Sidney Dancoff was a Pittsburgh Squirrel Hill Russian immigrant. He died in 1951 at 38 years old having already earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley under Robert Oppenheimer. He was a part of the research done for the Manhattan Project during WW II. He helped design the bomb and worked with Henry Quastler, a pioneer in radiology. One of his contributions to the world, Dancoff's Law: "The greatest growth occurs when the greatest number of mistakes are made consistent with survival." Or, in other words, risk-taking can have great rewards so long as it doesn't kill you. Ironically, in Dancoff's own life, this will be fatally reinforced as he died of cancer, lymphoma, which is believed to be caused from his work with the Manhattan Project, a theory supported by correspondence between Dancoff and Oppenheimer.
His main achievements in physics, he lead a life that had no promise of a very bright future as a child until his physics teacher convinced his grandfather to let him go to Carnegie Tech on private scholarships. With a B.S. in physics in 1934 he went on to receive a masters from the University of Pittsburgh in 1936. Then, at Berkeley, in their Radiation Laboratory, he helped develop the experimental program where cyclotrons were invented, built and tested. Cyclotrons are a type of particle accelerator.
Teaching physics at the University of Illinois, he as well as other physicists, produced the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction for the Manhattan Project. He co-developed the Dancoff Factor now used in reactor calculations.
For pictures from WW II: Zincov, a center of thriving Jews before WW II was cleaned out in close to three years has been memorialized by the publishings of Alan Shulman at alanzolashulman.com
Lowry, Patricia. (April 10, 2011) He wrote the law on risk-taking. Sunday Magazine, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. p1,4.
Contact: plowery@post-gazette.com
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