George Adolph Fink, atomic physicist, mechanical engineer, inventor, freethinker, and man of letters, was born May 4, 1906, the second son of Adolph and Ida Nist Fink. With the death of his parents as a youth, Fink left his native Cedar Rapids to live in Burlington with his father’s brother Fred Fink. There he graduated from high school (1923) and Burlington Junior College (1925). He worked for the Murray Iron Works for the next two years, and then enrolled at Iowa State College as a mechanical engineering major. He switched to physics and earned a bachelor’s degree (1931), a master’s (1932) and a scholarship to Columbia University. Fink obtained his Ph.D. (1936), assisting Dr. John R. Dunning in the physics department. Some years later, Dunning asked Fink to return to Columbia to work for the SAM laboratories of the Manhattan Project. Fink participated in the Manhattan Project (1942-1945), working on research connected with the gaseous diffusion plant for the separation of uranium isotopes. Two months after Hiroshima, Fink left the Sam laboratories and returned to his employer, C.K. Williams and Co., from whom he had taken a leave of absence during the war. Fink returned to Burlington (1949) to work on some inventions of his own, but then left again in the early fifties for jobs in Dayton, Ohio, and Chicago. He again returned to Burlington (1953) to work for his first full-time employer, the Murray Iron Works. Fink stayed in Burlington and at Murray until his death in early January (1971).



This collection consists of 30 boxes of material and covers all aspects of the last fifty years of Dr. Fink’s life. Because he led a highly skilled and professional scientific life, as well as a rewarding non-professional life, The George Fink Papers include materials concerning both facets of his life. The first of these, the non-professionally related papers, is divided into five sections and include 1) Fink’s diary and other personal memorabilia; 2) his correspondence with friends, relatives, and those critical of free-thinking; 3) his patents; 4) his non-professional concerns which include numerous letters to the editor, notes, and articles of a wide assortment of topics; 5) and materials concerning the many organizations to which Fink belonged.



The other major category of the Fink Papers deals with is professional concerns. This section includes scientific research material from the SAM project of Columbia University, Division of War Research on which Fink worked as a part of the Manhattan Project. It also includes Fink’s own research on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity which he tried to disprove; the D.D.F. Microscope for study of minute objects; and the Photo Electronic Feedback Amplifier which was a camera used in microscopic experiments. There is also information of Fink’s research on the Methods and Means to Comminute Solid Particles.



This collection of papers also contains a group of pamphlets which were of great interest to Dr. Fink. The various pamphlets express views on religion, the Catholic Church, freethinking, atheism, and personal philosophies. These are found at the end of the collection and are listed by the authors name or by the general topic.