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Merle Tuve

Merle TuveAKA Merle Antony Tuve

Born: 27-Jun-1901
Birthplace: Canton, SD
Died: 20-May-1982
Location of death: Bethesda, MD
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Physicist, Inventor

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Proximity fuse

Geophysicist Merle Tuve proposed that an electronically-activated proximity fuse would make anti-aircraft fire far more effective, and led the team of scientists that developed the device, which proved crucial in the allies' victory in World War II. He was among the first physicists to use high-voltage accelerators to define the structure of the atom, and with Gregory Breit he used radio waves to measure the height of the ionosphere and probe its interior layers (research which underpinned the subsequent development of radar). Ernest Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron, grew up across the street from Tuve's family in Canton, South Dakota, and the two boys were childhood friends.

Father: Anthony Tuve (President of Augustana College, d. 1918 flu epidemic)
Mother: Ida Marie Larsen Tuve (music teacher)
Brother: George Lewis Tuve (engineer)
Brother: Richard Larsen Tuve (chemist)
Sister: Rosemond Tuve (lierature professor)
Wife: Winifred Gray Whitman (physician, m. 1927, one son, one daughter)
Son: Trygve Whitman Tuve (chemist, d. 1972)
Daughter: Lucy Winifred Tuve Comly (biologist)

    High School: College Prep Program, Augustana College (1918)
    University: BS Physics, University of Minnesota (1922)
    University: MS Physics, University of Minnesota (1923)
    Teacher: Physics, Princeton University (1923-24)
    University: PhD Physics, Johns Hopkins University (1927)
    Teacher: Physics, Johns Hopkins University (1927-46)
    Professor: Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University (1946-82)

    Presidential Medal for Merit 1946
    American Geophysical Union
    Carnegie Institution for Science Director of Terrestrial Magnetism Research (1946-66)
    Cosmos Club
    National Academy of Sciences
    National Research Council
    Norwegian Ancestry

Author of books:
Velocity Structures in Hydrogen Profiles: A Sky Atlas of Neutral Hydrogen Emission (1973, with Soren Lundsager)


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