ON THIS DAY AUGUST 8 2023

This Day in History: August 8

Featured Event

1901





American physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence—winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of the cyclotron, the first particle accelerator to achieve high energies—was born in Canton, South Dakota.



cyclotron, any of a class of devices that accelerates charged atomic or subatomic particles in a constant magnetic field. The first particle accelerator of this type was developed in the early 1930s by the American physicists Ernest Orlando Lawrence and M. Stanley Livingston. A cyclotron consists of two hollow semicircular electrodes, called dees, mounted back to back, separated by a narrow gap, in an evacuated chamber between the poles of a magnet. An electric field, alternating in polarity, is created in the gap by a radio-frequency oscillator.





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Ernest Orlando Lawrence, (born August 8, 1901, Canton, South Dakota, U.S.—died August 27, 1958, Palo Alto, California), American physicist, winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of the cyclotron, the first particle accelerator to achieve high energies.
Lawrence earned a Ph.D. at Yale University in 1925. An assistant professor of physics at Yale (1927–28), he went to the University of California, Berkeley, as an associate professor and became full professor there in 1930.





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Featured Biography

Dustin Hoffman
American actor




Dustin Hoffman, (born August 8, 1937, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), acclaimed American actor known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable types. Short in stature and not typically handsome, he helped to usher in a new Hollywood tradition of average-looking but emotionally explosive leading men.
Hoffman began acting at age 19 after dropping out of music studies at California’s Santa Monica City College. He then moved to New York City, where he struggled for several years in odd jobs and eventually landed small parts on television and leading roles Off-Broadway, where he won an Obie Award.


Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate


Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs


Dustin Hoffman and Justin Henry in Kramer vs. Kramer


Rain Man
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