The American physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence (1901-1958), by inventing and successively improving the cyclotron, pioneered in the development of particle accelerators.

Ernest O. Lawrence was born on Aug. 8, 1901, in Canton, South Dakota. By age 9 he had become interested in simple electrical devices and by age 13 had constructed wireless equipment. Nevertheless he decided to study medicine after completing his high school education.

Lawrence pursued this goal for a year (1918-1919) at St. Olaf's College in Northfield, Minn., and briefly, beginning the following year, at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. At the latter institution, he came under the influence of Lewis Akeley, the dean of the College of Electrical Engineering, who acquainted him with the intellectual challenge and rewards of physics. As a result, he abandoned his plans for a medical career, mastered course after course of physics, and completed his bachelor's degree in physics with high honors...