Karl Compton | |
|---|---|
 Compton in 1944 | |
| 9th President of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| In office 1930–1948 | |
| Preceded by | Samuel Wesley Stratton |
| Succeeded by | James Rhyne Killian |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1887-09-14)September 14, 1887 |
| Died | June 22, 1954(1954-06-22) (aged 66) New York City,New York, U.S. |
| Relatives | Arthur Compton (brother) Wilson M. Compton (brother) Mary Elesia Compton (sister) |
| Education | College of Wooster (BA,MS) Princeton University (PhD) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | College of Wooster Reed College Princeton University Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Thesis | The Influence of the Contact Difference of Potential between the Plates Emitting and Receiving Electrons Liberated by Ultraviolet Light on the Measurement of the Velocities of These Electrons (1911) |
| Doctoral advisor | Owen Willans Richardson |
| Doctoral students | Henry DeWolf Smyth John Quincy Stewart Carl Henry Eckart Rao/Yao Yutai Philip M. Morse Wayne B. Nottingham |
Karl Taylor Compton (September 14, 1887 – June 22, 1954) was an American physicist and president of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1930 to 1948. Compton built much of MIT's modern research enterprise and engagement with the federal government. His policies fortechnology transfer, commercial spin-offs, and federal contracting have become central to United States science and technology policy.
An accomplished professor ofnuclear physics at Princeton, Compton was recruited to MIT to enhance basic science programs, rebalancing MIT's emphasis on applied engineering fields. He consolidated several departments into aSchool of Science, funded major new facilities and research projects, and increased faculty autonomy from industry support. Along with MIT ChancellorVannevar Bush, Compton built close connections to the U.S. government's research operations and advocated for federal funding of universitybasic research. These efforts greatly expanded MIT's graduate research programs. His introduction of higher tuition and loan-based financial aid increased undergraduate enrollment. During Compton's years at MIT, students increased 60 percent, employment tripled, and the Institute budget grew twelve-fold.[1]
Compton promoted new methods to bring research discoveries intocommercial use. He devised a model for licensing patents from MIT research, which was widely copied by other universities. To support the transition of basic research to high-tech industries, he later co-founded theAmerican Research and Development Corporation, the first modern venture capital fund. Over his career, he wrote and spoke widely about the roles of science and research in economic progress.
Compton led several federal government initiatives to reform military research and development. Among President Franklin Roosevelt's original appointees to theNational Defense Research Committee, his division oversaw the formation of theMIT Radiation Lab and the development offire control andradar, innovations which gave significant tactical advantages to Allied forces. He led the "Compton Radar Mission" to the United Kingdom and became the scientific advisor toGeneral MacArthur in thePacific theatre. Returning to the MIT leadership briefly after the war, Compton left its presidency tolead a reorganization and expansion of Department of Defense research programs. He addressed major public questions about the military: he was among the first toargue that dropping the atomic bomb spared Japanese and American lives. AtPresident Truman's request, he led a post-war commission report recommendinguniversal military service.
Compton was the founding chairman of theAmerican Institute of Physics, president of theAmerican Society for Engineering Education and a board member at theFord,Rockefeller, andSloan Foundations, as well as several other organizations. On his death at age 66, Caltech presidentLee DuBridge wrote that "the world had lost one of its greatest scientists, educators, and public servants."[2]
Karl Taylor Compton was born inWooster,Ohio, on September 14, 1887, the eldest of three brothers (includingArthur Compton andWilson Martindale Compton) and one sister, Mary.[3][4][5] His father, Elias Compton, was from an old American Presbyterian family, and his mother, Otelia Augspurger Compton, was from anAlsatian andHessianMennonite family that had recently immigrated to the United States. His brother Arthur became aNobel Prize-winning physicist and sister Mary a missionary.[citation needed]
Beginning in 1897, Compton's summers were spent camping atOtsego Lake,Michigan while attending Wooster public schools in fall, winter and summer. He took hard labor jobs starting at age eleven to help pay for college, working carrying hods for construction projects, as a farm hand, mule skinner, a book canvasser, in tile and brick factories and surveyed the first mile of paved road in Ohio.
In 1902, Compton skipped a grade and went intoWooster University's preparatory department for the last two years of high school. In 1908, he graduated from Woostercum laude with a bachelor of philosophy degree. In 1909, his master's thesis,A study of theWehnelt electrolytic interrupter, was published inPhysical Review.[6] During 1909–1910 he was an instructor in Wooster's chemistry department before entering a graduate program atPrinceton University.
At Princeton, he received the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship.[citation needed] Compton and his advisorOwen Willans Richardson published several papers on electrons released by ultraviolet light, electron theory, and on the photoelectric effect. Their 1912 paper inScience[7] was one of the first verifications of Einstein's 1905 paper on thephotoelectric effect.[8] In 1912, Compton received his Ph.D.summa cum laude, a rarely awarded distinction at Princeton.[9][10]
In June 1913, Compton married Rowena Raymond. They moved toReed College inPortland, Oregon, where Compton was an instructor in physics. In 1915, he returned to Princeton as an associate professor of physics. He also took a consultancy at theGeneral Electric Corporation. He contributed to the war effort with theSignal Corps, where he focused on sound-ranging techniques for enemy artillery.[9] In December 1917, Compton was attached to the US Embassy inParis as an associatescience attaché.
After theArmistice of 1918, the end ofWorld War I, Compton returned home to Princeton, his wife and three-year-old daughter Mary Evelyn. In June 1919, Compton was made a full professor, and worked in thePalmer Laboratory where his gift for teaching was legendary.[9] His research was in the area ofelectronics andspectroscopy in subject areas such as passage ofphotoelectrons through metals,ionization, the motion ofelectrons ingases,fluorescence, theory of theelectric arc,absorption andemissionspectra ofmercury vapor, and collisions ofelectrons andatoms.
