Science

Founded in Nashville in October 1915, the Tennessee Ornithological Society (TOS) is an independent, nonprofit, educational, scientific organization dedicated to the study and conservation of birds. The original objectives of the TOS still hold today: (1) to promote the science…

In mid-July 1925 much of the nation's attention was focused on the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where John T. Scopes was on trial for teaching about evolution. Four months earlier, the Tennessee General Assembly had overwhelmingly passed a bill…

Isabel Hanson Tipton, physicist, was born in Monroe, Georgia, June 17, 1909. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Georgia in 1929 and graduate degrees with majors in physics and minors in chemistry from the University…

Gerard Troost, geologist, was born in s'Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, on March 5, 1776. As Tennessee state geologist (1831-50) and the state's best known antebellum scientist, Troost promoted mining, planned transportation routes, described soils, and wrote forty-three geological reports. As he traveled…

Founded in 1911, the UT Health Science Center includes the Colleges of Allied Health Sciences, Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy; the School of Biomedical Engineering; the Bowld Hospital in Memphis; and the Graduate School of Medicine and…

Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) from 1955 to 1973, Alvin Weinberg became as well known for his ability to communicate the intricacies of science as for his research efforts. The son of Russian emigrants, Weinberg trained in mathematical…

James Edward “Ed” Westcott, Oak Ridge’s official photographer during the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on January 20, 1922. Ed Westcott’s photography is featured in nearly every book, magazine, documentary, and newspaper article about the…

Michael K. Wilkinson, a solid state physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was born at Palatka, Florida, in 1921 and attended The Citadel and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning his Ph.D. degree in physics in 1950. Wilkinson joined Oak Ridge…

Ernest O. Wollan, pioneer physicist in neutron diffraction, was born at Glenwood, Minnesota, in 1902. Wollan attended Concordia College and the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1929 under Arthur Compton in studies of X-ray scattering. Early…

The unassuming building at Oak Ridge numbered X-10 housed the Graphite Reactor, the oldest nuclear reactor in the world. The Graphite Reactor was the world's first powerful nuclear reactor which transformed uranium 238 into plutonium 239. The X-10 facilities also…