Edwin McMillan

He married Elsie Walford Blumer on June 7, 1941.

He had one daughter, Ann Bradford and two sons, David Mattison and Stephen Walker from this marriage who were born in 1943, 1945 and 1949 respectively.

Edwin M. McMillan died on September 7, 1991 at El Cerrito, California, USA of complications arising due to diabetes.

Edwin M. McMillan was born in Redondo Beach, California on September 18, 1907. His father, Dr. Edwin Harbaugh McMillan was a physician and his mother was Anne Marie Mattison. His parents were Scottish and hailed from the State of Maryland.

He had a younger sister named Catherine Helen.

His father-in-law was George Blumer, the dean of the medical school at Yale while his sister-in-law, Molly Blumer was married to Ernest Lawrence, namesake of the ‘Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’.

His family moved to Pasadena, California, from Maryland in October 1908 where he spent most of his childhood. He did his initial schooling at the ‘McKinley Elementary School’ from 1913 to 1918, at the ‘Grant School’ from 1918 to 1920 and then at the ‘Pasadena High School’ from where he graduated in 1924.

He did his B.Sc. in physics in 1928 from the ‘California Institute of Technology’ where he had done a research project with Linus Pauling.

In 1932, Edwin McMillan joined the University of California, Berkeley as a ‘National Research Fellow’ before completing his PhD and taught physics while he was there.

He started research work under Ernest O. Lawrence at the ‘Radiation Laboratory’ of the ‘University of California’ as a Staff Member at Berkeley in 1934. He helped to design cyclotrons and other equipment.

In 1935 he joined the faculty of the ‘Department of Physics’ at the ‘University of California’ at Berkeley as an instructor and became an Assistant Professor in 1936, and an Associate Professor in 1941.

In 1940 McMillan worked with Phillip Abelson to create a new element named ‘element 93’ which was the first trans-uranium element ever produced by bombarding Uranium-235 with neutrons and called it ‘Neptunium’.

In February 1941 he was helped by Joseph W. Kennedy, Glenn Seaborg and Arthur Wahl in isolating another trans-uranium element called ‘element 94’ which was named ‘Plutonium’ after McMillan’s practice of calling these elements by the names of planets.

Some of his publications include ‘Focusing in Linear Accelerators’ and ‘A Thick Target for Synchrotons and Betatrons’ that came out on August 24, 1950 and September 19, 1950 respectively.

His Nobel lecture ‘The Trans-uranium elements: Early History’ was published on December 12, 1951.

‘Notes on Quadruple Focusing’ was published in February 9, 1956 while ‘Some Thoughts on Stability in Non-linear Periodic Focusing systems’ came out on September 5, 1967 and its addendum was published on March 29, 1968.