Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Office of the Director records of Edwin M. McMillan, 1940-1973

Description of Collection

Repository

National Archives and Records Administration. Pacific Sierra Region.

1000 Commodore Drive
San Bruno, CA 94066
USA
http://www.archives.gov/pacific/san-francisco/
sanbruno.archives@nara.gov

Papers created by

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Office of the Director.

Size of collection

1.25 linear feet
1 records box

Short description of collection

This collection contains Edwin McMillan’s personal and professional correspondence from his time as Director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL).

Language(s) of collection

English

Collection number:

ARO-5982 (NRHS 434-10-011)

Historical Note

The laboratory was founded as the University of California Radiation Laboratory in 1931 by Ernest Orlando Lawrence, a University of California Berkeley physicist who won the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of the cyclotron, a circular particle accelerator that opened the door to high-energy physics. It is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory, operated by the University of California. The name of the laboratory has evolved since its founding: Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (1931-1958), the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1959-1995), and currently the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1995-present).

Edwin McMillan (1907-1991) was an American physicist and Nobel laureate credited with being the first ever to produce a transuranium element. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Glenn Seaborg in 1951.

Scope and Contents of Collection

This collection contains Edwin McMillan’s personal and professional correspondence from his time as Director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL). The personal papers consist of confidential correspondence regarding lab personnel, correspondence with laboratory members such as Ernest Lawrence and Donald Cooksey, and correspondence and clippings relating to McMillan's discovery of neptunium and plutonium. There is also a small collection of business correspondence, mostly related to accepting and declining positions, including a response from President Eisenhower accepting McMillan's retirement. The collection also includes salary and wage letters, statements for McMillan and other LBL staff from his time as director, files of newspaper clippings, announcements, correspondence, and lab related photographs. The photographs are generally devoid of metadata; however, some of the photographs contain their original collection tag numbers and the original metadata may be able to be located via LBL’s photo laboratory. The collection also contains an old item-level inventory created by the LBL Archives and Records Office. Only a small portion of the items listed in the inventory are contained in this collection; however, it may help to identify individual photographs, and it may help researchers locate certain documents in the collection.

Restrictions on Use and Access

This collection requires permission for access. Please contact the repository for more information, via email at aro@lbl.gov.

Selected Search Terms

These papers have been indexed in the International Catalog of Sources for History of Physics and Allied Sciences (ICOS) using the following terms. Those seeking related materials should search under these terms.

Persons

McMillan, Edwin M. (Edwin Mattison), 1907-

Institutions

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Office of the Director.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

Subject terms

Neptunium.
Particle accelerators.
Physics. Administration.
Plutonium.
Synchrotrons.

Related Collections

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Office of the Director records of Edwin M. McMillan, 1907-1991 (259 records boxes). Filing code: ARO-2997 (NRHS 9NNS 434-90-002). Finding aid

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Office of the Director records of Edwin M. McMillan [microfilm], 1907-1991 (4 records boxes). Filing code: ARO-4050. Finding aid

Administrative Information

Title

Finding Aid to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Office of the Director records of Edwin M. McMillan, 1940-1973

Publisher

American Institute of Physics Niels Bohr Library & Archives

One Physics Ellipse
College Park, MD 20740
USA
nbl@aip.org

2012

Encoding Information

Machine-readable finding aid encoded by Melanie J. Mueller in 2012. Any revisions made to this finding aid occurred as part of the editing and encoding process.

Series I: Records of Edwin McMillan

Box 1

Folder 1

[Ernest O. Lawrence - Edwin McMillan Correspondence] Originally filed under: “McMillan, E.M., 1940-1952,” [1935-1946]

Folder 2

[Correspondence, Early Manhattan Project], [1942]

Folder 4

[Cooksey, Donald] Letters, [1936-1941]

Folder 5

[Discovery of Elements 93 and 94 - Inquires], undated

Folder 7

[Personal and Confidential File] [Correspondence Regarding Lab Personnel], undated

Folder 8

N. Christophilos [Regarding Thermo-Nuclear Reactor], undated

Folder 10

Isotopes at Berkeley in the 1930s, undated

Folder 11

1949 [Photographs included], undated

Folder 13

1947, undated

Folder 14

1946 [Photographs included], undated

Folder 16

1942 [Photographs included], undated

Folder 17

1941-1942 [Photographs included], undated

Folder 19

1939 [Photographs included], undated

Folder 20

1937 [Photographs included], undated

Folder 22

[Archives and Records Office Description of Collection], undated

Folder 23

Selected Copies of “The Magnet” (Letter Representative Holifield), May 1969

Folder 25

[Correspondence - High-Energy Physics Conferences], 1955-1956, April and May 1956