Leland R. Johnson

A founder of the science of radiation ecology and staff leader at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Auerbach was born in Chicago in 1921. He studied at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, earning his Ph.D. in zoology in…

Oak Ridge scientist P. R. Bell advanced the art of scintillation spectrometry, using radioactive tracers scanned with a scintillator and collimator for medical diagnosis. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1913, Bell attended Howard College and the University of Chicago,…

The Russells, husband and wife, were leaders of mammalian genetics studies at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Liane Brauch was born in Austria in 1923. She immigrated to the United States, enrolled in Hunter College, and earned her Ph.D. in zoology…

Alexander Hollaender, director of the Biology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and professor of radiation biology at the University of Tennessee, was born in Germany in 1898. He immigrated to the United States, where he studied physical chemistry at the…

Called the father of radiation chemistry in America, Samuel Lind was born in McMinnville in 1879, the son of a Swedish immigrant and Union army veteran who practiced law there. He studied classics at Washington and Lee University until his…

Called the "father of health physics," Karl Z. Morgan was born in North Carolina and studied physics at the University of North Carolina and Duke, earning his Ph.D. in 1934. He chaired the Physics Department at Lenoir Rhyne College and…

Established during World War II by the Manhattan District, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) occupied the X-10 site on the fifty-six-thousand-acre reservation between Clinch River and Black Oak Ridge purchased by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1942. Initially…

A Nobel laureate who pioneered neutron diffraction research at Oak Ridge, Clifford Shull was born at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1915. He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology and New York University, where he earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1941.…

Oak Ridge chemist and administrator since 1945, Ellison H. Taylor was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1913 and studied physical chemistry at Cornell and Princeton, earning his Ph.D. in 1937. After teaching chemistry at Utah and Cornell, in 1942 he…

First established as an arm of the Continental Army, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has both military and civil missions. Since the Revolutionary War, it has provided topographic reconnaissance and mapping, fortification design and construction, and related services for…

Michael K. Wilkinson, a solid state physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was born at Palatka, Florida, in 1921 and attended The Citadel and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning his Ph.D. degree in physics in 1950. Wilkinson joined Oak Ridge…

Ernest O. Wollan, pioneer physicist in neutron diffraction, was born at Glenwood, Minnesota, in 1902. Wollan attended Concordia College and the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1929 under Arthur Compton in studies of X-ray scattering. Early…

The unassuming building at Oak Ridge numbered X-10 housed the Graphite Reactor, the oldest nuclear reactor in the world. The Graphite Reactor was the world's first powerful nuclear reactor which transformed uranium 238 into plutonium 239. The X-10 facilities also…