Zoe, you share your November 6th birthday with your great grandfather, Boppa's father, Ernest O. ("E.O.") Wollan. So it's great timing that this recognition occurred just recently, around both of your birthdays. E.O. Wollan was an accomplished nuclear physicist who performed some groundbreaking research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory back in the 1940s. In 1994, ten years after Ernie had passed away, one of his partners, Clifford Shull, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the work they performed together. Unfortunately they don't award it posthumously, so Ernie was not able to share that distinction. But someone wrote a nice little story about Ernie here (click here to read). The recent news out of Oak Ridge citing Ernie's 1944 letter is below (click on picture to enlarge).
Ernest Wollan (left) and Clifford Shull (standing) working with their neutron diffraction unit at the Oak Ridge Graphite Reactor in 1950.
Here is Grandpa Ernie with Eric & Kristina back in in 1971.I have not yet made it that far south, but apparently there are some rocks/islands off the coast of Argentina named after my grandfather and his partner -- Wollan Island and Shull Rocks. Talk about cool!
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