to produce chain-reacting "piles" of uranium to convert to plutonium, find ways to separate the plutonium from the uranium and to design a bomb. In December 1942, under the stands at the university's Stagg Field, a team of Met Lab scientists directed by Enrico Fermi achieved a sustained chain reaction in the world's first nuclear reactor. Throughout the war, Compton would remain a prominent scientific adviser and administrator. In 1945, he served, along with Lawrence, Oppenheimer, and Fermi, as part of the Scientific Panel which recommended military use of the atomic bomb against Japan.[20]

Arthur Holly Compton on the cover of Time Magazine on January 13, 1936

Return to Washington University

After the war ended, Compton resigned his chair as Charles H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago to return to Washington University in St. Louis, where he was inaugurated as the university's ninth Chancellor in 1946.[21] During Compton's time as Chancellor, the university formally desegregated its undergraduate divisions in 1952, named its first female full professor, and enrolled a record number of students as wartime veterans returned to the United States. His reputation and connections in national scientific circles allowed him to recruit many nationally renowned scientific researchers to the university. Despite Compton's accomplishments, he was criticized then, and subsequently by historians, for moving slowly toward full racial integration, making Washington University the last major institution of higher learning in St. Louis to open its doors to African Americans.[22]

Compton retired as Chancellor in 1954, but remained on the faculty as Distinguished Service Professor of Natural Philosophy until his retirement from the full-time faculty in 1961. In retirement he wrote Atomic Quest, a personal account of his role in the Manhattan Project, which was published in 1956.[21]

Philosophy

Compton was one of a handful of scientists and philosophers to propose a two-stage model of free will. Others include William James, Henri Poincaré, Karl Popper, Henry Margenau, and Daniel Dennett.[23] In 1931, Compton championed the idea of human freedom based on quantum indeterminacy and invented the notion of amplification of microscopic quantum events to bring chance into the macroscopic world. In his somewhat bizarre mechanism, he imagined sticks of dynamite attached to his amplifier, anticipating the Schrödinger's cat paradox.[24]

Reacting to criticisms that his ideas made chance the direct cause of our actions, Compton clarified the two-stage nature of his idea in an Atlantic Monthly article in 1955. First there is a range of random possible events, then one adds a determining factor in the act of choice.

A set of known physical conditions is not adequate to specify precisely what a forthcoming event will be. These conditions, insofar as they can be known, define instead a range of possible events from among which some particular event will occur. When one exercises freedom, by his act of choice he is himself adding a factor not supplied by the physical conditions and is thus himself determining what will occur. That he does so is known only to the person himself. From the outside one can see in his act only the working of physical law. It is the inner knowledge that he is in fact doing what he intends to do that tells the actor himself that he is free.[25]

Personal details

Compton played the mandolin and was a scientific glassblower. For a time he was a deacon at a Baptist church. "Science can have no quarrel," he said "with a religion which postulates a God to whom men are as His children."[26]

Compton died in Berkeley, California, from a cerebral hemorrhage on March 15, 1962. He was survived by his wife and sons.[9] He is buried in the Wooster Cemetery in Wooster, Ohio.[27]

Legacy

Compton received many awards in his lifetime, including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927, the Matteucci Gold Medal in 1933, the Royal Society's Hughes Medal and the Franklin Institute's Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1940.[28] He is commemorated in various ways. The Compton crater on the Moon is co-named for Compton and his brother Karl.[29] The physics research building at Washington University in St Louis is named in his honor.[30] Compton invented a more gentle, elongated, and ramped version of the speed bump called a "Holly hump," many of which are on the roads of the Washington University in St. Louis campus.[31] The University of Chicago Residence Halls remembered Compton and his achievements by dedicating Arthur H. Compton House in his honor.[32] Compton also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.[33]Arthur H. Compton House in Chicago is listed as a National Historic Landmark.[34] NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was named in honor of Compton. The Compton effect is central to the gamma ray detection instruments aboard the observatory.[35]

Bibliography

  • Compton, Arthur (1926). X-Rays and Electrons: an Outline of Recent X-Ray Theory. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc. OCLC 1871779.
  • Compton, Arthur (1935). X-Rays in Theory and Experiment. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc. OCLC 853654. {{cite book}}: |first2= missing |last2= (help)
  • Compton, Arthur (1935). The Freedom of Man. New Haven: Yale University Press. OCLC 5723621.
  • Compton, Arthur (1940). The Human Meaning of Science. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. OCLC 311688.
  • Compton, Arthur (1949). Man's Destiny in Eternity. Boston: Beacon Press. OCLC 4739240.
  • Compton, Arthur (1956). Atomic Quest. New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 173307.
  • Compton, Arthur (1967). Johnston, Marjorie (ed.). The Cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. OCLC 953130. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Compton, Arthur (1973). Shankland, Robert S. (ed.). Scientific Papers of Arthur Holly Compton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press;. ISBN 9780226114309. OCLC 962635.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Notes

  1. ^ Hockey 2009.
  2. ^ "Past National Mothers of the Year". American Mothers, Inc. Retrieved July 23, 2013.
  3. ^ a b Compton 1967, p. 425.
  4. ^ Compton 1967, pp. 11–12.
  5. ^ Compton, A. H. (May 23, 1913). "A Laboratory Method of Demonstrating the Earth's Rotation". Science. 37 (960): 803–806. Bibcode:1913Sci....37..803C. doi:10.1126/science.37.960.803.
  6. ^ a b c d "Arthur H. Compton – Biography". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved March 19, 2013.
  7. ^ "Arthur Holly Compton (1892–1962)" (PDF). University of Notre Dame. Retrieved July 24, 2013.
  8. ^ a b c Allison 1965, p. 82.
  9. ^ a b Allison 1965, p. 94.
  10. ^ Allison 1965, p. 83.
  11. ^ a b Compton 1967, p. 27.
  12. ^ a b Allison 1965, pp. 84–86.
  13. ^ a b Allison 1965, pp. 87–88.
  14. ^ Allison 1965, pp. 88–89.
  15. ^ "Eastman Professorship". The Association of American Rhodes Scholars. Retrieved July 26, 2013.
  16. ^ Allison 1965, p. 90.
  17. ^ Compton 1967, pp. 157–163.
  18. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 36–38.
  19. ^ Hewlett & Anderson 1962, pp. 46–49.
  20. ^ Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Nuclear Weapons. nuclearfiles.org (1945-06-16)
  21. ^ a b Allison 1965, p. 93.
  22. ^ Pfeiffenberger, Amy M. (1989). "Democracy at Home: The Struggle to Desegregate Washington University in the Postwar Era". Gateway-Heritage. 10 (3). Missouri Historical Society: 17–24. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  23. ^ "Two-Stage Models for Free Will". The Information Philosopher. Retrieved July 27, 2013.
  24. ^ Compton, A. H. (August 14, 1931). "The Uncertainty Principle and Free Will". Science. 74 (1911): 172. Bibcode:1931Sci....74..172C. doi:10.1126/science.74.1911.172. PMID 17808216.
  25. ^ Compton 1967, p. 115.
  26. ^ "Science: Cosmic Clearance". Time Magazine. January 13, 1936.
  27. ^ "Arthur Compton". Find a Grave. Retrieved July 27, 2013.
  28. ^ Allison 1965, p. 97.
  29. ^ "Compton". Tangient LLC. Retrieved July 27, 2013.
  30. ^ "Arthur Holly Compton Laboratory of Physics". Washington University. Retrieved July 27, 2013.
  31. ^ "Compton Speed Bumps for Traffic Control, 1953". Washington University. Retrieved July 27, 2013.
  32. ^ "Compton House". University of Chicago. Retrieved July 27, 2013.
  33. ^ St. Louis Walk of Fame. "St. Louis Walk of Fame Inductees". stlouiswalkoffame.org. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
  34. ^ "Compton, Arthur H., House". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Retrieved July 27, 2013.
  35. ^ "The CGRO Mission (1991 - 2000)". NASA. Retrieved July 27, 2013.

References

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