Boyce McDaniel

Boyce Dawkins McDaniel ( born June 11, 1917 in Brevard, North Carolina; † May 8, 2002 in Ithaca, New York) was an American physicist who worked on particle accelerators.

Boyce McDaniel studied at Ohio Wesleyan University (Bachelor 1938) and the Case School of Applied Science, where in 1940 he took his master's degree in physics. In 1943 he received his doctorate from Cornell University with Robert Bacher. Bacher took him to the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, where he played an important role in the cyclotron team of Robert R. Wilson. He was also the last, who conducted 1945 inspections at the first atomic bomb ignited in the Trinity test ( he had to regularly measure the radiation from the bomb and to climb a few hours before firing the test tower during a thunderstorm ). From 1946 he was assistant professor and in 1955 professor at Cornell University in the Laboratory of Nuclear Physics ( Laboratory of Nuclear Studies, LNS). He played a leading role in the construction of the 300 MeV electron synchrotron at the LNS (the world's first machine of this type ) and of his successors. In 1967 he was the successor of Robert R. Wilson as Director of the Laboratory ( Fermilab Wilson was Director), a position he held until his retirement in 1985. He made 1972 a year at LNS release to bring as Head of the Accelerator Division at Fermilab on this initial financial problems, stable running. The mid-1970s he proposed to convert the 10 - GeV synchrotron at the LNS in an 8- GeV electron-positron storage ring, which was realized in the CESR ( Cornell Electron Storage Ring) ( he operated from 1979), to the particular B mesons was examined.

In addition to the construction and development of accelerators he also particle physics experiments from (K -meson and lambda particles photoproduction, measuring the electromagnetic form factors of the neutron ). He invented by Robert Walker, the pair spectrometer for gamma rays and was a pioneer of the technique of gamma-ray photon tagger ( 1953 JW Weil).

McDaniel was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was married in 1941 and had a daughter and a son.