Edwin McMillan (1908–1991)



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Edwin McMillan (1908–1991)

American physicist

Inventor of phase focusing and discoverer of elements

Nobel Prize, 1951

Born in Redondo Beach, California, he was the son of a practicing physician who introduced him to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) at an early age. His interests in things scientific were nurtured by the extensive program that Caltech had in public programs and lectures. He entered Cal Tech in 1924 and was a physics major, but studied much chemistry and was greatly influenced by a close association with Linus Pauling (then a National Research Fellow and future Nobel Prize winner [twice]). McMillan received a BSc degree in 1928 and MSc a year later. He did work for his PhD at Princeton, which he received in 1932. He received a two-year National Research Fellowship and at the urging of E.O. Lawrence went to Berkeley in 1932.

There he set out to measure the magnetic moment of the proton, but the famous physicist Otto Stern beat him to it. However in 1934 he was invited by E.O. Lawrence to join the Rad Lab (now the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) and in 1935 he was invited to join the physics department in Berkeley. He remained in Berkeley for the rest of his life.

During World War II he helped develop radar and then went on to Los Alamos where he worked on developing the atomic bomb. Subsequently, he was very critical of the build-up of an arsenal of nuclear weapons during the Cold War.

Together with co-workers, he discovered the radioactive species beryllium 10, carbon 14 and new elements, neptunium and plutonium. Radioactive carbon has become an important tool in dating of fossils and archeological items, while Np and Pu were the first in a long string of transuranic elements discovered at Berkeley by Glenn Seaborg and Al Ghiorso.

His most important contributions to accelerator physics include phase focusing (independently discovered by Veksler) and the development of electron synchrotrons, as well as being a key member of Lawrence’s team that developed a long series of ever larger cyclotrons.



He was the second director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (from 1958 to 1973) and during that time helped steer the Laboratory into many new fields.

He was a life-time collector and tinkerer. He enjoyed the out-of-doors, and as a young adult climbed Mount Whitney and the Matterhorn, and often swam in the ocean. In later years, he often visited desert regions, collected rocks and shells, gardened and raised orchids. He was very modest, very easy-going and pleasant.
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