George Russell Harrison papers

George Russell Harrison, 1898-1979, BS 1919, PhD in physics, 1922, Stanford University, taught at Stanford until 1930 when he came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as professor of physics. He was director of the Research Laboratory of Experimental Physics from 1930 to 1942, and the first director of the Spectroscopy Laboratory. He was dean of the School of Science from 1942 until his retirement in 1964. During World War II Harrison served in a variety of posts including chair of the Instruments Section and later chief of the Optics Division of the National Defense Research Committee's Office of Scientific Research and Development; later he was chief of the Research Division at General Douglas MacArthur's headquarters in the southwest Pacific. Harrison's research focused on spectroscopy, studies of atomic structure, and the design of automatic instruments for making measurements and computations concerning the structure of atoms. A number of instruments he designed made possible his compilation of the MIT Wavelength Tables (1939, 1969). Harrison wrote over 100 scientific articles and a number of books including Atoms in Action (1939), a popular interpretation of physics, and coauthored Practical Spectroscopy (1948) with Richard Lord and John Loofbourow.