Abstract
THE Duddell Medal for 1947 of the Physical Society has been awarded to Dr. R. J. Van de Graaff, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in recognition of the invention and development of the high-voltage electrostatic generator already known by his name. To Van de Graaff belongs the credit of making a type of particle accelerator based on the simplest possible conception. Electric charge, sprayed on to a moving belt, is carried into a sphere, acting as a Faraday cage, until the potential rises to the desired value. The full potential to be applied to the particles thus exists between the sphere and the earth, and the great practical difficulty is to avoid discharges at undesired positions and corona losses. Van de Graaff overcame all these difficulties and so long ago as 1937 he exhibited at the Paris Exhibition an apparatus producing 4,000,000 volts. Sets for 10,000,000 volts have more recently been built and operated successfully. Dr. Van de Graaff will receive the Medal at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington, D.C., on April 29 ; the presentation will be made by the British Ambassador, Lord Inverchapel.
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Duddell Medal of the Physical Society : Dr. R. J. Van de Graaff. Nature 161, 511 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161511b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161511b0