BA, Oklahoma City University (1941); MA, University of Texas - Austin (1944); PhD, University of California - Berkeley (1947)

Email: tommorgan@mail.utexas.edu
Office: WEL 3.416
Phone: (512) 471-5266
FAX: (512) 471-8696

My initial research efforts were in Nuclear Chemistry on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago, 1944-1945. There, I was a member of the research team which successfully isolated and identified elements 95 (americium) and 96 (curium) and was credited with a share in the discovery of americium. In 1946, I continued research on the tracer and nuclear chemistries of the heaviest elements and received the Ph.D. degree in 1947 at the University of California (Berkeley).

In 1947, I joined the faculty of the University of Texas, where I initiated a program in nuclear and radiochemistry, primarily of the elements tungsten, rhenium, and osmium, and of electrochemical processes. During the early fifties the interests of my research students shifted to magnetic resonance relaxation as a tool for investigation of structural and dynamical properties of complex solution species. A theory of electron-nuclear interactions leading to enhanced spin relaxation, the Solomon-Bloembergen-Morgan (SBM) theory, was developed. That is the basis for much of the image enhancement in current magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

My most recent research efforts have been devoted to solutions of complex transition metal species, with an emphasis on those of biological interest, such as the iron-porphyrin structures in hemoglobin and cytochrome-c.