Arthur Jeffrey Dempster

Arthur Jeffrey Dempster (August 14 1886 - March 11 1950) was a Canadian-American physicist best known for his work in mass spectrometry and his discovery of the uranium isotope ²³⁵U.

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Biography

  Dempster was born in Toronto, Canada. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Toronto in 1909 and 1910, respectively. He travelled to study in Germany, and then left at the outset of World War I for the United States; there he received his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago. Dempster then joined the physics faculty there in 1916, teaching and researching until his death in 1950, interrupted only during World War II, when he worked on the secret Manhattan Project to develop the world's first nuclear weapons. From 1943 to 1946, he was chief physicist of the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory or "Met Lab" (this lab was integrally related to the Manhattan Project: it was founded to study the materials necessary for the manufacture of atomic bombs), and in 1946 took a position as a division director at the Argonne National Laboratory. Dempster died in 1950 in Stuart, Florida.

Research

In 1918, Dempster developed the first modern mass spectrometer, a scientific apparatus allowing physicists to identify compounds by the mass of elements in a sample, and determine the isotopic composition of elements in a sample.^[1] Dempster's mass spectrometer was over 100 times more accurate than previous versions, and established the basic theory and design of mass spectrometers that is still used to this day. Dempster's research over his career centered around the mass spectrometer and its applications, leading in 1935 to his discovery of the uranium isotope ²³⁵U. This isotope's ability to cause a rapidly expanding fission nuclear chain reaction allowed the development of the atom bomb and nuclear power. Dempster was also well known as an authority on positive rays.

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