John G. Trump

MIT doctorate (1931–1933)

In fall 1931, Trump arrived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to pursue a PhD in electrical engineering. MIT's new president, the physicist Karl Compton, was recruiting scientists to strengthen basic research at the institute. Vannevar Bush, dean of MIT's engineering school, recommended Trump work with one of these recruits: Robert J. Van de Graaff, a 29-year-old physicist developing a new electrostatic generator. Van de Graaff became Trump's advisor and lifelong collaborator.

Van de Graaff sought to build a generator with sufficiently strong electric potential to artificially split the atom. He split his research between open-air models, which required large terminals, and vacuum-insulated designs, which were compact but technically challenging. In 1933, Van de Graaff demonstrated the Round Hill generator, a 43-foot (13 m) air-insulated generator that produced dramatic electrical arcs and attracted broad press coverage. But the demonstration also revealed the design's fundamental limitation: high voltages broke down in open air.

To overcome these limits, Trump worked on vacuum techniques. He designed a synchronous alternating-current motor to power a vacuum, which proved highly efficient. Encouraged by this practical innovation, his dissertation also proposed a method to build vacuum-insulated, long-distance transmission lines for high-voltage direct current. In 1932, Van de Graaff filed to patent components in the transmission system. The new Tennessee Valley Authority showed interest in developing these patents for its hydropower projects, and Vannevar Bush offered to license them to the TVA by assigning them to the Research Corporation. Though the transmission project fell through, MIT became the first private university with a policy of research commercialization, and its arrangement was an influential predecessor to university patent licensing.

Trump received his doctorate of electrical engineering in 1933. His thesis, Vacuum Electrostatic Engineering, described these contributions and examined the factors governing voltage-insulation strength in vacuums.

Science education

Trump became a trustee of the Boston Museum of Science in 1961. When the museum installed the original Van de Graaff generator as a permanent exhibition, he designed electrostatic shielding that allowed live audience demonstrations. He became a life trustee of the museum.

Post-war career

After the war, Trump returned to his prior research in improving high-voltage generators, treating cancer, and began pursuing new applications of the artificial radiation. He pursued these both through research at MIT and a new company he organized, the High Voltage Engineering Corporation.

MIT cancer research

Trump returned to his earlier research and was appointed director of High Voltage Research Laboratory, a lab pursuing the improvement and application of electrostatic energy. Until 1965, the lab occupied a vehicle garage vacated by the Rad Lab. Building upon his pre-war collaboration with hospitals, Trump focused on applying high-voltage engineering to medical challenges, particularly cancer treatment.

Months after the war ended, Trump began work with his Huntington colleagues to treat cancer patients at a new clinic building on MIT's campus. Having discovered a way to reach deep-seated tumors without harming tissues above them, he worked on methods to improve targeting. Trump designed an apparatus to rotate the patient around the beam, allowing x-rays to be cross-fired at the tumor site while sparing sensitive organs. The lab's radiologists and medical physicists worked to improve "rotational radiation therapy" over the next twenty-five years.

In 1949, Trump began a two-decade collaboration with the Lahey Clinic, Boston's largest cancer hospital. MIT built a campus cancer treatment facility (Building 28) around a Van de Graaff accelerator of Trump's design. Over the next 22 years, over 500 cancer patients a year received treatment at MIT using Trump's x-ray generator. For many years, he taught radiation physics courses to early-career radiologists. The lab also focused on skin cancer treatment, designing a 5-MV electron-beam generator for targeting superficial lesions.

Despite advances in supervoltage (>1MeV) generators, few hospitals had machinery to allow high-voltage cancer treatment by the 1940s. After receiving many requests from hospitals for his generator, Trump oversaw a commercialization effort to meet demand. He designed a compact, low-cost 2-MV Van de Graaff generator, then founded a firm to build them. Between 1948 and 1969, the High Voltage Engineering Corporation manufactured 43 of these 2-MV machines, which treated as many as 1,000 patients a day in the United States alone.

By the time Trump was appointed full professor in 1952, his cancer treatment devices had received worldwide attention. He attracted support from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, each of which were building cancer research programs. His 1960 Lamme Medal citation, given for contributions to electrical engineering, observed that Trump had also "remain[ed] faithful to his original goals in the treatment of malignant diseases." In 1963, Trump was appointed to the board of the Lahey Clinic, and became its chair after retiring his professorship in 1973. Throughout this period, he published widely in radiology and scientific instrument journals.

High Voltage Engineering Corporation

In 1946, Trump received more hospital inquiries about his Van de Graaff generators and decided a company could better meet demand. He approached MIT President Karl Compton, who had recently co-founded the American Research and Development Corporation (ARD), the first modern venture capital fund. Compton introduced Trump to ARD president Georges Doriot. Trump organized High Voltage Engineering Corporation (HVEC) with Van de Graaff and British physicist Denis M. Robinson as co-founders, whom he had met through wartime radar work.

