Kenneth Ross MacKenzie, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Kenneth Ross MacKenzie

American physicist

Date of Birth: 15-Jun-1912

Place of Birth: Portland, Oregon, United States

Date of Death: 03-Jul-2002

Profession: physicist, nuclear physicist

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Gemini

Kenneth Ross MacKenzie (June 15, 1912 – July 4, 2002) together with Dale R.
Corson and Emilio Segrè, synthesized the element astatine, in 1940.
MacKenzie received his PhD under Ernest Lawrence at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Lawrence, MacKenzie, and their colleagues devised the first cyclotron.
He was a professor of physics at UCLA, where he and Reg Richardson built UCLA's first cyclotron and later a bevatron.
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. As an actor, he played minor roles with Yvonne De Carlo in Ride the Pink Horse (1947), River Lady (1948) and Black Bart (1948).He died in Los Angeles on 4 July 2002 at aged 90.