---
title: "Alfred Lee Loomis"
chunk: 2/3
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"
---

== Laboratory at Tuxedo Park ==
Taking advantage of his considerable wealth, Loomis increasingly indulged his interest in science. He established a personal laboratory near his mansion within the exclusive enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York. He and his small staff conducted pioneering studies in spectrometry, high-frequency sound and capillary waves, electro-encephalography, and the precise measurement of time, chronometry.
Eventually Loomis was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his work in physics.
His laboratory was the best of its kind, containing equipment that few universities could afford. His reputation spread quickly, particularly in Europe, where money for science was scarce. Loomis often sent first-class tickets to famous European scientists so that they could travel to the United States to meet with their peers and collaborate on projects. They would be picked up at the airport or train station and brought to Tuxedo Park in his limousine. At first, some in the scientific community called him an "eccentric dabbler," but soon his laboratory became the meeting place for some of the most accomplished scientists of the time, such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, James Franck, and Enrico Fermi. Scientists who worked with him personally, were convinced of his capability and industry. His wealth, connections, and charm all made him highly persuasive.
His Tuxedo Park laboratory was nicknamed the "Tower House", "The Loomis Lab" and "The Palace of Science". He turned this Tuxedo Park laboratory into a meeting place for many of the most important minds of the twentieth century; Albert Einstein, and the aforementioned scientists.
He was awarded the Franklin Institute's John Price Wetherill Medal in 1934 along with E. Newton Harvey.
In 1939, Loomis began a collaboration with Ernest Lawrence and was instrumental in financing Lawrence's project to construct a 184-inch (4.7 m) cyclotron. By this time, Loomis had become a prominent figure in experimental physics and had moved his Tuxedo Park operations to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he established a joint operation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Additionally, Loomis's 1937 house in Tuxedo Park by architect William Lescaze is regarded as an early experiment in double-skin facade construction. This house included "an elaborate double envelope" with a 2-foot-deep (60 cm) air space conditioned by a separate system from the house itself. The object was to maintain high humidity levels inside.

== World War II ==

In the late 1930s, Loomis's scientific team turned their attention to radio detection studies, building a crude microwave radar which they deployed in the back of a van. They drove it to a golf course and aimed it at the neighboring highway in order to track automobiles, then took it to the local airport, where they tracked small aircraft.
Loomis had visited the United Kingdom and knew many of the British scientists who were working on radar. Britain, at war with Germany, was being bombed nightly by the German Luftwaffe, while America was trying to stay out of the war. British scientists had developed the cavity magnetron, which allowed their radar to be made small enough for installation in aircraft. In 1940, the British Tizard Mission visited the United States, seeking help to mass-manufacture the technology they had invented.
On hearing that the British magnetron had a thousand times the output of the best American transmitter, Loomis invited its developers to Tuxedo Park. Because he had performed more work in this area than anyone else in the country, Loomis was appointed by Vannevar Bush to the National Defense Research Committee as chairman of the Microwave Committee and vice-chairman of Division D (Detection, Controls, Instruments). Within a month, he had selected a building on the MIT campus in which to equip a laboratory, dubbing it the MIT Radiation Laboratory, usually referred to as the Radiation Laboratory and later known simply as the Rad Lab. He pressed for the development of radar in spite of the Army's initial skepticism, and arranged funding for the Rad Lab until federal money was allocated.
The MIT Rad Lab was managed by its director, Lee DuBridge. Meanwhile, Loomis assumed his customary function of eliminating the obstacles to research and providing the encouragement that was needed at a time when success still remained elusive. The resulting 10-cm radar was a key technology that enabled the sinking of U-boats, spotted incoming German bombers for the British, and provided cover for the D-Day landing. Loomis took advantage of all his business acumen and industry contacts to ensure that no time was wasted in its development. DuBridge later commented, "Radar won the war; the atom bomb ended it."
Originally known as "LRN" for Loomis Radio Navigation, LORAN was a proposal of Loomis. It was the most widely used long-range navigation system until the advent of GPS. The system was developed at Rad Lab and is based on a pulsed hyperbolic system.  A world network of stations once existed. The United States Coast Guard (USCG) and Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) ceased transmitting LORAN-C (and joint CHAYKA) signals in 2010.
Loomis also made a significant contribution to the development of ground-controlled approach technology, a precursor of today's instrument landing systems that use radar to enable ground controllers to "talk down" aircraft pilots and help them to land safely when poor visibility makes visual landings difficult or impossible.
Loomis was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1930, the National Academy of Sciences in 1940, and received several honorary degrees: from Wesleyan University he received a D.Sc. in 1932, from Yale University an M.Sc. in 1933, and from the University of California an LL.D. in 1941.
President Roosevelt lauded the value of Loomis's work, describing him as being the civilian who was second perhaps only to Churchill, in facilitating the Allied victory in World War II.

== Personal life and death ==

His first wife was Ellen Holman Farnsworth of Dedham, Massachusetts, whom he wed on June 22, 1912. She was from a prominent Boston society family and a sister of Henry Weston Farnsworth. They had three sons: