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George Russell Harrison Biography
George Russell Harrison was born on July 14, 1898 in San Diego,
California. His early years and schooling were spent in California.
Young George's interest in physics may have been fostered by friends
of his father the Varian brothers, who were later to invent the
Klystron and to head the electronics firm in Palo Alto bearing their
name. Harrison entered Stanford University in 1915, and chose physics
as his major field of study. Despite a brief interruption in his
studies, associated with World War I, he received the bachelor's
degree on schedule in June 1919. That autumn he enrolled in the Stanford graduate school as a candidate
for the master's degree in physics. During this period he was chosen
to tutor Herbert Hoover, Jr., and for several years he lived on
the Stanford campus with the Hoover family, thereby beginning a
long and close friendship. He received the master's degree in 1920
and continued on for the doctorate. A new Physics Department chairman,
David L. Webster, had recently arrived from Harvard University and
influenced his decision to enter the field of spectroscopy. His
doctoral thesis, supervised by Webster, was completed in the spring
of 1922, and was the basis of a paper, "The Absorption of Light
by Sodium and Potassium Vapors," published later that year
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His promise as a research physicist led to the award of a National
Research Council Fellowship for work with the renowned spectroscopist
of the vacuum ultraviolet, Professor Theodore Lyman of Harvard.
The two years he spent in Lyman's laboratory (1923-25) deepened
and broadened his knowledge of the world of physics. He then returned
to Stanford where, as an assistant professor, he began building
up a laboratory, which soon included a 21-foot vacuum spectrograph,
the largest of its day. He was promoted to associate professor in
1927. In 1930 Dr. Harrison accepted the offer of a professorship of experimental
physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by its new
president, Karl T. Compton. Compton was a specialist in vacuum spectroscopy
and perhaps had been attracted by Dr. Harrison's early work. In
any case, the two men had this common interest, which resulted in
the founding of the MIT Spectroscopy Laboratory, the first building
designed and constructed for the particular needs of spectroscopy.
Dr. Harrison's activities in the Spectroscopy Laboratory are described
in his own words in the accompanying history. The most noteworthy
of his many achievements there were the development of a high-speed
automatic comparator for the recording of intensities and wavelengths
of spectral lines (1938), the compilation of the MIT Wavelength
Tables (1939), and the invention of the echelle spectrograph
(1949). He was the first to devise a practical ruling engine, servo-mechanically
controlled by means of optical interferometric techniques, which
he used to produce diffraction gratings of unprecedented optical
quality and size (1948-72). He was the author or coauthor of more
than 100 scientific papers. In 1948 he published the well-known
text, Practical Spectroscopy, with Richard C. Lord and John
R. Loofbourow. He also wrote books for the layman on scientific
and engineering subjects, the best known of which, Atoms in Action
(1939), was translated from English into more than a dozen other
languages. During World War II Dr. Harrison was chief of the Optics Division
of the National Defense Research Committee (1942-43), and later
head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development's Office
of Field Service in the Pacific Theater (1944-45). He was awarded
the U.S. Medal of Freedom and the Presidential Medal of Merit for
his contributions. Dr. Harrison became Dean of Science at MIT in 1942 and oversaw
the postwar development of the School of Science until his retirement
in 1964. He had a clear sense of the structure and purpose of MIT,
and he provided the conceptual leadership during this 22-year period
that brought the School of Science to its eminent position among
the world's foremost academic institutions. His encouragement and
support of science, not only for its own sake, but also as the indispensable
partner of engineering, were basic to fundamental changes in the
character of the Institute. Dean Harrison received many medals, awards, and honorary degrees
for his scientific accomplishments, including the Rumford Medal
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Cresson Medal
of the Franklin Institute, the Ives and Mees Medals and the Meggers
Award of the Optical Society of America, and the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy
Award. He was one of six honorary members of the Optical Society,
and was a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, the American
Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and
the Australian Academy of Science, and he held many high offices
in these and other scholarly organizations. Dean Harrison's devotion to his research until his death in 1979 was characteristic of his disciplined mind and strong work ethic. In the years of his retirement, it was a common sight for workers in the Spectroscopy Laboratory to see him bounding down the basement corridor with the vigor and sense of purpose, which were his trademark. Throughout his career he was admired and respected for his candor and fairness. His dominant thought seemed always to be, "If it is worth doing, how can it best be done?" Ingrained in his nature was the desire to experiment, to work with his hands, to invent new devices for the solution of seemingly insoluble problems. For George Harrison, inventing, as he used that term, was a challenge and a source of pleasure. Naming the Spectroscopy Laboratory in his honor is a fitting tribute, and will serve as an example of excellence to which students of science can aspire. |
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