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EDWIN MATTISON MCMILLAN
Group Leader
Project Y
 Edwin
Mattison McMillan was born on 18th September, 1907, at Redondo
Beach, California. He is the son of Dr. Edwin Harbaugh McMillan, a
physician, and his wife, Anne Marie McMillan, née Mattison, who both
came from the State of Maryland and were both of English and Scottish
descent. The boy spent his early years in Pasadena, California, and
obtained his education in that state.
McMillan attended the California
Institute of Technology, obtaining a B.Sc.degree in 1928, and taking
his M.Sc.degree a year later, then transferring to Princeton
University for Ph.D. in 1932. The same year he entered the University
of California at Berkeley as a National Research Fellow. The thesis
he submitted for Ph.D. was in the field of molecular beams, and the
problem he undertook as a National Research Fellow was the measurement
of the magnetic moment of the proton by a molecular beam method. After
two years on this work and one as a research associate he became a Staff
Member of the Radiation Laboratory under Professor E.
O. Lawrence, studying nuclear reactions and their products, and
helping in the design and construction of cyclotrons and other
equipment, and a member of the Faculty in the Department of Physics at
Berkely, being appointed Instructor in 1935, Assistant Professor in
1936, Associate Professor, 1941, and Professor in 1946.
During the Second World War, McMillan was on leave from November, 1940,
to September, 1945, engaged on national defence research, serving
(1940-1941) in the Radiation Laboratory, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; (1941-1942) U. S. Navy Radio and Sound
Laboratory, San Diego; (1942-1945) Manhattan District, Los Alamos.
It was during 1945 that he had the idea of "phase stability"
which led to the development of the synchroton and synchro-cyclotron;
these machines have already extended the energies of artificially
accelerated particles into the region of hundreds of MeV and have made
possible many important researches.
McMillan returned to the University of California Radiation Laboratory
as Associate Director from 1954-1958, when he was raised to Deputy
Director and finally Director, in the same year.
In 1951 he received the 1950 Research Corporation Scientific Award, and
in 1963 he shared the Atoms for Peace Award with Professor V. I. Veksler.
Professor McMillan is a FeIlow of the American Physical Society and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy
of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and from 1954-1958
he served on the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy
Commission. In 1960 he was appointed to the Commission on High Energy
Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.
An honorary doctorate in science was awarded to him by the Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in 1961, and by Gustavus
Adolphus College in 1963.
While serving in the Faculty of Physics at Berkeley, McMillan married
Elsie Walford Blumer, a daughter of Dr. George Blumer, Dean Emeritus of
the Yale Medical School. There are three children of the marriage - Ann
Bradford (1943), David Mattison (1945) and Stephen Walker (1949).
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