The 1950s: Science and Technology: Deaths

THE 1950s: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: DEATHS

Walter Sydney Adams, astronomer, former director of the Mount Wilson Observatory whose observations proved Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, 10 May 1956.

Dr. Robert Grant Aitken, 87, leading astronomer, 29 October 1951.

Dr. Oakes Ames, 75, botanist, 28 April 1950.

Maj. Edwin H. Armstrong, 63, inventor of FM radio, 1 February 1954.

Liberty Hyde Bailey, 96, renowned botanist and agricultural educator, 26 December 1954.

Dr. Francis M. Baldwin, 66, leading biologist, 2 February 1951.

Lawrence Dale Bell, founder of Bell Aircraft Corporation, codesigner of experimental jet-powered Bell X-1 and X-2 aircraft, 20 October 1956.

Dr. Charles F. Berkey, 88, former head of the geology department at Columbia University, a leader in applying geology to engineering, 22 August 1955.

Clarence Frank Birdseye, inventor and industrialist, developed methods of freezing and dehydrating foods, held more than five hundred patents, 7 October 1956.

Dr. Isaiah Bowman, 71, internationally famous geographer, 6 January 1950.

William H. Buell, 72, chemical engineer who developed the tracer bullet, 24 December 1950.

George Ashley Campbell, 83, physicist and research scientist, 10 November 1954.

Alfred Clark, 76, American-British inventor, associate of Thomas A. Edison, 16 June 1950.

Edwin J. Cohn, 60, Harvard University chemist who contributed to the development of gamma globulin, serum albumin, and liver extract, 1 October 1953.

Dr. Karl Taylor Compton, 66, physicist who helped to develop the atom bomb, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1930-1949), 22 June 1954.

Charles Gordon Curtis, 92, inventor of steam and gas turbines, 10 March 1953.

Allston Dana, 67, civil engineer, designer of George Washington and Triborough bridges in New York, 12 May 1952.

Clinton Davisson, 76, cowinner of the 1937 Nobel Prize in physics for work on the wave-particle character of electrons, 1 February 1958.

Dr. Arthur J. Dempster, 63, physicist, discoverer in 1935 of uranium-235 and principal authority on positive rays, 11 March 1950.

Robert E. Doherty, 65, president of Carnegie Institute of Technology (1936-1950), 19 October 1950.

Caston F. DuBois, 73, chemical engineer who developed processes for making synthetics and plastics, 1 November 1953.

Dr. Enrico Fermi, 53, famed Italian-American nuclear scientist and a leading architect of the atomic age, 28 November 1954.

Colin G. Fink, 71, scientist, discoverer of tungsten filaments for lightbulbs, 17 September 1953.

Dr. Eugene Gardner, 37, nuclear scientist, 26 November 1950.

Dr. Ronald W. Gurney, 54, electronics physicist, pioneer in the use of semiconductive solid materials to control electric current, 14 April 1953.

Edwin Wesley Hammer, 83, pioneer in development of electricity, associate of Thomas A. Edison, 11 October 1951.

Dr. William D. Harkins, 77, pioneer in hydrogen-bomb theory, 7 March 1951.

Dr. Isaac Faust Harris, 73, biochemist who refined diphtheria antitoxin into safe form, 31 January 1953.

Vladimir N. Ipatieff, 85, Soviet-born chemist, discoveries aided the production of high-octane gasoline and other petroleum products, 29 November 1952.

Charles F. Kettering, 82, engineer, inventor of the automobile self-starter and some 140 other improvements in various industries, former head of General Motors research division, 25 November 1958.

Count Alfred Habdank Korzybski, 70, scientist and philosopher, founder of the Institute of General Semantics, 1 March 1950.

Hendrick Anthony Kramers, 57, atomic scientist, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1946, 24 April 1952.

Dr. Carol O. Lampland, 78, astronomer, filmed Mars canals and discovered that Jupiter was cold, 14 December 1951.

Dr. Irving Langmuir, 76, chemist and 1932 Nobel Prize winner, 16 August 1957.

Charles Lanier Lawrence, 67, inventor of the air-cooled airplane engine, 23 June 1950.

Ernest O. Lawrence, 57, winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics for work on the cyclotron, 27 August 1958.

Andrew Cowper Lawson, 90, geologist, earthquake authority, 16 June 1952.

Dr. Robert Andrews Millikan, 85, physicist, winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize in physics for isolation and measurement of electrons, a leader in research on cosmic rays, chairman of the executive council of the California Institute of Technology (1921-1945), 19 December 1953.

Mark M. Mills, 40, physicist and atomic-weapons developer, 7 April 1958.

Eugene A. Nahm, 62, inventor of the coin machine, 3 March 1954.

Grady Norton, 60, Miami Weather Bureau forecaster, authority on hurricanes, 9 October 1954.

Charles Lathrop Parsons, 86, chemist who discovered a method for converting nitrogen from the air into ammonia, 14 February 1954.

Rear Adm. William Parsons, 52, atombomb expert who armed the first bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 5 December 1953.

Dr. Henry Louis Smith, 91, pioneer in X-ray photography, 27 February 1951.

O. L. Sponsler, 73, botanist at the University of California, Los Angeles, discoverer of molecular structure of cellulose, 14 March 1953.

Josiah Edward Spurr, 80, geologist and explorer for whom Alaska's Mount Spurr was named, 12 January 1950.

James Batcheller Sumner, 67, biochemist, winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in chemistry for isolating an enzyme, 12 August 1955.

Donald F. Warner, 56, Canadian-born mechanical engineer who developed the first American jet engine, 12 February 1952.

John Wilkinson, 83, inventor of the air-cooled automobile engine, 25 June 1951.

Dr. Herbert Eustis Winlock, 65, noted archaeologist and Egyptologist, 26 January 1950.

Dr. Albert F. Zahm, 92, aeronautical engineer who built a wind tunnel for aeronautical experiments in 1882 and later became director of the U.S. Navy aerodynamic laboratory, 23 July 1954.