| Karl T. Compton AKA Karl Taylor Compton Born: 15-Sep-1887
Birthplace: Wooster, OH
Died: 22-Jun-1954
Location of death: New York City
Cause of death: Heart Failure
Remains: Buried, Wooster Cemetery, Wooster, OH
Gender: Male
Religion: Presbyterian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Physicist, Administrator
Party Affiliation: Democratic Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Bikini Island atomic tests Military service: Office of Scientific Research and Development (1943-45) Physicist Karl T. Compton helped develop radar and the atomic bomb, and headed the team that evaluated the efficacy and aftermath of the Bikini Island atomic weapons tests in 1946. He was President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for nearly two decades as it became one of the nation's most respected universities, and he was instrumental in developing the modern concept of governmental and academic cooperation in research. He served as a top scientific advisor to US Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. His brother, physicist Arthur H. Compton, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927. Father: Elias Compton (philosophy professor, b. 8-Aug-1857, d. 2-May-1938)
Mother: Otelia Catheryne Augspurger Compton (b. 6-Feb-1858, d. 15-Dec-1944)
Sister: Mary Elesia Compton Rice (Christian missionary, b. 26-Apr-1889, d. 27-Jun-1961)
Brother: Wilson Martindale Compton (Voice of America executive, b. 15-Oct-1890, d. 7-Mar-1967)
Brother: Arthur Holly Compton (physicist, b. 10-Sep-1892, d. 15-Mar-1962)
Wife: Rowena Rayman Compton (m. Jun-1913, d. 1919, one daughter)
Daughter: Mary Ellen Compton Alderman (b. 1915)
Wife: Margaret Hutchinson Compton (m. 1921, d. 1980, one son, one daughter)
Son: Charles Arthur Compton
Daughter: Jean Compton Boyce
High School: Wooster High School, Wooster, OH (1904)
University: BS Philosophy, College of Wooster (1908)
University: MS Natural Sciences, College of Wooster (1909)
University: PhD Physics, Princeton University (1912)
Teacher: Physics, Reed College (1912-15)
Teacher: Physics, Princeton University (1915-19)
Professor: Physics, Princeton University (1919-30)
Administrator: President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1930-49)
Administrator: President, MIT Corporation (1949-54)
American Research and Development Co-founder (1946)
Rumford Prize 1931
French Legion of Honor 1951
US State Department Scientific attaché to US Embassy in Paris (1917-18)
American Chemical Society
American Philosophical Society
American Physical Society President (1927)
American Society for Engineering Education President (1938)
Brookings Institution Trustee
Council on Foreign Relations
Ford Foundation Trustee
Franklin Institute
National Academy of Engineering
National Academy of Sciences
Optical Society of America
Rockefeller Foundation Trustee
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Trustee
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Trustee
Manhattan Project
Lunar Crater Crater Compton (named for Karl & Arthur H. Compton)
English Ancestry
Author of books:
Scientists Face the World of 1942 (1942, nonfiction, with Vannevar Bush and Robert William Trullinger)
A Scientist Speaks (1955, nonfiction)
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