Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

William H. Beamer

Chemist, Researcher Los Alamos, NM

Scientist

William H. Beamer was born on July 5, 1918 in Apollo, Pennsylvania. He graduated from South High in Youngstown, Ohio in 1935, and then attended the College of Wooster. He earned his MA from the University of Maryland in 1941, and his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Ohio State University in 1944.

At Los Alamos, he worked as an associate chemist, studying polonium.

After the war, he went on to work in the embryonic spectroscopy lab at Dow Chemical Company. He also served as the director for the radiochemistry lab. In 1949, he published The Physical Properties of Polonium.

On October 23, 2000, Beamer passed away in a small plane crash, at the age of 82.

Related Profiles

Ida Noddack

Germany

Ida Noddack, née Tacke, was born in Wesel, Lackhausen in 1896. She earned her doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin in 1921, and became the first woman to hold a professional chemist’s position in the German chemical industry.

William Stillwagon

Los Alamos, NM

Alfred R. Weeks

Tinian Island

Alfred R. Weeks served in the First Ordnance Squadron. 

Lyman Briggs

Washington, DC

Lyman Briggs (1874-1963) was an American engineer, physicist and administrator.  In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt called on Briggs to head the newly established the Uranium Committee, a secret project to investigate the atomic fission of uranium, as a result of the Einstein-Szilard Letter.