(1901–58), U.S. physicist. Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born on Aug. 8, 1901, in Canton, S.D. He received a Ph.D. in 1925 from Yale University, where he taught for a year before moving to the University of California at Berkeley. There he began working on a circular accelerator, or cyclotron. This brought atoms up to high speeds and had them bombard a target, releasing atomic particles that could be used in research. Lawrence won the 1939 Nobel prize for physics for his invention. In his honor were named the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at Berkeley; the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at Livermore, Calif.; and element 103, lawrencium. (See also Nobel Prizewinners, )