David Nicodemus was a Physics professor, College of Science administrator, and Dean of Faculty at OSU from 1950 to 1986. Nicodemus also served as a physicist at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory from 1943 to 1946, assisting with the Manhattan Project. Richard Dempster came to OSC in 1944 after earning his doctorate at Cal, where he worked in the laboratory of Ernest O. Lawrence, the creator of the first cyclotron.