Alfred Lee Loomis
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Alfred Lee Loomis (November 4, 1887 – August 11, 1975) was an American attorney, investment banker, physicist, philanthropist and patron of scientific research. He established the Loomis Laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York, and his role in the development of radar is considered instrumental in the Allied victory in World War II. He invented the Aberdeen Chronograph for measuring muzzle velocities, proposed the LORAN navigational system, contributed significantly (perhaps critically, according to Luis Alvarez¹) to the development of a ground-controlled approach technology for aircraft, and participated in preliminary meetings of the Manhattan Project. Loomis also made contributions to biological instrumentation -- working with Edmund Newton Harvey, he co-invented the microscope centrifuge², and pioneered techniques for electroencephalography.³

Early years

Born in Manhattan, Loomis was the son of Julia Stimson and Henry Patterson Loomis. There were prominent members of society on both sides of his family; these were primarily physicians. Alfred's parents separated when he was very young, and his father died when Alfred was in college. His first cousin was Henry Stimson, who held cabinet-level positions in the administrations of William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. From the boy's early years, Stimson exerted considerable influence on Loomis.

Loomis completed undergraduate studies in mathematics and science at Yale University and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1912. Immediately following his graduation, Loomis married and began practicing corporate law in the firm of Winthrop and Stimson, where he was very successful.

His wife was Elizabeth Ellen Farnsworth of Dedham, Massachusetts, from a prominent Boston society family, whom he wedded on June 22, 1912. They had three sons, Alfred Lee Jr., William Farnsworth, and Henry.

In 1917 Alfred Loomis and Landon K. Thorne, the wealthy husband of Loomis's sister Julia, purchased 17,000 acres (69 km²) of Hilton Head Island, which they established as a private preserve for riding, boating, fishing and hunting. Loomis's hobbies included automobiles and yachting, including the racing of America's Cup yachts against the Vanderbilts and Astors.

Military service and a new career in finance

After the United States entered World War I, in 1917 Loomis volunteered for military service. He was commissioned as a captain, and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He worked in ballistics at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, where he invented the Aberdeen Chronograph, the first portable instrument capable of measuring muzzle velocity and the striking force of bullets. At Aberdeen he met and worked with a Johns Hopkins physicist, Robert W. Wood, under whose influence Loomis's long-standing interest in inventing and gadgetry evolved into the serious pursuit of experimental and practical physics.

In the 1920s, Loomis collaborated with his brother-in-law, Landon K. Thorne, rather than returning to the practice of law. They acquired Bonbright and Company and brought it from the verge of bankruptcy to becoming a preeminent U. S. investment banking-house specializing in public utilities. They became very wealthy by financing electric companies as these began to establish the electrical infrastructure of rural America, and Loomis sat on the boards of several banks and electric utilities. Loomis and Thorne pioneered the concept of the holding company, consolidating many of the electric companies that operated on the East Coast of the United States. Loomis further increased his fortune via insider trading practices that are now illegal.

In anticipation of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, he had converted most of his investments into cash after the market had risen so dramatically that he and his partner decided it was unsustainable. Once the stock market crash had bankrupted the majority of speculators, he became even wealthier while Wall Street floundered as a result of purchasing stocks cheaply after they had plummeted in value and few people had the cash to reinvest.

Loomis Laboratory at Tuxedo Park

Taking advantage of his considerable wealth, Loomis increasingly indulged his interest in science. He established a personal laboratory near his mansion within the exclusive enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York. He and his small staff conducted pioneering studies in spectrometry, high-intensity sound waves, electro-encephalography, and the precise measurement of time, chronometry. Eventually he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his work in physics.

His laboratory was the best of its kind, containing equipment that few universities could afford. His reputation spread quickly, particularly in Europe, where money for science was scarce. Loomis often sent first-class tickets to famous European scientists so that they could travel to the United States to meet with their peers and collaborate on projects. They would be picked up at the airport or train station and brought to Tuxedo Park in his limousine. At first, some in the scientific community called him an "eccentric dabbler," but soon his laboratory became the meeting place for some of the most accomplished scientists of the time, such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, James Franck, and Enrico Fermi. Scientists who worked personally with him were convinced of his capability and industry. His wealth, connections and charm all made him highly persuasive.

In 1939, Loomis began a collaboration with Ernest Lawrence, and was instrumental in financing Lawrence's project to construct a 184-inch (4.7 m) cyclotron. By this time he had become a prominent figure in experimental physics and had moved his Tuxedo Park operations to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he established a joint operation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Loomis in World War Two

A March 1940 meeting at the University of California at Berkeley concerning the planned 184-inch cyclotron (seen on the blackboard).⁴ From left to right: Ernest O. Lawrence, Arthur H. Compton, Vannevar Bush, James B. Conant, Karl T. Compton and Loomis.

In the late 1930s Loomis's scientific team turned their attention to radio detection studies, building a crude microwave radar which they deployed in the back of a van. They drove it to a golf course and aimed it at the neighboring highway in order to track automobiles, then took it to the local airport, where they tracked small aircraft.

Loomis had visited the United Kingdom and knew many of the British scientists who were working on radar. Britain, at war with Germany, was being bombed nightly by the German Luftwaffe, while America was trying to stay out of the war. In 1940 the British Tizard Mission visited the United States, desperately seeking help to develop their concepts further and construct the technology they had invented. British scientists had developed the cavity magnetron, which allowed their radar to be made small enough for installation in aircraft.

On hearing that the British magnetron had a thousand times the output of the best American transmitter, Loomis invited its developers to Tuxedo Park. Because he had done more work in this area than anyone else in the country, Loomis was appointed by Vannevar Bush to the National Defense Research Committee as chairman of the Microwave Committee and vice-chairman of Division D (Detection, Controls, Instruments). Within a month he had selected a building on the MIT campus in which to equip a laboratory, dubbing it the MIT Radiation Lab, later known as the Rad Lab. He pressed for the development of radar in spite of the Army's initial skepticism, and arranged funding for the Rad Lab until federal money was allocated.

The MIT Rad Lab was managed by its director, Lee DuBridge. Meanwhile, Loomis assumed his customary function of eliminating the obstacles to research and providing the encouragement that was needed at a time when success still remained elusive. The resulting 10 cm radar was a key technology that enabled the sinking of U-boats, spotted incoming German bombers for the British, and provided cover for the D-Day landing. Loomis took advantage of all his business acumen and industry contacts to ensuring that no time was wasted in its development. DuBridge later commented, "Radar won the war; the atom bomb ended it."

In later years he invented LORAN, the most widely used long-range navigation system until the advent of GPS. This was based on a pulsed hyperbolic system using a master and two slave stations. Loomis also made a significant contribution to the development of ground-controlled approach technology, a precursor of today's instrument-landing systems that used radar to enable ground controllers to talk down aircraft pilots and help them to land safely when poor visibility made visual landings difficult or impossible.

Later years and legacy

President Roosevelt lauded the value of Loomis's work, describing him as being the civilian who was second perhaps only to Churchill in facilitating the Allied victory in World War II.

Loomis was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1940, and received several honorary degrees: from Wesleyan University he received a D.Sc. in 1932, from Yale University an M.Sc. in 1933, and from the University of California an LL.D. in 1941.

Loomis was married to Ellen Farnsworth for over thirty years; she was beautiful, delicate, and often suffered from debilitating depression. He had an affair with a colleague's wife, Manette Hobart, and in 1945 he divorced Ellen and immediately married Manette, scandalizing New York society. At this point he completely changed his lifestyle, eschewing his multiple residences and numerous servants, and settling into a single household in which he and his wife shared a relationship that was characterized by its domesticity. They remained married until Alfred Loomis died more than thirty years later.

Loomis, always a very private person who avoided publicity, retreated from public life entirely after closing the Rad Lab and finishing his related obligations in 1947. He retired to East Hampton with Manette, and never granted another interview.

References

Further reading

• Alvarez, Luis W. (1980). "Alfred Lee Loomis". National Academy of Sciences. Biographical memoirs 51. Washington D.C.: National Academies Press. 308 – 341. 

• Conant, Jennet (2002). Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster.  hardcover: ISBN 0-684-87287-0, paperback: ISBN 0-684-87288-9

External links

• "The Consummate Amateur". Retrieved on 2008-09-18. - A review of Tuxedo Park in American Scientist pointing out a few errors and exaggerations in the book.

• "Inside the "Cloistered Fiefdom" of an Unrelenting Gentleman Scientist". Retrieved on 2008-09-15. - A review of Tuxedo Park at SIAM news.