Harald A. Enge

Harald Anton Enge (September 28, 1920, Fauske Municipality, Nordland, Norway – April 14, 2008, Middlesex County, Massachusetts) was a Norwegian-American experimental nuclear physicist and inventor of instrumentation used in nuclear physics. He is known for the Enge split-pole spectrograph, which became a standard instrument of nuclear physics research.

Biography Enge completed his secondary education in 1940 in Bodø. He studied electrical engineering and received in 1947 his engineering degree from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (now part of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology). He married his first wife in 1947. From 1948 to 1955 he was a research associate and lecturer in physics at the University of Bergen. At MIT Enge did research in nuclear physics using a magnetic spectrograph while working with the team led by Robert J. Van de Graaff. During this time at MIT, Enge also designed his first broad-range spectrograph, which he built when he returned to the University of Bergen. In 1954 he received his doctorate from the University of Bergen. His dissertation was supervised by Bjørn Trumpy.

In the MIT physics department, Enge was an instructor from 1955 to 1956, an assistant professor from 1956 to 1959, an associate professor from 1959 to 1963, and a full professor from 1963 to 1986, when he retired as professor emeritus. He became a U.S. citizen.

In 1967 he was co-founder and chair of Deuteron Inc. He was also associated with the Deltaray Corporation (1969 to 1973) and the Gammaray Corporation (1981).

In 1985 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bergen.