Milton Eugene Gardner (February 10, 1901 – 1986) was an American physicist who worked on radar systems at the

Radiation Laboratory The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was a microwave and radar research laboratory located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was first created in October 1940 and operated until 31 ...

in Massachusetts.

Early life

He was born in

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz (Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a pop ...

, but would have been born in China if his father, a missionary under the American Board of Missions, had not returned temporarily to the United States for safety during the

Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...

. After spending the first nine years of his life China, Milton moved with his family to Claremont, California where he completed his elementary and secondary education and received a B.A. degree from

Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became ...

in 1924. While at Pomona, Milton competed successfully in athletics competitions, and became quite a good ventriloquist and magician and belonged to the International Brotherhood of Magicians. After graduating from college, he worked at several jobs before starting graduate work in physics at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

where he received his M.A. degree in 1934, with a thesis on "The recombination of ions in pure oxygen as a function of pressure and temperature." He received his Ph.D. degree in 1936. In 1937, Milton accepted a position as an "instructor in physics" at the then "Branch of the College of Agriculture at Davis" where he remained until his retirement as professor of physics in 1968.

Career

From 1942 to 1946, he joined the MIT Radiation Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he helped in that gigantic effort to develop and improve the radar systems which were of major importance in enabling the Allied Forces to overcome the German and Japanese aggressors. He spent the 1955-56 year at the

University of Peshawar The University of Peshawar ( ps, د پېښور پوهنتون; hnd, پشور یونیورسٹی; ur, ; abbreviated UoP; known more popularly as Peshawar University) is a Public university, public research university located in Peshawar, Khy ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gardner, Eugene 20th-century American physicists Accelerator physicists American nuclear physicists Experimental physicists Manhattan Project people 1901 births 1986 deaths Academic staff of the University of Peshawar American expatriate academics American expatriates in Pakistan Pomona College alumni