Kenneth T. Bainbridge
Harvard University
July 27, 1904 - July 14, 1996
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Scientific Discipline: Physics Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1946)
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Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge was recognized early in his career for the design and application of mass spectrographs as research tools. In one notable example, his precise measurements of mass differences between nuclear isotopes, when compared to the energies of decay radiations, allowed him to confirm the mass-energy equivalence of Albert Einstein (E=mc2). In collaboration with J. Curry Street, Bainbridge designed and built the cyclotron at Harvard University that was sent to Los Alamos, NM, during World War II. Bainbridge participated in the formation of the wartime Radiation Laboratory at MIT, where he helped develop microwave radar; and in the nuclear weapons project at Los Alamos, where he oversaw the test explosion of the first nuclear bomb. After the war, Bainbridge renewed his work with mass spectrographs, began the construction of a new cyclotron, and was able to measure changes in the decay rates of radioactive nuclei resulting from differing molecular bonding and from physical compression.
Bainbridge entered MIT in 1921 to study electrical engineering in a cooperative program with the General Electric Company. In that five-year program he was able to receive both an S.B. and an S.M. degree from MIT and to work summers at GE facilities. But his work at the company brought him to realize that his strong interest was in physics, so instead of taking a job at GE upon graduation in 1926 he entered Princeton University for graduate work and received his Ph.D. in physics in 1929. After a five-year series of postdoctoral positions—first as a National Research Council fellow, then as a fellow at the Franklin Institute’s Bartol Research Foundation, and finally as a John Simon Guggenheim fellow at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory (then a world leader in experimental nuclear physics)—Bainbridge returned to the United States in 1934 and began his long association with the physics department of Harvard University. In addition to his long and productive career there as a researcher and teacher of physics, especially nuclear physics, Bainbridge was a strong advocate of civilian control of nuclear developments and devoted time and energy to efforts that would restrict any first use of nuclear weapons by the United States.
