Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Technique Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Walker Memorial Building

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Eleventh President of the Institute Fifteen years ago, in 1 930, Karl Taylor Compton became the eleventh president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He came to the Institute at the beginning of the Depression and brought the Institute through this period without deficits, emergency campaign funds, or salary cuts, and reached the end of the Depression with a stronger staff and a more intensified program in research and teaching. Under his administration, the George Eastman Labora- tories of Physics and Chemistry were planned and built, and stand today not only as a center but as a symbol of a fruitful union between pure and applied science. During fifteen years, by his eflfective interpretation of the ideals and objec- tives of science. President Compton has helped to establish higher goals for science and new faith in its power to do good not only at his own institution but in the world of science in general. From the very beginning he has empha- sized the new frontiers which pure and applied science can open to national enterprise and the benefits which scientific development can bring through the establishment of new industries and in the creation of the necessary conditions for a rising standard of living. In this way he has maintained Speakers ' Dais at Dr. Complon ' s Inaugural Dr. Compton and his predecessor, Dr. Stratton, after the inauguration

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and broadened the conception of this institution which has existed from the beginning as a private institution devoted to purposes of the widest public and national significance. Coming to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from Princeton University, where he had been Re- search Professor and Chairman ol the Department of Physics, Dr. Compton has been able to make notable contributions to the development of fundamental research. His own studies in the field of Physics are embodied in more than one hundred publications dealing with pho toelectricity, ionization of gases, soft X-ravs, spectros- copy in the extreme ultraviolet, fluorescence and the dissociation of gases, electric arcs and other types of gas discharge, and other subjects. The Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the most distinguished scien- tific honors in the world, was awarded Dr. Comptcn in 1931 in recognition of his contributions to the field of thermionics, the study of electron emission from hot films and cathodes, and of spectroscopics, the investigation of matter by means of light waves. He was elected to the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1934, and is a leading member of many other scientific societies. Under Dr. Compton ' s admin- istration, new Institute facilities for education and research include the Wright Brothers Wind Tun- nel, a laboratory for Gas Turbine research, the Sloan Automotive Laboratories, the Van de Craaff high voltage generator, a cyclotron, and a labora- tory for the development of high voltage short- wave X-ray generators. ATOMIC POWER . . . Developed by experimentation with the cyclotron and Van de Graaff Generator