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General Information
Description of Collection Historical Note Scope and Contents of Collection Restrictions on Use and Access Selected Search Terms Related Collections Administrative InformationContainer List
Series I: Records of Edwin McMillanLawrence 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 |