Lawrence H. Johnston

Lawrence Harding Johnston (February 11, 1918 – December 4, 2011) was an American physicist, a young contributor to the Manhattan Project. He was the only man to witness all three atomic explosions in 1945: the Trinity nuclear test in New Mexico and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

During World War II, Johnston worked at the MIT Radiation Laboratory where he invented ground-controlled approach radar. In 1944, he went to the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory, where he co-invented the exploding-bridgewire detonator. where he taught until his retirement.

Early life Born in Shandong, China, on February 11, 1918, Johnston was the son of American Presbyterian missionaries. The family returned to the United States in 1923, and his father became a Presbyterian pastor in Santa Maria, California.

World War II

MIT Radiation Laboratory Johnston intended to study for his doctorate under Alvarez, but instead followed him east to the MIT Radiation Laboratory near Boston in February 1941. Alvarez and Johnston worked together on ground-controlled approach radar. This allowed aircraft to be guided to a safe landing in adverse weather conditions, based on radar images, They were awarded US Patents 2,555,101 and 2,585,855 for it.

After the war After the war, Johnston returned to graduate school at Berkeley. Under Alvarez's supervision, he wrote his PhD thesis at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory on the "Development of the Alvarez-type proton linear accelerator". After he graduated in 1950, he became an associate professor at the University of Minnesota. There, he built a 68 MeV proton linear accelerator, which he used to perform proton-proton scattering experiments. In 1964, he joined the Physics Laboratory of The Aerospace Corporation, where he learned techniques for investigating far infrared radiation. Married for 69 years, he was survived by his wife Millie and their five children.

Honors Phi Beta Kappa, 1939 Elected Member, Society of the Sigma Xi, 1950 Elected Fellow, American Physical Society, 1953 Elected Fellow, American Scientific Affiliation, about 1952 Sigma Xi award, Outstanding Research Paper of the year, 1976 Stark Spectrum of Methyl Alcohol in the Far Infrared with R. P. Srivastava. J. Mol. Spectroscopy 61 147 (1976).

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