[1][verification needed] He was born on 28 September 1912 in Rome, Georgia[2] to Reverend Eugene Theodore Booth, Sr. and Lucy Cornelia Gibson.
[2][3] In December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to Naturwissenschaften reporting they had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons;[4] simultaneously, they communicated these results to Lise Meitner.
[7][8][9] Even before it was published, Meitner’s and Frisch’s interpretation of the work of Hahn and Strassmann crossed the Atlantic Ocean with Niels Bohr, who was to lecture at Princeton University.
It was soon clear to a number of scientists at Columbia that they should try to detect the energy released in the nuclear fission of uranium from neutron bombardment.
[2][11][13] After World War II, Booth was director of the project for the design, construction, and operation of a 385-MeV Synchrocyclotron at the Nevis Laboratories in Irvington-on-the-Hudson.
The project was a collaborative effort of Columbia University, the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and the Office of Naval Research.