Viking Magazine - January 2021 - 26

F
or farming credentials,
young Ernest Orlando had
the dust of homesteads in
his bloodline-his mother,
Gunda, was born in a sod
shanty in Norway Township
of Dakota Territory.
But as far as his uncle, John Overseth,
was concerned, the boy didn't measure
up when it came to the important
business of working the land in Canton,
S.D. " He can't farm worth a nickel,
can't even hit the bangboard with an
ear of corn. They all fall back on the
ground, " Overseth marveled after
employing both Ernest and his brother,
John, at his farm during their teen
years. " Now John, he's much better at
it. He could amount to something. "
Ernest thought about a career in
medicine, but his grades after his first
year at St. Olaf College in Northfield,
Minn., weren't stellar. His marks for
second semester were lower than for
the first: Cs in mathematics, English,
psychology and chemistry, and-this is
the one he dreaded telling his parents
about-a D in religion.
But things took a turn for the
better after Ernest switched to the
University of South Dakota in the fall
of 1919. There, Dean Lewis Akeley
of the College of Engineering became
convinced that Ernest's interests in
chemistry, medicine and radio were not
quite the right fit. He suggested Ernest
give physics a try, even providing him
with personal tutoring.
Ernest continued his education in
physics at the University of Minnesota,
the University of Chicago, and finally
Yale. He then became a professor at the
University of California at Berkeley and
invented a device for smashing atoms.
In November 1939, not quite 20 years
after Dean Akeley suggested he study
physics, Ernest Orlando Lawrence,
known to the scientific community
as E.O. Lawrence, won the Nobel
26 VIKING JANUARY 2021
sonsofnorway.com
Prize in physics " for the invention
and development of the cyclotron and
for results obtained with it, especially
with regard to artificial radioactive
elements. "
Ole Lavrens Goes to America
That's the short version. As Herbert
Childs tells in his biography, " An
American Genius: The Life of Ernest
Orlando Lawrence, Father of the
Cyclotron, " part of the back story is
that E.O. Lawrence came from a family
keenly interested in education even
before they immigrated to America
from Norway. And yes, strange as it
may seem, Lawrence started out as a
Norwegian name.
" It's a changed name. It was
Lavrens and they anglicized it, " says
Jim Lawrence, a retired physician
in California who is the son of John
Lawrence and the nephew of Ernest
Lawrence. " I'm not even sure who did
that-probably my grandfather's father,
Ole. He came to America and somehow
ended up in the Midwest, where all the
Norwegians end up. "
Ole Hundale Lavrens had been a
teacher in Telemark, Norway, before
he immigrated to America. He took
a teaching certificate in Wisconsin
Territory in 1846. It's probably a sign
of things to come that the family had
already been known for having " good
heads " back in Norway, as Childs
notes. Ole changed the family name
first to Larence and then to Lawrence,
and eventually married Bertha Hull, an
immigrant from Kragerø, Norway.
Carl Gustavus, the youngest of their
four surviving children, continued his
father's tradition of teaching, earning
his university degree in Madison and
then heading west to the little town of
Canton, S.D.-traveling by bicycle,
Jim Lawrence said-to begin his own
career in academics. While serving as
superintendent of Canton's schools,
Carl married Gunda Jacobson, a teacher
specializing in mathematics.
The Jacobsons had come to Iowa
from Gudbrandsdalen, Norway, where
several members of the family were
noted for their artistic ability, including
Gunda's father, Erik-famed locally for
carving a noted altar piece at Garmo,
Norway.
That was the household in which
E.O. Lawrence grew up. He heard his
parents use Norwegian table prayers
and, as a young child, asserted that he
didn't speak Norwegian because he
was young. When his parents tried to
explain that the language had nothing
to do with his age but rather with the
country their own parents had come
from, Ernest protested, " But I am an
American! " After that, the boy was
allowed to say table prayers in English,
his biographer says, though he still had
to take Norwegian lessons after his
regular school day ended.
He retained something undeniably
Scandinavian. Years later, when his
fianceé, Mary " Molly " Blumer, told one
of her professors at Harvard that she
was engaged, he asked if the man she
was marrying was " that big Swede " she
had been keeping company with.
" You're awfully close, " Molly told
him. " His family are all Norwegian. "
The Cyclotron
There's an odd connection to Norway
in the genesis of E.O. Lawrence's great
invention, too. Science historians know
that in the spring of 1929, Ernest read
an article by the Norwegian physicist
Rolf Wideröe in the German journal,
" Archiv für Elektrotechnik. " He may
have just stumbled across the article
in the university library at Berkeley, as
he said in his Nobel Prize acceptance
speech, but Ernest later told Wideröe
that he studied the journal article
during a boring faculty meeting that
just dragged on-one of the more
PHOTOS PAGES 24-25: GADO IMAGES / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, COURTESY DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY. OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

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Viking Magazine - January 2021

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