20 Facts About Boyce McDaniel

Boyce Dawkins McDaniel was an American nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and later directed the Cornell University Laboratory of Nuclear Studies.

Boyce McDaniel is noted as having performed the final check on the first atomic bomb prior to its detonation in the Trinity test, during a lightning storm.

Boyce McDaniel continued postgraduate studies when he moved to Cornell University, and in 1943 he completed his doctoral thesis, examining the absorption rates of neutrons in indium.

From Cornell, Boyce McDaniel moved to MIT where he held a postdoctoral position, studying "the rapidly evolving field of fast electronics", which he applied to research in particle physics.

Boyce McDaniel is noted as having performed the final check on the first atomic bomb prior to its detonation in the Trinity test.

Boyce McDaniel was one of many Manhanttan Project researchers to join the Cornell faculty after the war.

Boyce McDaniel became an assistant professor in 1946 and became a full professor in 1955.

Boyce McDaniel was a co-founder of Cornell's Laboratory for Nuclear Studies and had helped create the 300 megavolt electron synchrotron, one of the first such accelerators in the world.

Boyce McDaniel quickly earned a reputation as a hands-on designer as indicated by this episode in the construction of the 300 MeV synchrotron:.

Boyce McDaniel was a Fulbright research fellow in 1953 at the Australian National University and a Guggenheim fellow in 1959 at the University of Rome.

In 1967, Boyce McDaniel became director of LNS and served until he retired from the Cornell faculty in 1985.

Boyce McDaniel research included important measurements with each of the series of LNS accelerators, including studies lambda-baryon photo production, K-meson production, and measurements of the neutron electromagnetic form factors.

Wilson and Boyce McDaniel continued to collaborate at Cornell until Wilson left to head Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois in 1967.

When Boyce McDaniel left eight months later, he led the effort which increased the power of Fermilab's accelerator from 20 GeV to 300 GeV and its beam density by a factor of 1000.

In 1981, Boyce McDaniel developed a proposal for a new mile-diameter electron-positron collider called CSER II, but could not obtain the necessary $200 million in funding for it.

In 1988, Boyce McDaniel was Visiting Distinguished Professor at Arizona State University.

Boyce McDaniel was later placed in another job on Cornell's campus.

Boyce McDaniel was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981.

Boyce McDaniel was a governing board member of Fermilab, a trustee of the Associated Universities, a member of the Department of Energy High Energy Advisory Panel, a trustee of the Universities Research Association and a board member of Brookhaven National Laboratory.

In 2002, Boyce McDaniel died of a heart attack in Ithaca, New York, aged 84.