Finding Aid to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Office of the Director records of Edwin M. McMillan [microfilm], 1907-1991

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These papers have been indexed in the International Catalog of Sources for History of Physics and Allied Sciences (ICOS) using the following terms. Those seeking related materials should search under these terms.

Biographical Note

The laboratory was founded as the University of California Radiation Laboratory in 1931 by Ernest Orlando Lawrence, a University of California Berkeley physicist who won the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of the cyclotron, a circular particle accelerator that opened the door to high-energy physics. It is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory, operated by the University of California. The name of the laboratory has evolved since its founding: Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (1931-1958), the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1959-1995), and currently the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1995-present).

Edwin McMillan (1907-1991) was an American physicist and Nobel laureate credited with being the first ever to produce a transuranium element. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Glenn Seaborg in 1951.

Scope and Contents of Collection

These professional and scientific files of Edwin McMillan include correspondence, conference and symposia papers, letters of nomination and recommendation, research reports, reprints, administrative records, consultant and advisory records. The collection also includes technical drawings, including McMillan's invention, the synchrotron particle accelerator, and other major accelerators which he operated, designed or planned; sound recordings of selected speeches and lectures; and photographs of various early laboratory staff, cyclotrons and other accelerators, his discovery of neptunium and plutonium investigation (for which he won the Nobel Prize with Glenn T. Seaborg in 1951), high energy physics conferences, and visitors to the laboratory. Among McMillan's correspondents were Luis W. Alvarez, Hans Bethe, Raymond T. birge, Melvin Calvin, Owen Chamberlain, Karl T. Compton, Edward U. Condon, Martin Kamen, Ernest and John Lawrence, Linus Pauling, W. K. H. Panofsky, Glenn T. Seaborg, Emilio Segre, Robert Serber, Victor Weiskopf, and Robert R. Wilson, and Martin Gardner.

Access to Collection

This collection requires permission for access. Please contact the repository for more information, via email at aro@lbl.gov.