University Announces Completion of Atom Smasher, Useful in Research

Harvard yesterday announced the completion of an 85-ton cyclotron capable of producing atomic projectiles of 11,000,000 volts energy, which will be of great use for research in the biological and physical sciences.

The Harvard cyclotron was planned and constructed by a group composed of Kenneth T. Bainbridge, associate professor of Physics; Jabez C. Street, associate professor of Physics; Roger W. Hickman, lecturer in Physics and Engineering; and John J. Livingood, instructor in Physics, working under the Committee on Nuclear Physics, of which Harry R. Mimno, associate professor of Physics, in chairman.

Like Other Atom Smashers

The apparatus is similar in principle to other cyclotrons now in construction or operation throughout the world all of which are based on the fundamental design developed by Professor Ernest O. Lawrence of the University of California, recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Atoms are transmuted when struck by the high-speed atomic particles or ions. The cyclotron affords a method of achieving these high speeds through a combination of electric and magnetic forces acting on the ions which have their origin at the center of a large vacuum chamber. These forces cause the atomic particles to travel in a spiral, receiving a "push" of many thousand volts at each half revolution.

The final energy of millions of electron volts achieved by the projectiles equals the sum of the energies of all of the separate pushes.

Frequently in these cataclysmic collisions penetrating radiations of various types are emitted. These radiations may be used in medical and biological research, while the newly formed radioactive atoms may serve as labels to trace biological or chemical processes within plants or animals without disturbing the normal conditions of behavior.

The high-velocity particles from the apparatus are applied by the physicist and chemist to the study of the nuclei of atoms.