George Collins Papers,

George Collins, a physicist, particle experimentalist, educator, and administrator, earned a PHD with R.W. Wood at Hopkins studying UV Spectroscopy. Collins was a Professor at Notre Dame working on nuclear excitation and disintegration. He was responsible for the construction of a nuclear accelerator for the Notre Dame Nuclear Physics lab in 1935. He worked with Dr. Jose Caparo. In 1935, the accelerator was Notre Dames largest nuclear physics- related project to that date. The accelerator was the source of several decades research on nuclear physics, much of which was headed by Collins. At MIT he assisted the war effort in the Radiation Laboratory, developing radar for military purposes. He taught at University of Rochester and served the Department of Physics as Chairman. He was in charge of construction and operation of the 240 MeV synchrocyclotron and initiated, with Robert Marshak the Rochester Conferences. He was Chairman of Brookhaven's Cosmotron Department and a Fulbright fellow in Belgium. Late in his career he came to Virginia Tech and taught physics from 1968 to 1976.