The beginning of the University of Pittsburgh Nuclear Physics Laboratory dates to the late 1930s when Alex Allen came to the University of Pittsburgh as a professor of Physics with the goal of building a cyclotron for producing radioactive isotopes for medical applications. He obtained a gift from the Scaife family for this purpose, with the facility called the Sarah Mellon Scaife Radiation Laboratory. Construction halted during World War II, when Prof. Allen worked at the MIT Radiation Laboratory on radar research. In 1946 construction was completed with the cyclotron delivering internal beams of 15 MeV deuterons, 7.5 MeV protons and 30 MeV alpha particles that were used for the production of radioactive isotopes. Subsequently Allen's main efforts were directed at getting reliable external beam and designing a high-energy resolution system for determining with high precision the energies of reaction products. For this effort, Roger Bender from the University of Wisconsin was hired in about 1948, and was soon joined by two other Wisconsin alumni, Jim McGruer and John Cameron, and in the mid-50s Karl Quisenberry from the University of Minnesota. High-resolution studies of energy levels in light nuclei were completed with several Ph.D. theses resulting. This program was able to draw on theoretical support in the physics department, involving Professors Ed Gerjoy, Phil Stehle, and later Norman Austern, Elizabeth Baranger, and Sidney Meshkoff.
Around 1958 Roger Bender, John Cameron, and Karl Quisenberry left and Bernie Cohen, from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, joined the group as an associate professor. His interests were in heavy elements and the high-resolution system proved ideal for these studies. A major effort was made under the guidance of the chairman of the physics department, David Halliday, to expand the Nuclear Physics Laboratory and Juerg Saladin and Wilfried Daehnick joined the laboratory as assistant professors in 1961 and 1962. In 1962, a grant of $ 1.65 million was obtained from the National Science Foundation for the purchase of the world's first 3-stage Van De Graff accelerator, and a $ 1 million gift was obtained from the Sarah Mellon-Scaife foundation for a building to house it. The building construction and accelerator installation and operation were dircted by Jim McGruer. The first beams were obtained in 1965. This type of accelerator had at that time considerable advantages over the cyclotron:
Over the next three decades the faculty, in collaboration with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, developed research programs encompassing
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The ion source and tank of the Van de Graff accelerator. |
The control panel of the Van de Graff accelerator. |
