Van de Graaff, Robert J.

Van de Graaff, Robert J. (Jemison) (1901–67) physicist; born in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He conceived the idea for his constant-potential electrostatic generator (later known as the Van de Graaff generator) while he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford (1926–28), and constructed its first working model at Princeton (1929–31). At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1931–60), he developed his generator for use as a particle accelerator, but was unsuccessful in using it to bombard uranium and other heavy ions. He invented the insulating-core transformer in the late 1950s.