George E. Valley Jr. was a 20th Century nuclear physicist who joined the

MIT 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 1940, where he led the development of the H2X radar bombsight. After the war he became a professor of physics at MIT. Valley received his PhD in physics in 1939 from the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The University of Roc ...

. He was on faculty of MIT from 1947 to 1974, and was concurrently Chief Scientist of the Air Force from 1957 to 1958. In 1946 Valley joined the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, where he conceived of the idea of a nationwide air defense system that used long-range radar to patrol the nation's perimeter, and then dispatched missiles or fighters to intercept incoming Soviet bombers. This idea led to the founding of the

MIT Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and dev ...

and the eventual creation of the

Semi-Automatic Ground Environment The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of mainframe computer, large computers and associated computer network, networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image ...

. Valley returned to MIT in 1959. In 1969 he founded MIT's

Experimental Study Group The Experimental Study Group (ESG) describes itself as a freshman learning community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was created in 1969 by Professor George Valley to explore alternative teaching and learning methods in a small ...

, an optional interdisciplinary study program for MIT's first-year students. In recognition of Valley's contributions to physics, the

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

created the George E. Valley, Jr. Prize, which awards $10,000 annually to "early-career individual for an outstanding scientific contribution to physics that is deemed to have significant potential for a dramatic impact on the field."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Valley, George American physicists Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni