Gerard K. O'Neill

Gerard Kitchen O'Neill (February 6, 1927 – April 27, 1992) was an American physicist and space activist.

As a faculty member of Princeton University, he invented a device called the particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments.

Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the mass driver.

O'Neill was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 6, 1927, to Edward Gerard O'Neill, a lawyer, and Dorothy Lewis O'Neill (née Kitchen).

He had no siblings.

His family moved to Speculator, New York when his father temporarily retired for health reasons.

For high school, O'Neill attended Newburgh Free Academy in Newburgh, New York.

While he was a student there he edited the school newspaper and took a job as a news broadcaster at a local radio station.

He graduated in 1944, during World War II, and enlisted in the United States Navy on his 17th birthday.

The Navy trained him as a radar technician, which sparked his interest in science.

After he was honorably discharged in 1946, O'Neill studied physics and mathematics at Swarthmore College.

As a child he had discussed the possibilities of humans in space with his parents, and in college he enjoyed working on rocket equations.

However, he did not see space science as an option for a career path in physics, choosing instead to pursue high-energy physics.

He graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1950.

O'Neill married Sylvia Turlington, also a Swarthmore graduate, in June 1950.

O'Neill began researching high-energy particle physics at Princeton in 1954, after he received his doctorate from Cornell University.

Two years later, he published his theory for a particle storage ring.

This invention allowed particle accelerators at much higher energies than had previously been possible.

O'Neill pursued graduate studies at Cornell University with the help of an Atomic Energy Commission fellowship, and was awarded a PhD in physics in 1954.

In 1956, his second year of teaching, he published a two-page article that theorized that the particles produced by a particle accelerator could be stored for a few seconds in a storage ring.

In 1965 at Stanford University, he performed the first colliding beam physics experiment.

While teaching physics at Princeton, O'Neill became interested in the possibility that humans could survive and live in outer space.

He researched and proposed a futuristic idea for human settlement in space, the O'Neill cylinder, in "The Colonization of Space", his first paper on the subject.

They had a son, Roger, and two daughters, Janet and Eleanor, before their marriage ended in divorce in 1966.

One of O'Neill's favorite activities was flying.

He held instrument certifications in both powered and sailplane flight and held the FAI Diamond Badge, a gliding award.

In the 1970s, he developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space, including a space habitat design known as the O'Neill cylinder.

He founded the Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into space manufacturing and colonization.

During his first cross-country glider flight in April 1973, he was assisted on the ground by Renate "Tasha" Steffen.

He had met Tasha, who was 21 years younger than him, previously through the YMCA International Club.

They were married the day after his flight.

They had a son, Edward O'Neill.

After graduating from Cornell, O'Neill accepted a position as an instructor at Princeton University.

There he started his research into high-energy particle physics.

He held a conference on space manufacturing at Princeton in 1975.

Many who became post-Apollo-era space activists attended.

O'Neill built his first mass driver prototype with professor Henry Kolm in 1976.

He considered mass drivers critical for extracting the mineral resources of the Moon and asteroids.

His award-winning book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space inspired a generation of space exploration advocates.

He died of leukemia in 1992.