Kenneth Tompkins was born in Cooperstown, New York back in 1904 to William and Mary. He studied at Horace Mann School in New York and entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1921 to study electrical engineering. In only five years he earned both a bachelor of science and a master of science degree.
During the summer breaks, he worked at General Electric’s laboratories in Lynn, Massachusetts where he obtained three patents related to photoelectric tubes. Not that he was satisfied with what he had accomplished now his attention turned to physics. So, he enrolled t Princeton University where in 1929 he was awarded his Ph.D. and his thesis was on a search for element 87.
In 1932 he used an instrument to verify Albert Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence by developing a mass spectrometer. In 1933 he was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. He worked as an associate professor at Harvard and in 1937 was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in 1996 at 91 and is buried on Martha’s Vineyard.
Now apparently, he was a brilliant person however, what he was involved in during WWII will forever be written down in history. You see I’m writing about is Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge a person that along with others (one of which was J. Robert Oppenheimer) develop the atomic bomb. Of which he was the Director of the Trinity nuclear test and the boss of Mr. Oppenheimer. Until now you thought Oppenheimer was the leader however, now you know the real story.
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