There he worked as a research fellow assisting Ernest O. Lawrence in constructing the laboratory's cyclotron.
[6] From 1941 to 1943 Henry Newson was a senior physicist in the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab), where in December 1942 the first controlled nuclear chain reaction was produced.
He was from 1944 to 1945 a technical expert at Hanford Engineering Works and from 1945 to 1946 a group leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory, during the development of the atomic bomb.
[7] In 1948 the Newsons' second daughter, Caroline, was born, and he became a full professor in the physics department of Duke University.
[7] The university established a Henry Newson Professorship of Physics (currently held by Haiyan Gao).