Opinion

Lawrence’s cyclotron

By 2019-09-04T14:00:00

An image showing Ernest Orlando Lawrence at the controls of the 37-inch cyclotron around 1938

Source: © 2010 The Regents of the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The instrument that transformed our understanding of atoms

Museum gift shops often sell pretty polished ammonites, the fossilised remains of a family of molluscs with a flattened spiral shell. But their full beauty appears only when you watch their modern descendant, the nautilus, move by squirting a jet of water from the outer end of the spiral.

In a way, the nautilus is a metaphor for one of the greatest scientific inventions of the 20th century: the cyclotron.