Duncan A. MacInnes

As a member of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, he was the organizer the 1947 Shelter Island Conference where the experimental validation of quantum electrodynamics was first presented.

Life

Duncan Arthur MacInnes was born in 1885 in Salt Lake City, Utah. At the age of thirteen he had streetcar accident, where he lost two fingers and injured his leg.

In 1907, MacIness got his Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from University of Utah and Master of Science from the University of Illinois in 1909.

MacIness obtained his PhD on the topic of ion hydration of aqueous salt solutions, from the University of Illinois in 1911 under the direction of Edward Wight Washburn.

He continued teaching at Illinois until he left to do postdoctoral research in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1917, where he became associate professor in 1921.

Botanist Winthrop John Van Leuven Osterhout persuaded MacInnes to come to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City as an associate member in 1926. He became a member in 1940, and became an emeritus member in 1950.

During World War II, MacInnes worked on chemical warfare as director of a research group at the Rockefeller Institute. He also worked with the Office of Scientific Research and Development in a study directed toward isolation of uranium-235.

After the war, he and Karl K. Darrow organized a series of conferences focused specifically on quantum electrodynamics (QED) bringing top priority physicists of the time. These conferences including the 1947 Shelter Island Conference chaired by J. Robert Oppenheimer, where the first results on Lamb–Retherford experiment on vacuum polarization were presented.