John George Trump (August 21, 1907 – February 21, 1985) was an American electrical engineer and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He pioneered the use of high-voltage generators in cancer treatment and was founding chairman of High Voltage Engineering Corporation, a leading manufacturer of particle accelerators. Trump received his electrical engineering doctorate as the first student of MIT physicist Robert J. Van de Graaff. He joined MIT's faculty in 1935 and designed compact, high-voltage Van de Graaff generators for use in cancer radiotherapy. Trump later directed MIT's High Voltage Research Laboratory, which developed new radiotherapy techniques, trained radiologists, and treated more than 10,000 patients. Under Trump, the lab explored the generation and use of electrostatic power in medical sterilization, spacecraft propulsion, wastewater disinfection, and direct current power transmission. Ahead of American entry into World War II, Trump joined the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), the government's main effort to organize civilian scientists for war. As technical aide to Karl Compton, he helped establish the Radiation Laboratory to develop microwave radar. He served on the lab's steering committee and as an NDRC divisional secretary, managing the NDRC's portfolio of radar contracts. In February 1944, he went to England to direct the Rad Lab's field operation in Europe. There, he organized radar deployments for the D-Day invasion, aided interception of V-1 missiles, and advised American commanders on radar use in combat. He received service commendations from President Truman and King George VI. In 1946, Trump organized the High Voltage Engineering Corporation (HVEC) with Van de Graaff and Denis Robinson to build compact Van de Graaff accelerators for cancer therapy. They received one of the first three investments of the American Research & Development Corporation, the first modern venture capital firm. As chairman, Trump oversaw the company's growth and debut on the New York Stock Exchange. HVEC became the largest global supplier of research particle accelerators as government funding for nuclear science expanded, and later diversified into industrial products. Trump retired from the MIT faculty in 1973 and remained active as a trustee of Boston's Museum of Science and board chairman of the Lahey Clinic, a regional hospital. President Reagan awarded Trump the National Medal of Science in 1983 for the "beneficial application of ionizing radiation to medicine, industry and atomic physics." Trump was the paternal uncle of Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States.
Early life and education
New York years (1907–1931) Born in the Bronx, New York City, on August 21, 1907, John Trump was the youngest of three children born to German immigrants Frederick and Elizabeth Christ Trump. After the Queensboro Bridge opened in 1909, the family moved to Queens, eventually settling in the Woodhaven neighborhood. When Trump was 11, his father died in the 1918 influenza pandemic, leaving his mother to support the family. Like his siblings, Trump attended Richmond Hill High School, where he was a gifted student. He joined Western Electric's Manhattan engineering office in 1923, two years before it became known as Bell Labs.
Both John Trump and his older brother Fred joined their family's real estate firm. Their mother hoped that Fred would build homes and John design them. With support from his brother, John enrolled at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute to study architecture. The brothers' work together ended due to differences in business philosophy: Fred preferred to sell units as they were planned; John thought they should only sell once constructed. By the end of his freshman year, John left the family real estate business and switched his concentration from architecture to engineering. Selected as Brooklyn Poly's valedictorian, Trump graduated from in 1929 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. While teaching electrical engineering at his alma mater, he earned his master's degree in physics from Columbia University in 1931.
MIT doctorate (1931–1933)
In fall 1931, Trump arrived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to pursue a PhD in electrical engineering. MIT's new president, the physicist Karl Compton, was recruiting scientists to strengthen basic research at the institute. Vannevar Bush, dean of MIT's engineering school, recommended Trump work with one of these recruits: Robert J. Van de Graaff, a 29-year-old physicist developing a new electrostatic generator. Van de Graaff became Trump's advisor and lifelong collaborator.
Van de Graaff sought to build a generator with sufficiently strong electric potential to artificially split the atom. He split his research between open-air models, which required large terminals, and vacuum-insulated designs, which were compact but technically challenging. In 1933, Van de Graaff demonstrated the Round Hill generator, a 43-foot (13 m) air-insulated generator that produced dramatic electrical arcs and attracted broad press coverage. But the demonstration also revealed the design's fundamental limitation: high voltages broke down in open air. To overcome these limits, Trump worked on vacuum techniques. He designed a synchronous alternating-current motor to power a vacuum, which proved highly efficient. Encouraged by this practical innovation, his dissertation also proposed a method to build vacuum-insulated, long-distance transmission lines for high-voltage direct current. In 1932, Van de Graaff filed to patent components in the transmission system. The new Tennessee Valley Authority showed interest in developing these patents for its hydropower projects, and Vannevar Bush offered to license them to the TVA by assigning them to the Research Corporation. Though the transmission project fell through, MIT became the first private university with a policy of research commercialization, and its arrangement was an influential predecessor to university patent licensing. Trump received his doctorate of electrical engineering in 1933. His thesis, Vacuum Electrostatic Engineering, described these contributions and examined the factors governing voltage-insulation strength in vacuums.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
