The birth of the atomic age in Berkeley

One Bold Idea

In 1929, a young physicist named Ernest Lawrence was leafing through physics periodicals at UC Berkeley when a drawing stopped him in his tracks. It was a diagram of a common particle accelerator, whose design inspired a feat of engineering that would change the course of the 20th century. In this episode, we'll learn about the creation of Lawrence's cyclotron, the granddaddy of today's particle accelerators. Special credit: The interview with physicist Philip Abelson was made available through Voices of the Manhattan Project, an oral history collection from the Atomic Heritage Foundation and the Los Alamos Historical Society.