Editing Ernest Lawrence (section)

=== Development ===
[[File:Lawrence Compton Bush Conant Compton Loomis 83d40m March 1940 meeting UCB.JPG|thumb|right|Meeting at Berkeley in 1940 concerning the planned {{convert|184|in|m|2|adj=on}} [[cyclotron]] (''seen on the blackboard''): Lawrence, [[Arthur Compton]], [[Vannevar Bush]], [[James B. Conant]], [[Karl T. Compton]], and [[Alfred Lee Loomis]]|alt=Six men in suits sitting on chairs, smiling and laughing]]
In what would become a recurring pattern, as soon as there was the first sign of success, Lawrence started planning a new, bigger machine. Lawrence and Livingston drew up a design for a {{convert|27|in|cm||adj=on}} cyclotron in early 1932. The magnet for the $800&nbsp;11-inch cyclotron weighed 2 tons, but Lawrence found a massive 80-ton magnet rusting in a junkyard in Palo Alto for the 27-inch that had originally been built during World War I to power a transatlantic radio link.{{sfn|Herken|2002|pp=5–7}}<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aip.org/history/lawrence/radlab.htm |access-date=September 22, 2013 |title=The Rad Lab – Ernest Lawrence and the Cyclotron |publisher=[[American Institute of Physics]] |archive-date=September 20, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150920022408/https://www.aip.org/history/lawrence/radlab.htm |url-status=dead}}</ref> In the cyclotron, he had a powerful scientific instrument, but this did not translate into scientific discovery. In April 1932, [[John Cockcroft]] and [[Ernest Walton]] at the [[Cavendish Laboratory]] in England announced that they had bombarded [[lithium]] with [[proton]]s and succeeded in transmuting it into [[helium]]. The energy required turned out to be quite low—well within the capability of the 11-inch cyclotron. On learning about it, Lawrence sent a wire to Berkeley and asked for Cockcroft and Walton's results to be verified. It took the team until September to do so, mainly due to lack of adequate detection apparatus.{{sfn|Heilbron|Seidel|1989|pp=137–141}}

Although important discoveries continued to elude Lawrence's [[Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory|Radiation Laboratory]], mainly due to its focus on the development of the cyclotron rather than its scientific use, through his increasingly larger machines, Lawrence was able to provide crucial equipment needed for experiments in [[Particle physics|high energy physics]]. Around this device, he built what became the world's foremost laboratory for the new field of nuclear physics research in the 1930s. He received a [[patent]] for the cyclotron in 1934,<ref>{{US patent reference
 | number = 1948384
 | y = 1934
 | m = 02
 | d = 20
 | inventor = Ernest O. Lawrence
 | title = [https://patents.google.com/patent/US1948384 Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions]
}}</ref> which he assigned to the [[Research Corporation]],{{sfn|Heilbron|Seidel|1989|pp=192–193}} a [[Private foundation (United States)|private foundation]] that funded much of Lawrence's early work.{{sfn|Heilbron|Seidel|1989|pp=27–28}}

In February 1936, [[Harvard University]]'s president, [[James B. Conant]], made attractive offers to Lawrence and Oppenheimer.{{sfn|Childs|1968|pp=235–237}} The University of California's president, [[Robert Gordon Sproul]], responded by improving conditions. The Radiation Laboratory became an official department of the University of California on July 1, 1936, with Lawrence formally appointed its director, with a full-time assistant director, and the university agreed to make $20,000 a year available for its research activities ({{Inflation|US-GDP|20000|1936|r=-4|fmt=eq}}).{{sfn|Childs|1968|pp=240–241, 248}} Lawrence employed a simple business model: "He staffed his laboratory with graduate students and junior faculty of the physics department, with fresh Ph.D.s willing to work for anything, and with fellowship holders and wealthy guests able to serve for nothing."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www2.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Research-Review/Magazine/1981/ |title=Lawrence and His Laboratory – A historian's view of the Lawrence years – Chapter 1: A New Lab for a New Science |first1=J. L. |last1=Heilbron|first2=Robert W. |last2=Seidel|last3=Wheaton|first3=Bruce R. |publisher=Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory|year=1981|access-date=October 5, 2013}}</ref>