Edwin McMillan:
Edwin McMillan was an American physicist and Nobel laureate.
Birth:
September 18, 1907 in Redondo Beach, California
Death:
September 7, 1991 in El Cerrito, California
Claim to Fame:
McMillan was an American physicist who shares the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Glenn Seaborg for their discovery of the first transuranium elements. He created the element neptunium by bombarding uranium with neutrons. He also bombarded uranium with deuterons to create the element plutonium.
McMillan also proposed the next step in cyclotron technology called the synchrocyclotron. The original cyclotron design would receive diminished returns as the accelerated charged particles would become relativistic and more massive making them more difficult to accelerate. The synchrocyclotron would adjust the frequency of the accelerating charge to adapt to this change in mass and allow for much more energetic particles.
