Columbia cyclotron

Three things occurred in American laboratories in 1932 the positron was discovered by Carl Anderson at the California Institute of Technology, deuterium was discovered by Harold Urey at Columbia University, and Ernest Lawrence at the University of CaHfornia, Berkeley extended the energy of the cyclotron to the 1 milHon volt level. Thus, the frontier of physics was shifting to American laboratories. Much of the nuclear research originated from those universities where the boys, who had learned the new physics and had assimilated the spirit of world-class research in Europe, had come home to lead their own research groups. 

The same day Fermi stepped into the office of John R. Dunning, a Columbia experimentalist whose specialty was neutrons, to propose an experiment. Dunning, his graduate student Herbert Anderson and others at Columbia had built a small cyclotron in the basement of Pupin Hall, the modem thirteen-story physics tower that faces downtown Manhattan from behind the library on the upper campus. A cyclotron was a potent source of neutrons the two men talked about using it to perform an experiment similar to Frisch s experiment of January 13-14, of which they were as yet unaware. They discussed arrangements over lunch at the Columbia faculty club and afterward back at Pupin. 

Lawrence happened to be visiting New York. Fermi, Lawrence, Pe-gram and I met in Dean Pegram s office at Columbia University and developed plans for a cyclotron irradiation that could produce a sufficient amount of [element 94]. After Christmas Segrd returned to Berkeley. 

But there was already a first-class cyclotron in Canada that was not being used for commercial production the Tri-University Meson Facility (TRIUMF) accelerator at the University of British Columbia. 

The TRIUMF facility is located on the campus of the University of British Columbia on Point Grey southwest of downtown Vancouver. Its main cyclotron was designed to produce subatomic particles such as pions and muons for research purposes. The MDS Nordion section of the facility is pictured below. The yellow blocks pictured below were to be used to shield the main cyclotron. 

This included the cyclotron lab at McGill, the synchrotron lab at Queen s, Harry Thode s lab at McMaster, the betatron lab at the University of Saskatchewan, and the Van de Giaaff generator lab at the University of British Columbia (MDS N CR, Sales of Isotopes, Thomas to Errington, May 26, 1952). 

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