Boyce McDaniel

Who was Boyce McDaniel?

Boyce Dawkins McDaniel was an American nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and later directed the Cornell University Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. McDaniel was skilled in constructing "atom smashing" devices to study the fundamental structure of matter and helped to build the most powerful particle accelerators of his time. Together with his graduate student, he invented the pair spectrometer.

During World War II, McDaniel used his electronics expertise to help develop cyclotrons used to separate Uranium isotopes. McDaniel is also noted as having performed the final check on the first atomic bomb prior to its detonation in the Trinity test.