Kenneth Ross MacKenzie together with Dale R. Corson

Dale R. Corson

Dale R. Corson was the eighth president of Cornell University. Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, in 1914, Corson received a B.A. degree from the College of Emporia in 1934, his M.A. degree from the University of Kansas in 1935, and his Ph.D...

 and Emilio Segrè, synthesized the element astatine

Astatine

Astatine is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol At and atomic number 85. It occurs on the Earth only as the result of decay of heavier elements, and decays away rapidly, so much less is known about this element than its upper neighbors in the periodic table...

, in 1940. MacKenzie received his PhD under Ernest Lawrence

Ernest Lawrence

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was an American physicist and Nobel Laureate, known for his invention, utilization, and improvement of the cyclotron atom-smasher beginning in 1929, based on his studies of the works of Rolf Widerøe, and his later work in uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project...

 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...

. Lawrence, MacKenzie, and their colleagues devised the first cyclotron. He was a professor of physics at UCLA

University of California, Los Angeles

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

, where he and Reg Richardson built UCLA's first cyclotron and later a bevatron

Bevatron

The Bevatron was a historic particle accelerator — specifically, a weak-focusing proton synchrotron — at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S.A., which began operating in 1954. The antiproton was discovered there in 1955, resulting in the 1959 Nobel Prize in physics for Emilio...

. MacKenzie devised MacKenzie buckets which are plasma sources created by lining vacuum chamber walls with permanent magnets of alternating polarity to suppress plasma electron losses, that are widely used to this day. He later traveled around the world, helping to troubleshoot various country's cyclotron problems. Later in life, he studied plasma physics and dark matter.