Karl Taylor Compton

Karl Taylor Compton (September 14, 1887 – June 22, 1954) was an American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1930 to 1948. A professor of nuclear physics at Princeton, Compton was recruited to MIT to promote instruction and research in basic science rather than MIT's previous emphasis on vocational training.

Karl Compton
Compton in 1944
President of the Massachusetts 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 Wooster, Ohio, U.S.
Died	June 22, 1954(1954-06-22) (aged 66) New York City, New York, U.S.
Relatives	Arthur Compton (brother) Wilson Martindale Compton (brother)
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

During his presidency, MIT experienced formidable growth in its research operations. Compton encouraged close connections to the U.S. government's scientific and military apparatus. During World War II, Compton served in a many federal government leadership roles related to military technology, particularly the development of radar. Along with MIT Chancellor Vannevar Bush, Compton advocated federal funding of basic science research.

The early years (1887–1912)

Karl Taylor Compton was born in Wooster, Ohio, on September 14, 1887, the eldest of three brothers (including Arthur Compton and Wilson Martindale Compton) and one sister, Mary. His father, Elias Compton, was from an old American Presbyterian family, and his mother, Otelia Augspurger Compton, was from an Alsatian and Hessian Mennonite family that had recently immigrated to the United States. His brother Arthur became a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and sister Mary a missionary.

Beginning in 1897, Compton's summers were spent camping at Otsego 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 into Wooster University's preparatory department for the last two years of high school. In 1908, he graduated from Wooster cum laude with a bachelor of philosophy degree, then in 1909 his master's thesis A study of the Wehnelt electrolytic interrupter was published in Physical Review. During 1909–1910 he was an instructor in Wooster's chemistry department before entering a graduate program at Princeton University.

At Princeton, he received the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship. Compton and his advisor Owen Willans Richardson and published several papers on electrons released by ultraviolet light, electron theory and on the photoelectric effect. Their 1912 paper, "The Photoelectric Effect," was one of the first verifications of Einstein's 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect. In 1912, Compton received his Ph.D. from Princeton summa cum laude, a rarely awarded distinction.

Teaching career

Reed College and WW I (1913–1918)

In June 1913, Compton married Rowena Raymond. They moved to Reed College in Portland, 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 the General Electric Corporation. He contributed to the war effort with the Signal Corps, where he focused on sound-ranging techniques for enemy artillery. In December 1917, Compton was attached to the US Embassy in Paris as an associate science attaché.

Princeton University (1918–1930)

After the Armistice of 1918, the end of World 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 the Palmer Laboratory where his gift for teaching was legendary. His research was in the area of electronics and spectroscopy in subject areas such as passage of photoelectrons through metals, ionization, the motion of electrons in gases, fluorescence, theory of the electric arc, absorption and emission spectra of mercury vapor, and collisions of electrons and atoms.

Rowena died in the fall of 1919. In 1921, Compton married Margaret 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.

During the 1920s, Compton became widely known in his profession. In 1923, Compton was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society and in 1924 a member of the National Academy of Sciences for which he was chairman of the Section of Physics (1927–1930). He was named vice-president of the American Physical Society (APS) in 1925 and in 1927 became its president. Compton was also a fellow of the Optical Society of America, a member of the American Chemical Society, the Franklin Institute and other professional engineering societies. During a fellowship year at the University of Göttingen, Compton met the coterie of young American physicists working under Max Born, including the father of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer.

In Princeton's Palmer Lab

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 sustain work led by A. A. Michelson. Chicago eventually sought to recruit him and his brother, Arthur, to work there together. In 1927, Arthur received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the eponymous Compton effect. A year later, Karl Compton's thesis advisor Owen Richardson was also awarded the Nobel in physics, for work on thermionic effects. As Princeton fought to retain him, Compton was named director of research at the Palmer Laboratory and Cyrus Fogg Brackett professor at Princeton. In 1929, he was appointed head of the physics department.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1930–1954)

In 1930, Compton accepted an invitation from the MIT Corporation to be president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an engineering school that was redefining the relationship between engineering and science. He took office at the beginning of the Great Depression in America, a time of economic turmoil and a time when science was under attack as a source of social ills and national despair. 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 the Society 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". 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.

In the early 1930s, Compton joined with members of the APS to form the American 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.

Cooperation with the military (1933–1949)

In 1933, U.S. President Roosevelt 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 of World War II motivated the start of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), created in 1940 under the chairmanship of Vannevar 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 primarily radar, fire control and thermal radiation. In 1941, the NDRC was assimilated into the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) where Compton chaired the "United States Radar Mission" to the United Kingdom.

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 of synthetic rubber, arising due to the loss of rubber supply during the war.

In 1945, Compton was selected as one of eight members of the Interim Committee appointed to advise President Harry S. Truman on the use of the atomic bomb. When Japan 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. He also wrote an article in the Atlantic magazine 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; President Harry S Truman responded in agreement. From 1946 to 1948, he was a member of the Naval Research Advisory Committee. Compton chaired the Joint Research and Development Board from 1948 to 1949, when he stepped down for health reasons.

Awards and honors

• The Rumford Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1931
• The Presidential Medal for Merit in 1946 for hastening the termination of hostilities by means of the radar research and development program he directed.
• The Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. in 1947 for his eminence in the application of science to the public welfare.
• The Washington Award of the Western Society of Engineers in 1947
• Honorary Commander, Civil Division, of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1948
• Knight Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1948
• The Lamme Medal of the American Society for Engineering Education in 1949
• The Hoover Medal jointly from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1950
• The William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement of the Scientific Research Society of America in 1950
• Officer in the French Legion of Honor in 1951
• The "Priestley Memorial Award" of Dickinson College in 1954 for his contributions to the "welfare of mankind through physics"

The lunar crater Compton is named after Compton and his brother Arthur, who was also an influential scientist. Compton was also the recipient of thirty-two honorary degrees.

Further reading

• Office Of The National Research Council, Biographical Memoirs, National Academies Press, (October 1, 1992), ISBN 0-309-04746-3
• Galison, Peter, and Barton Bernstein. "In any light: Scientists and the decision to build the Superbomb, 1952-1954." Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 19.2 (1989): 267–347. online

External links

• Photograph of Karl Taylor Compton and other members of the NDRC Archived 2011-05-14 at the Wayback Machine
• Official MIT Presidential Biography
• Julius A. Stratton's biography of Compton
• Annotated bibliography for Karl Compton from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir