Gale J. Young

Gale J. Young (1912 to 1990) was an American engineer, mathematical physicist, biophysicist and applied mathematician, known as a pioneer of nuclear engineering. He took a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1933 and a master's degree in mathematical physics at the University of Chicago in 1936. In early 1942 he joined Eugene Wigner's Theoretical Group in Chicago to develop nuclear reactors, and Wigner called him his main helper that year in designing a nuclear pile cooled by water. He was a research associate on the Manhattan Project at the Metallurgical Laboratory until 1946 and later shared the patent for the design of water-cooled nuclear reactors. In 1948 he and John R. Menke founded Nuclear Development Associates, the first privately owned nuclear firm, and in 1962 he returned to Oak Ridge National Laboratory as an assistant laboratory director, working on non-military uses of nuclear energy, especially desalination of seawater. He is also a namesake of the Eckart-Young theorem in linear algebra.