User:Pnrj/William Charles Parkinson

William C. Parkinson (Feb 11 1918 to Mar 19 2012) was a university professor known for his work in precision nuclear reaction experiments using cyclotron accelerators, his work in biophysics, his contribution to military research in World War II, and his invention of the electronic swimming timer.

Early Years

Parkinson was born in Jarvis, Ontario. He came to the US in 1932, settling in Ann Arbor, Michigan, attending the University of Michigan starting in 1935.

After his sophomore year he became a lab assistant to the Chairman of the Physics Department (and Director of the Physical Laboratory) Harrison M. Randall. Parkinson found working with Randall an invaluable experience, not just in the work they collaborated on in infrared spectrometry, but in the people he met and the mentorship they provided in preparing him for a long career as a research physicist. Randall paid him generously; while the usual rate was $0.35 per hour (inflation-adjusted to 2013: $5.68), Randall paid Parkinson $1.00 per hour (2013: $16.22). Parkinson finished his B.S.E at Michigan in 1940 and his M.S. in 1942.

World War 2 Era

Shortly thereafter he was recruited into the US Navy top-secret VT Proximity Fuze project in Silver Spring, Maryland at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University. His continued work in military research at Johns Hopkins' with the Office of Science Research and Development (OSRD) required him to travel to Europe in 1943-44 and then to London during the 'buzz-bombing' of the city.

On August 2, 1944 he married Martha Capron in Utica, NY. They returned together to the University of Michigan, where in 1947 William Parkinson earned his Ph.D. and became an instructor. That year he was appointed to The University of Michigan faculty as instructor of physics; the following year, he was promoted to assistant professor. He then spent 1952 and 1953 in England, working as a Fulbright Research Scholar at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. He returned to the University of Michigan once more and became associate professor in 1953, then professor in 1958.

Cyclotron Laboratory

As a junior faculty member Parkinson performed nuclear reaction experiments with a 42-inch cyclotron. In order to expand this work to higher bombarding energies, he assembled a team including Kent Terwilliger, Robert S. Tickle and John Bardwick to design and construct a high-resolution 83-inch isochronous sector-focused cyclotron. The project was funded by the Atomic Energy Commission and the State of Michigan. As a result he became director from 1962 to 1972 of the University of Michigan Cyclotron Laboratory. During this period his group broadened the range of experiments from single-nucleon stripping and pickup reactions to multi-nucleon transfer reactions, charge-exchange reactions, elastic scattering, and heavy-ion reactions using lithium-6 projectiles. While leading the cyclotron laboratory, he also continued his own experiments; along the way he invented tools to measure the velocity of airborne projectiles and a system for remote control of airborne vehicles, a predecessor of today’s unmanned aerial vehicles. Parkinson was also an athlete; he particularly enjoyed swimming. He combined his love of swimming with knowledge of physics and electrical engineering to invent one of the first electronic swimming timers, which by 1962 was the industry standard.

Later Years

In his later years, Parkinson’s interests turned to biophysics, where he did research on the effects of electromagnetic fields on mammalian cells. He collaborated with U-M Medical School Professor William Beierwaltes in producing radioactive iodine for the treatment of thyroid cancer. He also showed that nuclear fission fragments could be used to create micropores in plastic that improve the acceptance of surgical implants.

In 1989, shortly after his retirement, Parkinson wrote a historical memoir, "Nuclear Physics at Michigan", which was later edited into a larger history by Jens C. Zorn.

He was a fellow of the American Physical Society, and served a term as president of the Michigan chapter of Sigma Xi. He had also been a member of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Physics Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation, chairman of the Bonner Prize Committee, and a consultant for the Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

References

Physicists University of Michigan