Donald Arthur Glaser was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1926. He received his B.Sc. degree in physics and mathematics at the Case Institute of Technology in 1946. His first original research is described in his bachelor's thesis and consists of an electron diffraction study of the properties of thin metallic films evaporated onto crystalline metal substrates.
During the spring of 1946, Glaser worked as a teacher of mathematics at the Case Institute of Technology, and he began his graduate study at the California Institute of Technology in the autumn of the same year. He finished his Ph.D. work in 1949, and received his degree in physics and mathematics officially in 1950. His doctoral thesis research was an experimental study of the momentum spectrum of high energy cosmic ray and mesons at sea level.
From 1949 to 1959, Glaser was member of the physics faculty at the University of Michigan. In 1959, he became Professor of Physics at the University of California, at Berkeley. His main research interest during this period was the elementary particles of physics, particularly the strange particles. He examined various experimental techniques that seemed useful in this research and constructed a number of diffusion cloud chambers and parallel-plate spark counters before finally beginning to develop the ideas that led to the invention of the bubble chamber in 1952.
Information as of 1961