Edward J. Lofgren, American physicist, Died at 102

  Health care

Edward Joseph Lofgren was born on January 18, 1914, in Chicago and died on September 5, 2016.

He was an American physicist in the early days of nuclear physics and elementary particle research at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL).

Lotgren was an important figure in the breakthroughs that followed the creation of the Bevatron, of which he was the director for a time.

He graduated from UC Berkeley in May 1938, and got a summer job working on E. O. Lawrence’s new 37-inch cyclotron completed in 1937, at a salary of about $0.50 an hour.

At the same time there was no government funding for scientific research, and the money came from medical foundations interested in evaluating the possible uses of neutron beams for cancer treatment and for producing radio-isotopes for medical research.

During the fall of 1940 he was hired by Lawrence to help on adapting and using the 37-inch cyclotron to separate isotopes of uranium for the atomic bomb project.

He, later went to Los Alamos, where the first bombs were designed and built, and where he remained for the rest of the war.

At the end of the war he returned to Berkeley to complete the final year of his degree program, then went on to the University of Minnesota as a post doctoral fellow.

Then, Lofgren returned to the laboratory at Berkeley and remained at the Laboratory until his retirement in 1982.

Edward J. Lofgren passed away at 102 years old.