biography
| name: |
Oliphant, Sir Mark
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| |
in full Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1901–2000)
|
| biography:
| Nuclear physicist, born in Adelaide, South Australia. He studied there and at Cambridge, where he did valuable work on the nuclear disintegration of lithium. Professor at Birmingham (1937), he designed and built a 60-in cyclotron. He worked on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos (1943–5), but later strongly argued against the US monopoly of atomic secrets. He became Australian representative of the UN Atomic Energy Commission in 1946, designed a proton-synchrotron for the Australian government, and was appointed research professor at Canberra (1950–63). He was knighted in 1959, and became Governor of South Australia in 1971–6. |
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