Mark Oliphant Totally Explained

Everything about Mark Oliphant totally explained

Sir Marcus 'Mark' Laurence Elwin Oliphant AC KBE (October 8 1901 – July 14, 2000) was an Australian physicist and humanitarian who played a fundamental role in the first experimental demonstration of nuclear fusion, and later, in the development of the atomic bomb.
During retirement he was appointed state governor of South Australia. He assisted in the inauguration of the Australian Democrats and chaired the 1977 Melbourne meeting at which the party was launched.

Early life and family

Oliphant was born the eldest of five sons in Kent Town, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia. As a child, after witnessing the killing of farm pigs he became a lifelong vegetarian. He was also found to be completely deaf in one ear and needed glasses for severe astigmatism and short-sightedness. Oliphant wasn't well off—his father was a civil servant and his mother an artist. He went to school at Unley High School in Adelaide.
He was at first interested in a career in medicine or dentistry and began studying at the University of Adelaide in 1919. However, his physics lecturer, Dr. Roy Burdon, influenced him to become a physicist by showing him "the extraordinary exhilaration there was in even minor discoveries in the field of physics".

Cavendish Laboratory

In 1925, he heard a speech given by New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford and decided then and there that he'd work for him - an ambition he fulfilled by gaining a position at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in 1927 which was at the time carrying out the most advanced research into nuclear physics in the world. It was at the Cavendish, for example, that the atom was first split in 1932. Amongst other research, Oliphant worked on the artificial disintegration of the atomic nucleus and positive ions, and he designed complex particle accelerators.
Oliphant's contribution to this work was his discovery of the nuclei of helium 3 (helions) and tritium (tritons). He was also the first to discover heavy hydrogen nuclei could be made to react with each other (tritons and helions being the products, along with protons and neutrons). This fusion reaction is the basis of a hydrogen bomb. Ten years later, American scientist Edward Teller would press to use Oliphant's discovery in order to build one. However, Oliphant didn't foresee this:

...we had no idea whatever that this would one day be applied to make hydrogen bombs. Our curiosity was just curiosity about the structure of the nucleus of the atom, and the discovery of these reactions was purely, as the Americans would put it, coincidental.
Later years in Australia
In 1950, Oliphant returned to Australia as first director of the Research School of Physical Sciences at the new Australian National University, where he initiated the design and construction of the world's largest (500MJ) homopolar generator. This machine was used to power the large-scale railgun which was used as a scientific instrument. He established the Australian Academy of Science in 1954 and was its first president until 1956. After retiring from the university in 1967, Oliphant was invited to become state governor of South Australia, a position he held from 1971 to 1976. During his period he caused great concern to premier Don Dunstan when he strongly supported the decision of the governor-general, Sir John Kerr in the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. (ref 5) Oliphant was knighted in 1959 and was made a Companion in the Order of Australia (AC) in 1977.
   Late in life he watched his wife, Rosa, suffer before her death in 1987 and became an advocate for voluntary euthanasia.
   On July 14 2000, Oliphant died in Canberra, aged 98.
Legacy
Places named after Sir Mark Oliphant include the Oliphant Building at the Australian National University, the Mark Oliphant Conservation Park, A South Australian high schools science competition, the Oliphant Wing of the Physics Building at the University of Adelaide and the Mark Oliphant Building, Bedford Park, South Australia.
   Sir Mark’s nephew, Pat Oliphant, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist.
Biography

Further Information
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