Making the first demonstration of nuclear fission in the United States, working on gaseous separation of uranium isotopes, directing the construction of a synchrocyclotron
Eugene Theodore Booth, Jr. (28 September 1912 – 6 March 2004) was an American nuclear physicist. 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, he worked on gaseous diffusion for isotope separation. 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.[1][verification needed]
Education
He was born on 28 September 1912 in Rome, Georgia[2]to Reverend Eugene Theodore Booth, Sr. and Lucy Cornelia Gibson.[citation needed]
Booth joined Columbia University faculty as a lecturer. He also helped professor John R. Dunning with his cyclotron construction and research. Thus began Booth’s lengthy professional collaboration with Dunning.[2][3]
In December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to Naturwissenschaften reporting they had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons;[4] simultaneously, they communicated these results to Lise Meitner. Meitner, and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, correctly interpreted these results as being nuclear fission.[5] Frisch confirmed this experimentally on 13 January 1939.[6] 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.[7][8][9]
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. Isidor Isaac Rabi and Willis Lamb, two Columbia University 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,[10] which was done in the basement of Pupin Hall; the other members of the team were Herbert L. Anderson, John R. Dunning, Enrico Fermi, G. Norris Glasoe, and Francis G. Slack.[3][11][12]
A middle school in Woodstock, Georgia named after his father E.T. Booth was opened at 6550 Putnam Ford Drive, in Woodstock, his hometown.[citation needed]
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.
^O. Hahn and F. Strassmann Über den Nachweis und das Verhalten der bei der Bestrahlung des Urans mittels Neutronen entstehenden Erdalkalimetalle (On the detection and characteristics of the alkaline earth metals formed by irradiation of uranium with neutrons), Naturwissenschaften Volume 27, Number 1, 11-15 (1939). The authors were identified as being at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie, Berlin-Dahlem. Received 22 December 1938.
^Lise Meitner and O. R. Frisch Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: a New Type of Nuclear Reaction, Nature, Volume 143, Number 3615, 239-240 doi:10.1038/143239a0. The paper is dated 16 January 1939. Meitner is identified as being at the Physical Institute, Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. Frisch is identified as being at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Copenhagen.
^O. R. Frisch Physical Evidence for the Division of Heavy Nuclei under Neutron Bombardment, Nature, Volume 143, Number 3616, 276-276 doi:10.1038/143276a0. The paper is dated 17 January 1939. [The experiment for this letter to the editor was conducted on 13 January 1939; see Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb 263 and 268 (Simon and Schuster, 1986).]
^Ruth Lewin SimeFrom Exceptional Prominence to Prominent Exception: Lise Meitner at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for ChemistryErgebnisse 24 Forschungsprogramm Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus (2005).
^Ruth Lewin Sime Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (University of California, 1997).
^Elisabeth Crawford, Ruth Lewin Sime, and Mark Walker A Nobel Tale of Postwar Injustice, Physics Today Volume 50, Issue 9, 26-32 (1997).
^H. L. Anderson, E. T. Booth, J. R. Dunning, E. Fermi, G. N. Glasoe, and F. G. Slack The Fission of Uranium, Phys. Rev. Volume 55, Number 5, 511 - 512 (1939). Institutional citation: Pupin Physics Laboratories, Columbia University, New York, New York. Received 16 February 1939.
^ abBederson, Benjamin The Physical Tourist: Physics in New York City, Physics in Perspective Volume 5, 87-121 (2003)Archived 2004-12-30 at the Wayback Machine.
^Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb 267-270 (Simon and Schuster, 1986).
^Boney, F. N. and Michael Adams A Pictorial History of the University of Georgia 114 (University of Georgia, 2000).
