Robert Van de Graaff (20.12.1901-16.01.1967) — American physicist. Born in Tuscaloosa (Alabama). He graduated from the University of Alabama (1922). He continued his studies at the Sorbonne and at Oxford. In 1929–31 he worked at Princeton University and in 1931–60 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His research was in nuclear physics and accelerator technology. In 1931 he invented the high-voltage electrostatic accelerator (the Van de Graaff generator), whose principle of operation he had worked out in 1929, and in 1932–33 he designed and built a generator with spheres 4.5 m in diameter. In 1936 he built the largest of the conventional constant-voltage generators. He put forward the idea of the tandem accelerator and by 1958 had built the first tandem accelerator of negative ions.
The T. Bonner Prize (1966).