Arthur Compton

Infobox_Scientist
name = Arthur Holly Compton


image_size =
caption = Arthur Holly Compton on the cover of "Time" magazine, January 13, 1936.
birth_date = birth date|mf=yes|1892|9|10
birth_place = Wooster, Ohio, USA
death_date = death date and age|mf=yes|1962|3|15|1892|9|10
death_place = Berkeley, California, USA
nationality = United States
field = Physics
work_institution = University of Chicago
Washington University in St. Louis
alma_mater = College of Wooster
Princeton University
doctoral_advisor = Owen Willans Richardson
H. L. Cooke
doctoral_students = Winston H. Bostick
Robert S. Shankland
known_for = Compton effect
Compton length
Compton scattering
Compton wavelength
Compton shift
prizes = nowrap|Nobel Prize for Physics (1927)
religion = Presbyterian
footnotes = Compton is the son of Elias Compton, brother of Wilson Compton and Karl Taylor Compton, and father of John Joseph Compton.

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.

Biography

Early years

Arthur Holly Compton was born in Wooster, Ohio in 1892 to Elias and Otelia Compton. They were an academic family; his father Elias Compton was dean of The University of Wooster (later The College of Wooster), which Arthur attended. His eldest brother Karl Taylor Compton also attended The University of Wooster, became a physicist, and was later president of MIT; his second brother Wilson M. Compton became a diplomat and president of the State College of Washington, later Washington State University. Around 1913, Compton devised a demonstration method for the Earth's rotation.

In 1918, Compton began studying X-ray scattering. In 1922, Compton 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" demonstrates the "particle" concept of electromagnetic radiation and earned Compton the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927. Compton developed the method for observing at the same instant individual scattered X-ray photons and the recoil electrons (developed with Alfred W. Simon). In Germany, Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger independently developed a similar method.

Wartime activities

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 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, underneath Chicago'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.

Washington University in St. Louis

Compton returned to Washington University in St. Louis, where he had served as Head of the Department of Physics from 1920 to 1923, when he was inaugurated as the university's ninth Chancellor in 1946.

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. [Amy M. Pfeiffenberger, "Democracy at Home: The Struggle to Desegregate Washington University in the Postwar Era," "Gateway-Heritage" (Missouri Historical Society), vol. 10, no. 3 (Winter 1989), pp. 17-24.]

Compton resigned as Chancellor in 1953, but remained on the faculty until his retirement from the full-time faculty in 1961.

Personal details

Along with being an academic his father was a Presbyterian clergyman. At least for a time Arthur Compton was a deacon at a Baptist Church. He also played the mandolin and was a scientific glassblower. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,755635-5,00.html Time Magazine: January 13, 1936] ]

Legacy

Compton is buried in the Wooster Cemetery in Wooster, Ohio. Compton crater on the Moon is co-named for Arthur Compton and his brother Karl. The physics research building at Washington University in St Louis is named in his honor. The University of Chicago Residence Halls remembered Compton and his achievements by dedicating [http://compton-house.uchicago.edu Compton House] in his honor. Compton also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

The Arthur H. Compton House in Chicago is listed as a National Historic Landmark.

Compton also 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.

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.

Bibliography

* Compton, Arthur (1918). "American Physical Society address (Dec 1917)", " [http://prola.aps.org Physical Review] , Series II".
* Compton, Arthur (1923). " [http://www.aip.org/history/gap/Compton/Compton.html A Quantum Theory of the Scattering of X-Rays by Light Elements] ", "Physical Review", 21(5), 483 – 502.
* Compton, Arthur (1935). "The Freedom of Man", New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Compton, Arthur (1940). "The Human Meaning of Science", Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
* Compton, Arthur (1956). "Atomic Quest", New York: Oxford University Press.
* Compton, Arthur (1967). "The Cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton", New York: Alfred A. Knopf; edited by Marjorie Johnston
* Compton, Arthur (1973). "Scientific Papers of Arthur Holly Compton", Chicago: University of Chicago Press; edited by Robert S. Shankland.

References

External links

* [http://chancellorsroom.wustl.edu/compton.htm Arthur Compton biographical entry] at Washington University in Saint Louis
* [http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=people/Compton,+Arthur Arthur Compton Annotated bibliography from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues]
*findagrave|22551

Persondata
NAME= Compton, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Compton, Arthur Holly
SHORT DESCRIPTION= American Physicist
DATE OF BIRTH= September 10, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH= Wooster, Ohio, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH= March 15, 1962
PLACE OF DEATH= Berkeley, California, U.S.