John Gooden and the Birmingham proton synchrotron

Abstract

During World War 2, Sir Mark Oliphant began to plan for the construction of the world’s first proton synchrotron at the University of Birmingham. In March 1945, he offered a research fellowship to an enthusiastic and highly commended young physicist, John Stanley Gooden. Gooden had graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1941, and been working at the Radiophysics Laboratory, Sydney on radar research. With his wife, he arrived in Birmingham at the end of 1945, and immediately began work on the mathematical theory, design and construction of the proton accelerator. His enthusiasm and work ethic were infectious, and he soon became the project leader. In the latter part of 1947, Oliphant arranged for Gooden and John Fremlin to visit nuclear research facilities in the United States of America (USA) to gain knowledge about American plans for proton accelerators. They spent most of their time at the Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley and at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. The United Kingdom (UK) was exhausted after the war, and despite the best efforts of Gooden and Oliphant’s team, the construction of the synchrotron was slow. In 1947, Oliphant accepted a position as head of the Research School of Physical Sciences at the new Australian National University in Canberra. Gooden was the first staff appointment to the school. Oliphant planned to build a cyclosynchrotron at the university with Gooden as team leader. Tragically, in 1950, Gooden’s chronic nephritis deteriorated, and he died on 9 June 1950. Described by Oliphant as ‘my most brilliant student’, Gooden pioneered the theoretical basis and construction of the proton synchrotron. The Birmingham machine was finally completed in 1953, a year after the Brookhaven Cosmotron.