Thomas Hope Johnson (September 12, 1899,
Coldwater, Michigan
Coldwater is a city in Branch County, Michigan, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 10,945. It is the county seat of Branch County, located in the center of the southern border of Michigan. The city is surrounded by Co ...
– February 25, 1998,
Denmark, Maine
Denmark is a town in Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,197 at the 2020 census. A number of ponds and lakes are located within the town.
History
The land was once part of Pequawket (now Fryeburg), village of the Sokoki ...
) was an American physicist, known for his research on
cosmic ray
Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...
s. He was elected in 1930 a fellow of 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 ...
.
Biography
Johnson graduated in 1920 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics from
Amherst College
Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...
.
From 1920 to 1921 he was a graduate student and instructor in mathematics at the
University of Maine
The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the Flagship universities, flagshi ...
. During the summers of 1922 and 1923 he studied at the University of Chicago.
From 1922 to 1923 he taught at
Moses Brown School
Moses Brown School is an independent Quaker school located in Providence, Rhode Island, offering pre-kindergarten through secondary school classes. It was founded in 1784 by Moses Brown, a Quaker abolitionist, and is one of the oldest prepara ...
. At Yale University he was from 1923 to 1924 an assistant in physics, from 1924 to 1925 a laboratory assistant in optics, and from 1926 to 1927 a Sterling research fellow. There he received his doctorate in physics in 1926.
[
At the Bartol Research Foundation (now named the Bartol Research Institute), he was a research fellow from 1927 to 1929 and assistant director from 1930 to 1942. He married his first wife in 1930.][ At the Bartol Research Foundation, Johnson and colleagues counted cosmic rays at several different latitudes and altitudes.][
According to ]Nicholas P. Samios Nicholas P. Samios (born in NYC on March 15, 1932) is an American physicist and former director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.
Biography
He majored in physics at Columbia College of Columbia University, from which he grad ...
:[
In the 1930s Johnson and E. C. Stevenson invented the cosmic ray hodoscope.][ His ballistics research involved measuring blast forces for bombs and using microwaves to record projectile velocities in artillery bores.][ In 1947 he became the chair of the physics department of the newly formed Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). In 1951 he resigned from BNL to become Raytheon's vice-president for research, retaining that position until he retired in 1965. His first wife died in 1964.][
His second wife died in 1981. Upon his death in 1998 he was survived by two stepchildren and two brothers.][
]
Selected publications
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Thomas Hope
1899 births
1998 deaths
20th-century American physicists
Cosmic ray physicists
Amherst College alumni
Yale University alumni
Fellows of the American Physical Society
People from Coldwater, Michigan