Word: kersting
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...photographic plate. The principal purpose of the Illinois betatron will be to produce copious supplies of mesons, the particles which are thought to be connected with the "binding force" that holds atomic nuclei together. Powerful X rays knock mesons out of the nuclei. Said Professor Donald William Kerst, developer of the betatron and builder of the Illinois machine: "We are in business, making mesons...
...Kerst is also the betatron's christener. At first he thought of calling it the "Ausserordentlichhochges chwindigkeit-electronenentwickelndesschwerab eitsbei-gollitron," German for "extraordinarily high-speed electron generator, hard work by golly-tron." He settled for "Betatron," from beta particle (high-speed electron...
...University of Illinois' Dr. Donald W. Kerst, inventor of the betatron (TIME, Dec. 29, 1941), hopes that the doctors will learn how to cut out the middle step and use the electrons raw upon cancerous tissues...
...Inventor Kerst first learned his physics at the University of Wisconsin, then taught at the University of Illinois, where last year he built his first small betatron - a 2,300,000-volt table-top model. He saw at once that similar machines capable of imparting energies of 100,000,000 volts, and even higher, could readily be built...
This week, while G.E. is starting work on a giant 100,000,000-volt model, Kerst is shipping his betatron to his laboratory in Illinois to see what discoveries he can make with it. Its electron beams have already penetrated inch-thick aluminum, made copper radioactive. Its medical applications, like those of the cyclotron which once struck the bewildered public as a useless device, must be explored. In time the betatron may be able to produce earthborn artificial cosmic rays, whose fantastic energies - hundreds of millions of volts - now smite the earth mysteriously from among the stars...