Inventor Samuel Collins earned the BS and MS degrees in agriculture at UT in 1920 and 1924 and the PhD in chemistry from the University of North Carolina in 1927. He taught at Carson-Newman College, UT, Tennessee State Teachers College, and the University of North Carolina before joining the faculty of MIT in 1930 as a research associate in physical chemistry.
Early in World War II, he developed a reversing exchanger for the manufacture of pure oxygen and pure nitrogen. At Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, he supervised development of a low-pressure, lightweight oxygen generator for use in American bombers. His most notable accomplishment was the invention of the helium cryostat, a process he began before World War II but temporarily abandoned to devote his time to the war effort.
His postwar perfection of the helium cryostat with his colleagues at MIT, where he had joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was considered the most important contribution to cryogenics since the liquefaction of helium in 1908. Before his invention, fewer than 10 laboratories in the world had devices for liquefying helium. His device provided—for the first time—reliable, relatively inexpensive, and adequate supplies of liquid helium. His invention was of great interest to physicists because it opened the door to extensive experimental low-temperature physics. In 1949 he established the MIT Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory.
He was also known for developing—in collaboration with a surgeon at a veterans’ hospital—a compact heart-lung machine, which could be used at accident scenes, in ambulances, or during military operations. Among his honors and awards are American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1942; John Price Wetherill Medal, Franklin Institute, 1951; Kamerlingh Onnes Gold Medal, Netherlands Refrigeration Society, 1958; American Academy of Arts and Sciences Rumford Prize, 1965; American Society of Mechanical Engineers Gold Medal, 1968; and induction into the National Academy of Sciences in 1969. He was the first recipient in 1965 of the special award established for the Cryogenic Engineering Conference in his honor.