37 Facts About Kenneth Bainbridge

Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge was an American physicist at Harvard University who worked on cyclotron research.

Kenneth Bainbridge was the Director of the Manhattan Project's Trinity nuclear test, which took place July 16,1945.

Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge was born in Cooperstown, New York, on July 27,1904.

Kenneth Bainbridge had one older brother and one younger brother.

Kenneth Bainbridge was educated at Horace Mann School in New York.

Kenneth Bainbridge was awarded a National Research Council, and then a Bartol Research Foundation fellowship.

Kenneth Bainbridge spent four years at the Franklin Institute's Bartol laboratories and during his time there Kenneth Bainbridge learned how to take subtle and difficult mass measurements.

Kenneth Bainbridge married Margaret Pitkin, a member of the Swarthmore teaching faculty, in September 1931.

In 1932, Kenneth Bainbridge developed a mass spectrometer with a resolving power of 600 and a relative precision of one part in 10,000.

Since Kenneth Bainbridge was the first to successfully test Einstein's theory of the equivalence of mass and energy, he was awarded the Louis Edward Levy Medal.

In 1933, Kenneth Bainbridge was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used to travel to England and work at Ernest Rutherford's Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University.

Kenneth Bainbridge started by building a new mass spectrograph that he had designed with at the Cavendish Laboratory.

Kenneth Bainbridge was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1937.

Kenneth Bainbridge proposed using a Holweck pump to produce the vacuum necessary for this work, and enlisted George B Kistiakowsky and E Bright Wilson to help.

Kenneth Bainbridge ended up bringing his Holweck pump to government authorities in Washington DC, however the government authorities claimed that scientists working for the government were already working on a process of isotope separation and that he should discontinue his work using the Holweck pump for isotope separation.

Kenneth Bainbridge spent two and a half years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Radiation laboratory working on radar development.

The scientists divided up the work between them; Kenneth Bainbridge drew pulse modulators.

Also, while in England Kenneth Bainbridge met with British scientists and learned about the British's efforts in developing an atomic bomb.

When Kenneth Bainbridge returned to the United States, he reported to the United States about the British's plans to build an atomic bomb.

Kenneth Bainbridge eventually became the lead of a division of the lab that was responsible for ship-borne interception control radar, ground systems search and warning class radar, ground-based fire control radar, microwave early warning radar, search and fighter control radar, and fire control radar.

In May 1943, Kenneth Bainbridge joined Robert Oppenheimer's Project Y at Los Alamos.

Kenneth Bainbridge initially led E-2, the instrumentation group, which developed X-ray instrumentation for examining explosions.

Kenneth Bainbridge worked on developing designs for the uranium Little Boy design dropped on Hiroshima and the plutonium Fat Man design used on Nagasaki.

Additionally, Kenneth Bainbridge helped in the development of methods to determine the trajectories of the atomic bombs.

In March 1945, Kenneth Bainbridge was given the position of director of the Trinity Test.

Kenneth Bainbridge was tasked with finding a site that was flat in order to be able to take accurate measurements of the explosion.

Kenneth Bainbridge ended up finding a site that was approximately 200 miles away from Los Alamos, located in the Alamogordo Gunnery Range.

Kenneth Bainbridge along with his assistant director, John Williams who was a physicist planned and oversaw the construction of the needed facilities at the test site.

Additionally, Kenneth Bainbridge played a role in the development of bomb detonator equipment and setting up equipment for measuring the yield of the explosion.

Kenneth Bainbridge received a Presidential Certificate of Merit for his work at the MIT Radiation Laboratory.

Kenneth Bainbridge returned to Harvard after the war, and initiated the construction of a 96-inch synchro-cyclotron, which has since been dismantled.

Also, upon arriving back at Harvard, Kenneth Bainbridge created a larger mass spectrograph.

Kenneth Bainbridge devoted a good deal of his time to improving the laboratory facilities for graduate students.

Kenneth Bainbridge married Helen Brinkley King, an editor at William Morrow in New York City, in October 1969.

Kenneth Bainbridge died at his home in Lexington, Massachusetts, on July 14,1996.

Kenneth Bainbridge was survived by his daughters from his first marriage, Joan Bainbridge Safford and Margaret Bainbridge Robinson.

Kenneth Bainbridge was buried in the Abel's Hill Cemetery on Martha's Vineyard, in a plot with his first wife Margaret and his son Martin.