Nationality American Doctoral advisor Ernest Lawrence Fields Nuclear physics | Name Kenneth MacKenzie Known for Synthesis of astatine | |
Institutions Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California, Los Angeles Alma mater BS University of British Columbia, PhD University of California, Berkeley Died July 2002, Los Angeles, California, United States Education University of California, Berkeley, University of British Columbia Similar People Ernest Lawrence, Glenn T Seaborg, Edwin McMillan | ||
Kenneth Ross MacKenzie (June 15, 1912 – July 4, 2002) together with Dale R. Corson and Emilio Segrè, synthesized the element astatine, in 1940. MacKenzie received his PhD under Ernest Lawrence at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Lawrence, MacKenzie, and their colleagues devised the first cyclotron. He was a professor of physics at UCLA, where he and Reg Richardson built UCLA's first cyclotron and later a bevatron. MacKenzie devised MacKenzie buckets which are plasma sources created by lining vacuum chamber walls with permanent magnets of alternating polarity to suppress plasma electron losses, that are widely used to this day. He later traveled around the world, helping to troubleshoot various country's cyclotron problems. Later in life, he studied plasma physics and dark matter.