Tracy Hall
| Tracy Hall | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Tracy Hall October 20, 1919 Ogden, Utah |
| Died | July 25, 2008 (aged 88) Provo, Utah |
| Known for | Inventing the synthetic diamond |
Howard Tracy Hall (October 20, 1919 – July 25, 2008) was an American physical chemist, and the first person who grew a synthetic diamond according to a reproducible, verifiable and witnessed process, using a press of his own design.
Tracy Hall was born in Ogden, Utah in 1920. His full name was Howard Tracy Hall, but he often used the name H. Tracy Hall or, simply, Tracy Hall. He was a descendant of Utah pioneers who were devout Mormons. Tracy grew up on a farm in Marriott, Utah. When still in the fourth grade, he announced his intention to work for General Electric. He attended Weber College for two years, and married Ida-Rose Langford in 1941. He went to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he received his B. S. degree in 1942 and an M. S. in the following year. For the next two years, he served as an ensign in the U. S. Navy. He returned to the University of Utah in 1946, where he was Henry Eyring's first graduate student. and was awarded his Ph. D. in physical chemistry in 1948. Two months later he realized his childhood dream by starting work at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York. He joined a team focused on synthetic diamond making, code named "Project Superpressure" headed by an engineer, Anthony Nerad.
As with many important inventions, the circumstances surrounding Hall's synthesis is the object of some controversy. What is undoubted is that he produced synthetic diamond in a press of his own design on December 16, 1954 and that he and others could do it over and over in the following week and that success led to the creation of a major super materials industry. What is also undoubted is that Hall was one of a group of about a half dozen of researchers who had focused on the syntheses for almost four years. These years had seen a succession of failed experiments, an increasingly impatient management, and a complex blend of sharing and rivalries among the researchers.
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