Key 81: The Melbourne Cyclotron

In the post-war optimism regarding the possibilities of nuclear science for power production and medical research, the Physics Department drew on twenty years of atomic research to design and construct a high speed, variable energy nuclear accelerator or Cyclotron. In choosing this over other forms of accelerators the Melbourne physicists ‘had in mind the urgent need of a local source of radio-active isotopes’ for medical research. Such a focus also allowed for tapping into the more generous funding possibilities associated with medical science. Its design, by Drs David Caro and John Rouse, was a world-first but better-resourced Americans managed to actually build one sooner.