Gale J. Young

Gale J. Young (1912–1990) was an American engineer, mathematical physicist, biophysicist, and applied mathematician. He is known as a pioneer of nuclear engineering From 1942 to 1946 Young was a research associate on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab). He later shared the patent for the design of water-cooled nuclear reactors. In 1946 he joined Wigner at the Clinton Laboratories, which was renamed Clinton National Laboratory in late 1947 and again renamed in January 1948 as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In 1948 Young and John R. Menke (1919–2009) founded Nuclear Development Associates (NDA), Inc., the first privately owned nuclear firm. Menke was the president and Young was the research director. When NDA was taken over by the United Nuclear Company, Young remained with the company until 1962. In 1962 he returned to ORNL as an assistant laboratory director, working on non-military applications of nuclear energy, especially desalination of seawater.

Selected publications (statement and proof of the Eckart-Young theorem)

(See Julius Bernstein.)