He earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1933 and a master's in physics in 1934. He completed a Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1939 at the University of Chicago. He was put to work for the war effort from 1941 to 1943 in Washington, D.C. at the Carnegie Institute where he designed a proximity fuse system for anti-aircraft shells.
In 1943 he was sent to the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico to work on the atomic bomb. He adapted his proximity fuse system to develop a fuse for the first atomic bomb that would allow the airplane crew who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima to escape the blast. His Los Alamos photo ID is the picture that appears above the fold.
After the war, he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago working on the medical applications of radiation. In 1979 he retired from the university and developed a neutron-therapy facility at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Lester S. Skaggs (1911 - 2009) from Missouri farm boy to famous nuclear physicist.
Can you name his father, grandfather and so on back to Henry Skaggs ?
ReplyDeleteHere is the Skaggs line between Henry the Long Hunter and Lester Skaggs:
Delete1 Henry Skaggs
+ Mary Thompson
2 Solomon Skaggs
+ Rhoda
3 Wesley Skaggs
+ Hannah Shields
4 John Wesley Skaggs
+ Elizabeth Smelser
5 Solomon Skaggs
+ Maria Elizabeth Baker
6 Francis Baker Skaggs
+ Etta Clingingsmith
7 Lester Skaggs