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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Geoffrey Chew was an American physicist.

Born and raised in Washington, DC, Chew graduated from high school at the age of 16. In 1944, he received a B.S. in Physics from George Washington University. One of his professors, George Gamow, recommended that Chew join Edward Teller’s team on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.

After arriving at Los Alamos, Chew worked on various calculations related to Teller’s ideas for developing the hydrogen bomb. Chew witnessed the Trinity Test from a nearby mountain.

Scientific Contributions

In 1946, Chew began his Ph.D. under Teller at the University of Chicago, but soon switched to become a student of Enrico Fermi. He received his doctorate in theoretical particle physics in 1948. Chew served as a postdoc and assistant professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley between 1948 and 1950, but resigned after refusing to sign the university’s controversial loyalty oath. After seven years teaching at the University of Illinois, Chew returned to Berkeley in 1957.

Chew is best known for articulating the idea of “nuclear democracy,” which rejected the traditional division between elementary and composite particles, and the “bootstrap theory,” based on reinterpretations of Feynman diagrams. In 1962, Chew was awarded the Hughes Prize of the American Physical Society for this theory. In 1969, he received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

Chew was a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

For more on Chew’s contributions and the political climate in which he developed the idea of “nuclear democracy,” see historian of science David Kaiser’s article “Nuclear Democracy: Political Engagement, Pedagogical Reform, and Particle Physics in Postwar America.”

Geoffrey F. Chew's Timeline
1924 Jun 5th Born in Washington, DC.
1944 Received a B.S. from George Washington University.
19441946 Worked under Edward Teller on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.
19461948 Received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago under Enrico Fermi.
19481949 Worked at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory.
19491950 Served as an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley before resigning due to the "loyalty oath" controversy.
19501957 Assistant Professor of Physics, Associate Professor of Physics, and Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
1957 Returned to Berkeley as Professor of Physics.
1962 Awarded the Hughes Prize of the American Physical Society.
1969 Received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
2019 Apr 12th Passed away in California.

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