BRICKWEDDE LECTURE
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 3 p.m.
in Schafler Auditorium at the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy
Charles W. Clark
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Ferdinand Brickwedde and the Discovery and Exploitation of Deuterium
On Thanksgiving Day, 1931, deuterium was discovered in the optical spectrum of atomic hydrogen.
As we know now, deuterium, the heavy stable isotope of hydrogen, is a bound state of a proton and a neutron. However, the neutron
itself was unknown at the time; it was only discovered about two months later. The six months following the discovery of deuterium
were among the most productive in the history of science, with many of the most important basic facts of nuclear structure being
suddenly assembled then and then rapidly exploited. Harold Urey was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery
of deuterium; eight years later the first nuclear reactor went into operation, and the 21st birthday of deuterium was celebrated by
the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb.
The deuterium used in that bomb, as well as the deuterium in the original Thanksgiving Day discovery,
was produced by Ferdinand Graft Brickwedde (Ph.D. Physics, Johns Hopkins 1925). From 1925 to 1956,
Brickwedde was employed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS – now the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
or NIST). There he led a pioneering low-temperature physics program that conducted the first liquefaction of helium in the USA,
co-discovered deuterium with Harold Urey and George Murphy, and developed the NBS cryogenic engineering facilities in Boulder,
Colorado to support the nuclear weapons program. Some of Brickwedde’s unpublished manuscripts in the collections of the NIST
Library add a personal flavor to the public record of events of that time, and enhance appreciation of the roles of different branches
of science in the age of nuclear discovery.
About the speaker: Charles W. Clark received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1979. Dr. Clarke
joined NIST in 1981, where he is now the Chief of Electron and Optical Physics Division.
Dr. Clark's research interests are in dynamics of ultracold atoms, physical implementation of quantum information processing, absolute
optical radiometry with synchrotron radiation sources, quantitative tomographic imaging and atomic electronic excitation in nuclear reactions.
Dr. Clark's webpage
Directions:
Directions to the department
Clickable map of campus
Charles W. Clark
National Institute of Standards and Technology
The deuterium used in that bomb, as well as the deuterium in the original Thanksgiving Day discovery, was produced by Ferdinand Graft Brickwedde (Ph.D. Physics, Johns Hopkins 1925). From 1925 to 1956, Brickwedde was employed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS – now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST). There he led a pioneering low-temperature physics program that conducted the first liquefaction of helium in the USA, co-discovered deuterium with Harold Urey and George Murphy, and developed the NBS cryogenic engineering facilities in Boulder, Colorado to support the nuclear weapons program. Some of Brickwedde’s unpublished manuscripts in the collections of the NIST Library add a personal flavor to the public record of events of that time, and enhance appreciation of the roles of different branches of science in the age of nuclear discovery.
About the speaker: Charles W. Clark received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1979. Dr. Clarke joined NIST in 1981, where he is now the Chief of Electron and Optical Physics Division. Dr. Clark's research interests are in dynamics of ultracold atoms, physical implementation of quantum information processing, absolute optical radiometry with synchrotron radiation sources, quantitative tomographic imaging and atomic electronic excitation in nuclear reactions.
Dr. Clark's webpage
Directions:
Directions to the department
Clickable map of campus
