Harrison Brown
| Harrison Scott Brown | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 26, 1917 Sheridan, Wyoming |
| Died | December 8, 1986 (aged 69) Albuquerque, New Mexico |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields |
Nuclear chemistry Geochemistry |
| Institutions |
Metallurgical Laboratory Clinton Engineering Works University of Chicago California Institute of Technology |
| Alma mater |
University of California Johns Hopkins University |
| Thesis | Part I. The construction of a mass spectrometer for isotope analysis. Part II. Intermolecular forces in gases and thermal diffusion: the thermal diffusion coefficient of argon at low temperatures (1941) |
| Doctoral advisor | Robert D. Fowler |
| Doctoral students |
Edward D. Goldberg Clair Cameron Patterson |
| Other notable students | George Tilton |
| Notable awards | Newcomb Cleveland Prize (1947) |
| Spouse | Adele Scrimger (divorced) Rudd Owen (divorced) Theresa Tellez |
Harrison Scott Brown (September 26, 1917 – December 8, 1986) was an American nuclear chemist and geochemist. He was a political activist, who lectured and wrote on the issues of arms limitation, natural resources and world hunger.
During World War II, Brown worked at the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory and Clinton Engineer Works, where he worked on ways to separate plutonium from uranium. The techniques he helped develop were used at the Hanford Site to produce the plutonium used in the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. After the war he lectured on the dangers of nuclear weapons.
After the war, he worked at the University of Chicago, where he pioneered nuclear geochemistry. The study of meteorites by Brown and his students led to the first close approximation of the age of the Earth and the solar system. Between 1951 and 1977, he worked at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where he contributed to advancements in telescopic instrumentation, jet propulsion, and infrared astronomy.
In 1942 Glenn T. Seaborg invited Brown to work with him at the University of Chicago in the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory, working on ways to separate plutonium from uranium. The Manhattan Project intended to create plutonium by irradiating uranium in a nuclear reactor. The resulting highly radioactive product would then have to be chemically separated from the uranium and any fission products created by the irradiation process. The problem was that plutonium was a new element with chemical properties that were not yet fully known. Until a reactor could be built, it was available only in microgram amount, so an industrial separation process would have to be scaled up one billion times. With Orville Hill, Brown devised a successful method of achieving this by using the gaseous evaporation of fluorides.
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