NUCLEARKATIE - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Member of the Manhattan Project

Dr. Elda Emma Anderson was a physicist, member of the Manhattan Project, and pioneer of health physics. She was born in Wisconsin on October 5, 1899. Dr. Anderson earned a Bachelor of Arts (AB) from Ripon College in 1922, and went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to earn her Master of Arts in physics, 1924. After completing her masters, she taught in high schools and colleges around Iowa and Wisconsin, including a position as the dean of physics, chemistry and mathematics at Estherville Junior College in Iowa (now part of Iowa Lakes Community College). Eventually, she joined the physics department at Milwaukee-Downer College and became the department head in 1934. Milwaukee-Downer College was a women's college that eventually consolidated with Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1964. The land from Milwaukee-Downer is now part of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. While maintaining her job as dean of physics, Dr. Anderson completed her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1941, with the dissertation "Low energy levels in the atomic spectra Co VII and Ni VIII". Shortly after finishing her Ph.D., she joined the Manhattan Project at Princeton University's Office of Scientific Research and Development in New Jersey. By 1943, she was moved to Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico to study fission. Working in the cyclotron group, Dr. Anderson focused mainly on spectroscopy and neutron cross section measurements. Her work led her to produce the lab's first sample of uranium-235. Although she returned to Milwaukee-Downer in 1947, Dr. Anderson was very interested in the new field of health physics. She left Wisconsin in 1949 to move to Oak Ridge, Tennessee and devote the rest of her life to health physics. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, she became the first chief of education and training for the Health Physics Division. Dr. Anderson was very active in establishing health physics as an official discipline, helping to establish the Health Physics Society in 1955 and the American Board of Health Physics in 1960. Her collaboration with faculty at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee led to the creation of the graduate health physics program. She was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and various honor societies such as Sigma Xi and Sigma Delta Epsilon. She developed international courses in health physics, including ones in Stockholm, Belgium, and Bombay. In 1956 she was diagnosed with leukemia and eventually breast cancer. Dr. Elda Emma Anderson died in 1961. She never married and had no children. In honor of her memory, the Health Physics Society established the Elda E. Anderson Award in 1962, which is presented yearly to a young member of the Society to recognize "excellence in (1) research or development, (2) discovery or invention, (3) devotion to health physics, and/or (4) significant contributions to the profession of health physics." Elda Anderson. (n.d.). In Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved March 29, 2018, from < a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-and-education-magazines/anderson-elda">encyclopedia.com/history/news-and-education-magazines/anderson-elda</a>

Way, K. (1937, April 1). Photoelectric cross section of the deuteron (Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1938). Physical Review Journals,51