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Philip Abelson

 
Scientist: Philip Hauge Abelson
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American physical chemist (1913–2004)

Abelson, who was born in Tacoma, was educated at Washington State College and at the University of California at Berkeley, where he obtained his PhD in 1939. Apart from the war years at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, he spent most of his career at the Carnegie Institution, Washington, serving as the director of the geophysics laboratory from 1953, and as president from 1971 to 1978. He subsequently became the editor of a number of scientific journals including the important periodical Science, which he edited from 1962 to 1985.

In 1940 he assisted Edwin McMillan in creating the first transuranic element, neptunium, by bombardment of uranium with neutrons in the Berkeley cyclotron. Abelson next worked on separating the isotopes of uranium. It was clear that a nuclear explosion was possible only if sufficient quantities of the rare isotope uranium–235 (only 7 out of every 1000 uranium atoms) could be obtained. The method Abelson chose was that of thermal diffusion. This involved circulating uranium hexafluoride vapor in a narrow space between a hot and a cold pipe; the lighter isotope tended to accumulate nearer the hot surface. Collecting sufficient uranium–235 involved Abelson in one of those massive research and engineering projects only possible in war time. In the Philadelphia Navy Yard, he constructed a hundred or so 48-foot (15-meter) precision- engineered pipes through which steam was pumped. From this Abelson was able to obtain uranium enriched to 14 U-235 atoms per 1000.

Although this was still too weak a mixture for a bomb, it was sufficiently enriched to use in other separation processes. Consequently a bigger plant, consisting of over 2000 towers, was constructed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and provided enriched material for the separation process from which came the fuel for the first atom bomb.

After the war Abelson extended the important work of Stanley Miller on the origin of vital biological molecules. He found that amino acids could be produced from a variety of gases if carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen were present. He was also able to show (1955) the great stability of amino acids by identifying them in 300-million-year-old fossils and later (1956) identified the presence of fatty acids in rocks.

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Philip Abelson

Philip Abelson
Born April 27, 1913
Tacoma, United States
Died August 1, 2004
Bethesda, United States
Nationality American
Fields Nuclear physics
Alma mater Washington State University
University of California, Berkeley
Known for Discovery of neptunium, isotope separation techniques

Philip Hauge Abelson (April 27, 1913 – August 1, 2004) was an American physicist, a scientific editor, and a science writer.

Contents

Life

Abelson was born in 1913 in Tacoma, Washington. He attended Washington State University where he received degrees in chemistry and physics, and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), where he earned his PhD in nuclear physics. As a young physicist, he worked for Ernest Lawrence at the UC Berkeley. He was among the first American scientists to verify nuclear fission in an article submitted to the Physical Review in February 1939.[1] In addition, he collaborated with the Nobel Prize laureate Luis Alvarez in early nuclear research, and was the co-discoverer of neptunium on 8 June 1940 with Edwin McMillan. McMillan was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery amongst others elements.

Abelson was a key contributor to the Manhattan Project during World War II. Although he was not formally associated with the atom bomb project, the liquid thermal diffusion isotope separation technique that he invented was used in the S-50 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and proved a critical step in creating the large amount of nuclear fuel required for building atomic bombs.

After the war, he turned his attention under the guidance of Ross Gunn to applying nuclear power to naval propulsion. While not written at an engineering-design level, he wrote the first physics report detailing how a nuclear reactor could be installed in a submarine, providing both propulsion and electrical power. His report anticipated the nuclear submarine's role as a missile platform. This concept was later supported by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover and others. Under Rickover, the concept became reality in the form of USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine.

From 1951 until 1971 he served as the director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Geophysical Laboratory, and as president from 1971 to 1978. From 1962 to 1984 he was editor of Science, one of the most prestigious academic journal, and served as its acting executive officer in 1974, 1975 and 1984. From 1972 until 1974 he served as the president of the American Geophysical Union.

Abelson was outspoken and well-known for his opinions on science. In a 1964 editorial published in Science magazine, Abelson identified overspecialization in science as a form of bigotry. He outlined his view that the pressure towards specialization beginning in undergraduate study and intensifying in PhD programs has the effect on students of leading them to believe that their area of specialization is the most important, even to the extreme of considering other intellectual pursuits to be worthless. He reasoned that such overspecialization led to obsolescence of one's work, often through a focus on trivial aspects of a field, and that avoidance of such bigotry was essential to guiding the direction of one's work. [2]

In a 1965 article he described his work in paleobiology and reported evidence of amino acids recovered from fossils hundreds of millions of years in age. He estimated that based on his experiments alanine would be stable for billions of years. [3]

Perhaps his most famous work from this time period is an editorial entitled "Enough of Pessimism" ("enough of pessimism, it only leads to paralysis and decay"). This became the title of a 100 essay collection.[4]

During the 1970s he became interested in the problem of world energy supplies. Books on the topic include Energy for Tomorrow (1975), from a series of lectures at the University of Washington, and Energy II: Use Conservation and Supply. He pointed out the possibilities of mining the Atabascan tar sands, as well as oil shale in the Colorado Rockies. In addition he urged conservation and a change of attitude towards public transit.[5]

After 1984, he remained associated with the magazine. Some have claimed him to be an early skeptic of the case for global warming on the basis of a lead editorial in the magazine dated March 31, 1990 in which he wrote, "[I]f the global warming situation is analyzed applying the customary standards of scientific inquiry one must conclude that there has been more hype than solid fact." However, in 1977 in a US National Research Council, Energy and Environment report he wrote,

What is important is not that there are differences [in the models] but that the span of agreement embraces a fourfold to eightfold increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the latter part of the twenty-second century. Our best understanding of the relation between an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and change in global temperature suggests a corresponding increase in average world temperature of more than 6°C, with polar temperature increases of as much as three times this figure. This would exceed by far the temperature fluctuations of the past several thousand years and would very likely, along the way, have a highly significant impact on global precipitation.

—Philip H. Abelson, Thomas F. Malone, Cochairmen, Geophysics Study Committee [6]

Abelson died on August 1, 2004 from respiratory complications following a brief illness. He was married to Neva Abelson, a distinguished research physician who co-discovered the Rh blood factor test (with L. K. Diamond). Their daughter, Ellen Abelson Cherniavsky, worked as an aviation researcher for the MITRE corporation in Virginia.

Awards

Abelson received many distinguished awards, including National Medal of Science, the National Science Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award, the American Medical Association's Scientific Achievement Award, the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal and the Waldo E. Smith Medal in 1988. In 1992 he was awarded the Public Welfare Medal, the National Academy of Science's highest honor.

See also

External links

References

  1. ^ Philip Abelson (1939). "Cleavage of the Uranium Nucleus". Physical Review 55 (4): 418. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.55.418. 
  2. ^ Philip H. Abelson (1964). "Bigotry in Science". Science 144 (3617): 1964. 
  3. ^ Philip Abelson (1965). "Paleobiochemistry". Scientific American 195: 83–92. 
  4. ^ Philip H. Abelson (1985). Enough of Pessimism. American Association for the Advancement of Science. ISBN 0-871-68274-5. 
  5. ^ Philip H. Abelson (1975). Energy for Tomorrow. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-95413-2. 
  6. ^ Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics (1977), National Research Council, Forward

Further reading


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