Rowena died in the fall of 1919. In 1921, Compton marriedMargaret Hutchinson, with whom he had a daughter, Jean, and a son, Charles Arthur.
Compton was a productive researcher and a highly regarded teacher. During his decade at Princeton, over one hundred papers were published in his name in thermionic effects, ultraviolet spectroscopy, and electron physics. While his mentor Richardson was not a strong teacher, Compton's "clear, goal-oriented" instruction was a cornerstone of Princeton's physics program.[9]George R. Harrison later described him as "one of the best physics teachers in the United States."[11]
During the 1920s, Compton became widely known in his profession. In 1923, Compton was elected a member of theAmerican Philosophical Society and in 1924 a member of theNational Academy of Sciences for which he was chairman of the Section of Physics (1927–1930).[citation needed] He was named vice-president of theAmerican Physical Society (APS) in 1925 and in 1927 became its president. Compton was also a fellow of theOptical Society of America, a member of theAmerican Chemical Society, theFranklin Institute and other professional engineering societies. During a fellowship year at theUniversity of Göttingen, Compton met the coterie of young American physicists working under Max Born, including the father of theManhattan Project,J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Compton's stature in his discipline was rising, as attested by offers he received to leave Princeton. Through the 1920s, the University of Chicago recruited him heavily to maintain research led byA. A. Michelson, eventually proposing to hire both Compton and his brother Arthur.[9] In 1927, Arthur received theNobel Prize in Physics for his work on the eponymousCompton effect. A year later, Karl Compton's thesis advisor Owen Richardson was also awarded the Nobel in physics for work on thermionic effects.[12] As Princeton fought to retain him, Compton was named director of research at the Palmer Laboratory andCyrus Fogg Brackett professor. In 1929, he was appointed head of the physics department.
In 1930, Compton accepted an invitation from theMIT Corporation to be president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an engineering school that was redefining the relationship betweenengineering andscience. He took office at the beginning of theGreat Depression inAmerica, a time ofeconomic turmoil and a time whenscience was under attack as a source of "social ills and national despair."[4] Compton was to strengthen basic scientific research at the Institute while becoming a spokesman for science and technology.
During Compton's service as president, the organization went through a revolutionary change. He developed a new approach to education in science and engineering, the influence of which was felt far beyond MIT. Significantly, he was active in theSociety for the Promotion of Engineering Education, and its president in 1938. He was a leader in establishing new standards for the accreditation of engineering criteria through his role as chairman of the "Committee on Engineering Schools" of the "Engineer's Council for Professional Development".[citation needed] He believed in broad-based education for scientists and engineers that was responsive to the needs of the time, and that science should be an element of industrial progress.
Before Compton's arrival at MIT, industrial sponsors would often license faculty inventions, but it was uncommon for faculty to spin off their own commercial enterprises.[13] Compton sought to encourage direct faculty entrepreneurship through revisions of Institute patent policies and venture capital support.[14] Through the venture fund,American Research and Development Corporation, Compton directly backed several faculty ventures. Later fund investments included theDigital Equipment Corporation, a early manufacturer of minicomputers.
In the early 1930s, Compton joined with members of the APS to form theAmerican Institute of Physics (AIP). While he was chairman of the AIP board during 1931–1936, the organization became a federation of several disparate societies for developing subject areas in physics. It sponsored publication of research results in the rapidly expanding study of physics during that era.
In 1948, Compton resigned his post as President of MIT and was elected chair of the MIT Corporation. He held that position until his death on June 22, 1954.
In 1933, U.S. PresidentRoosevelt asked Compton to chair a new "Scientific Advisory Board" that lasted two years. This put him into a forefront of scientists that perceived a need for reliable scientific advice at the highest levels of government. The start ofWorld War II motivated the start of theNational Defense Research Committee (NDRC), created in 1940 under the chairmanship ofVannevar Bush. Compton was a member of the NDRC and became head of the division responsible for assembling a group of academic and industrial engineers and scientists that would study primarilyradar,fire control andthermal radiation.[citation needed] In 1941, the NDRC was assimilated into theOffice of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) where Compton chaired the "United States Radar Mission" to theUnited Kingdom.[citation needed]
In August 1942, Roosevelt appointed Compton to the "Rubber Survey Committee", which investigated and made recommendations to help resolve conflicts on technical direction in the development ofsynthetic rubber, arising due to the loss of rubber supply during the war.[15]
In 1945, Compton was selected as one of eight members of theInterim Committee appointed to advise PresidentHarry S. Truman on the use of theatomic bomb. WhenJapan surrendered in 1945,World War II came to an end and Compton left the OSRD. In 1946, Compton chaired the President's Advisory Commission on Military Training. After a visit to Japan, Compton wrote an article inThe Atlantic entitled "What If The United States Had Never Dropped The Atomic Bomb?" in which he argues that the dropping the bomb saved hundreds of thousands of lives; PresidentHarry S Truman responded in agreement.[16]
From 1946 to 1948, he was a member of theNaval Research Advisory Committee. Compton chaired the Joint Research and Development Board from 1948 to 1949, when he stepped down for health reasons.
The lunar craterCompton is named after Compton and his brother Arthur, who was also an influential scientist.Compton was also the recipient of thirty-two honorary degrees.
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1930–1948 | Succeeded by |
| Government offices | ||
| Preceded by | 9thChair of the Research and Development Board 1948–1950 | Succeeded by William Webster |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