HVEC was one of ARD's first three investments, two of which were new firms. Doriot provided $200,000 in initial capital, Compton arranged an exclusive license to MIT's Van de Graaff patents, and both served on HVEC's board. Trump served as HVEC's founding chairman and technical director while maintaining his MIT professorship.

Trump's motivations—making radiation therapy affordable to patients and accessible to hospitals—set the company's initial priorities. HVEC's first product was a commercial version of Trump's compact 2 MV generator, which could be operated by hospital technicians. It provided controllable, directed radiation that reduced damage to healthy tissue compared to traditional radium sources. Between 1948 and 1969, HVEC delivered these machines to 35 U.S. hospitals and eight hospitals abroad.

Trump's MIT lab also maintained close ties with HVEC. The High Voltage Research Laboratory provided technical feedback, developed clinical procedures, and tested prototypes for the company. While HVEC's Van de Graaff accelerators were early market leaders in radiotherapy, cheaper cobalt-60 machines and higher-voltage medical linear accelerators debuted in the 1950s, displacing HVEC's Van de Graaff accelerators as the preferred source for radiotherapy.

As federal funding for nuclear physics expanded, HVEC pivoted from medical devices to large research accelerators for universities and national laboratories. Trump and Van de Graaff contributed technical innovations that enabled higher-voltage machines. Between 1958 and 1973, HVEC manufactured 55 tandem accelerators that became the dominant platform for nuclear physics experiments. At its peak, nearly 70 percent of papers in experimental nuclear physics relied on data from HVEC accelerators.

At the time of its 1963 public offering, HVEC was ARD's largest asset and the first company it introduced to public markets. Along with Ionics, it established ARD's focus on research-intensive ventures. This approach anticipated ARD's later investment in Digital Equipment Corporation, considered the first "home run" of venture capital industry.

HVEC invested heavily in higher-energy accelerators with the potential to fuse superheavy elements. When federal support for nuclear physics retreated in 1969, its research accelerator business collapsed. Trump exited his position as chairman in 1970, but continued providing technical advice over the next decade. The company reorganized as a conglomerate focused on industrial radiation processing products. Under a new business model, Trump championed industrial and environmental uses of electron beam technology. In 1962, he encouraged the company to invest in new industrial applications of ionizing radiation. In the late 1970s, he led research into electron beam treatment of wastewater and sewage sludge, demonstrating that high-energy radiation could eliminate pathogens and organic contaminants. In 1980, HVEC received contracts from Miami-Dade County and the Massachusetts Metropolitan District Commission to develop commercial-scale water treatment systems.

HVEC was privately purchased in 1988 and filed for bankruptcy in 2005. Trump held HVEC shares until his death in 1985.

Wastewater experiments

In 1972, Congress passed new Clean Water Act standards for secondary treatment of wastewater discharged into oceans and waterways. New rules gave cities five years to make major upgrades to sewage treatment. Trump, who had longstanding interests in sterilization methods, initiated a new program at MIT concentrated on disinfecting wastewater. He researched using an electron beam from a 2-MeV accelerator as the deactivating agent in the treatment of municipal wastewater sludge. The High Voltage Research Laboratory developed a prototype system that was tested at Boston's Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant, and it was able to provide bacterial and viral disinfection via continuous on-line treatment.

Trump retired from his faculty appointment in 1973, but continued running wastewater experiments and teaching MIT students as a senior lecturer. He directed the High Voltage Research Laboratory until stepping down in 1980. Trump remained engaged in wastewater research until the year of his death.

Trump died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on February 21, 1985.

Disputed claims about career

Refusal to work on weaponry

James Melcher, Trump's successor as HVRL director, falsely claimed that Trump declined to research military weaponry during his career. Melcher, an advocate for nuclear disarmament, stated: "John, over a period of three decades, would be approached by people of all sorts because he could make megavolt beams of ions and electrons – death rays... What did he do with it? Cancer research, sterilizing sludge out in Deer Island, all sorts of wondrous things. He didn't touch the weapons stuff." However, alongside his work in cancer research and sludge sterilization, Trump did work under military contracts for dual uses of microwave radar and high-voltage generators.

Longest-serving MIT professor

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed his uncle was MIT's "longest serving professor." John Trump served as an MIT professor for 37 years (1936–1973), ending his faculty appointment at the university's then-mandatory retirement age of 65. His career at MIT spanned 51 years, including research staff and senior lecturer appointments before and after his professorship. According to Newsweek, other MIT professors have had longer tenures: Harold Edgerton remained active at MIT for nearly 62 years (1927–1989), and Gilbert Strang served as professor for 61 years.

Alleged connections to the Unabomber

At a July 2025 political rally, President Trump asserted that domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski was Professor Trump's student. He described asking his uncle about Kaczynski's performance as a student. Because the reclusive Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber in 1996, nine years after John Trump's death, multiple media outlets concluded it was unlikely President Trump knew the Unabomber's identity during his uncle's lifetime. Kaczynski was a student at Harvard University (1959–62) and the University of Michigan (1962–67); MIT officials told CNN they have no records of Kaczynski's enrollment in MIT courses.