Arthur Compton

Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) won the Nobel Prize in Physics (1927) for discovery of the Compton effect named in his honor. He served as Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1945 to 1953.

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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-rays wavelength increases due to scattering of the radiant energy by "free electrons". 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 advisor and administrator.

Washington University

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.

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

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 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.

See also

• Schools : College of Wooster, Princeton University, University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis
• Physics : Timeline mechanics and physics
• Energy : Luminiferous aether, Radiant energy, Manhattan Project (Atomic energy)

Bibliography

• Compton, Arthur (1918). "American Physical Society address (Dec 1917)", Physical Review, Series II.
• Compton, Arthur (1923). "A Quantum Theory of the Scattering of X-Rays by Light Elements", Physical Review, 21(5), 483 – 502.
• 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.