Robert Jemison Van de Graaff

Van de Graaff, Robert Jemison (1901–67), U.S. physicist and inventor of the electrostatic generator, used in nuclear research. While a student at the Sorbonne, Van de Graaff attended lectures given by Marie Curie. He formed the idea for his generator when he realized that the study of atomic behavior requires a source of energetic beams of subatomic particles. In 1946 he became a founder of the High Voltage Engineering Corporation (HVEC).