After finishing his PhD, he spent two years as an assistant professor at the
Iowa State College and worked at the
Ames Laboratory at the university, which was run by the
United States Atomic Energy Commission. There he taught nuclear physics and helped to increase the electron beam current in the facility's new 70-MeV
synchrotron particle accelerator. In 1959, after growing frustrated with what he saw as the Canadian government's lack of interest in investing in science, Cameron emigrated to the United States, which had just seen a major expansion of funding for space-science research due to the
Sputnik crisis. In this model, the outer silicates of the body hitting the Earth would be vaporized, whereas a metallic core would not. The more volatile materials that were emitted during the collision would escape the Solar System, whereas silicates would tend to coalesce. Hence, most of the collisional material sent into orbit would consist of silicates, leaving the coalescing Moon deficient in iron and volatile materials, such as water. After seeing
William Hartmann present a similar, independent model at a conference in 1974, Cameron began a several decade-long collaboration with Hartmann to develop the
giant-impact hypothesis. Cameron was able to use increasingly sophisticated computer models to show that such a collision could produce an Earth-Moon system with the correct mass, spin, and orbital momentum. The giant-impact theory gained mainstream acceptance as the scientific explanation for the origin of the Moon beginning in the 1980s. After his retirement from Harvard in 1999, Cameron held a position at the
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the
University of Arizona. == Awards and recognition ==