---
title: "Alfred Lee Loomis"
chunk: 1/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:07:08.048084+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Alfred Lee Loomis (November 4, 1887 – August 11, 1975) was an American attorney, investment banker, philanthropist, scientist, physicist, inventor of the LORAN Long Range Navigation System and a lifelong patron of scientific research. He established the Loomis Laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York, and his role in the development of radar and the atomic bomb contributed to the Allied victory in World War II. He invented the Aberdeen Chronograph for measuring muzzle velocities, contributed significantly (perhaps critically, according to Luis Alvarez) 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 E. Newton Harvey he co-invented the microscope centrifuge, and pioneered techniques for electroencephalography. In 1937, he discovered the sleep K-complex brainwave. During the Great Depression, Loomis anonymously paid the Physical Review journal's fees for authors who could not afford them.

== Early life ==

Born in Manhattan, Loomis was the son of Julia Josephine Stimson and Henry Patterson Loomis, and grandson of Alfred Lebbeus Loomis. There were prominent members of society on both sides of his family; primarily they were 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 attended Phillips Academy and studied mathematics and science at Yale University. He 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 older cousin Henry Stimson developed a close relationship with Loomis and became the father that Loomis never had while Loomis became the son that Stimson could not have (as Stimson was sterile after a bout of adult mumps).
In 1908 he became an hereditary member of the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati.
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. The centerpiece of the property was the old Honey Horn Plantation. Loomis's hobbies included automobiles and yachting, including the racing of America's Cup yachts against the Vanderbilts and Astors.

== Military service and 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 instrument to measure accurately the muzzle velocity of artillery shells, and portable enough to be used on the battlefield. 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 now are illegal.

 
In 1928, anticipating the coming Wall Street Crash of 1929, he, his partner, and his firm had converted their investments into gold—having determined that the market had risen so dramatically that it was unsustainable and a crash was inevitable.  Once the stock market crash had bankrupted the majority of speculators, while Wall Street floundered, he and his firm became even wealthier as a result of purchasing stocks cheaply after they had plummeted in value and few people had the cash to reinvest. While Senatorial hearings sought to tar him for the success of his prudent strategy, no substantive charges were ever brought. Loomis later worked closely with FDR and his administration in preparing the country's technological base for war, using his many contacts in New York finance, as well as generous sums from his own considerable fortune, to finance the early developments in radar, before government money could be provided.