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Niels Bohr Library Acquires Variety of Source Materials
A Look Ahead
- Manuscript Materials
- Oral History Interviews
- Manuscript Biographies and Institutional Histories
- Audio-Visual Materials
- Books and Finding Aids
The Niels Bohr Library of the AIP has become widely known as a
repository for historical source materials that are otherwise
dispersed or even discarded, ranging from old textbooks to student
class notes to finding aids for collections in other repositories.
The materials that find their way to our shelves are remarkably
varied, and many of them arrive simply because someone has
recommended the Library to a colleague. Of course the staff also
makes constant efforts to save useful documentation. Examples of
such efforts include searches launched when we receive requests for
a portrait of a scientist and have none, and a regular scanning of
the programs of meetings of AIP Member Society for talks including
historical reminiscences, which we arrange to have tape-recorded.
The most notable collection received this past year is a set of
oral history interviews covering the mass-extinction controversy.
The debate over possible astronomical or geophysical causes for the
mass extinction that ended the age of the dinosaurs--notably the
proposal that the impact of a comet wrecked the ecosystem--has been
one of the most hard-fought and potentially revolutionary
developments in physical science of the past decade. Its
ramifications extend from the outer solar system (if the impact of
comets is, as some suggest, periodic) to the earth's core (if mass
extinctions are in fact due to huge volcanic eruptions). Under NSF
grants administered by the AIP Center, William Glen has followed
this controversy from its first moments, gathering documents and
tape-recording interviews with participants. His collection of
materials provides probably the most detailed snapshot in existence
of a scientific debate observed in progress. Virtually every
astronomer, paleontologist, etc. involved in the debates was
interviewed, many of them at intervals as the controversy
developed. Glen has now deposited copies of the tapes in the Niels
Bohr Library. For 82 of the persons interviewed there are
agreements covering access--most but not all stipulating no
restrictions--while for 51 the process of arranging agreements is
still in progress. This collection will doubtless see heavy use by
scholars over centuries to come. Glen himself has published the
first of a projected three-book series based in large measure on
the interviews (The Mass Extinction Debates: How Science Works in
a Crisis, Stanford University Press, 1994).
The Library has an extensive collection of lecture notes taken by
students in physics and astronomy courses, a unique window into the
character and development of education in these fields. During the
past years the collection was augmented by notes that Gibson Reaves
took of astrophysics courses taught by Louis G. Henyey at the
University of California Berkeley, 1947-1950, 3 vols.; by Joe Tenn
from a solid state physics course taught by Arthur Schawlow at
Stanford University, 118 pp., 1962; and a lecture series on nuclear
physics from Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, 329 pp., 1943-1946,
donated by Dorothy Cieslicki. We also received laboratory manuals
written by Philip J. Hart and Eugene Gardner for courses in
experimental physics at Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah
State University), 1933-1950, 4 notebooks; Al Wattenberg sent us
copies of notes, prepared by John Wheeler, from the 1948 Pocono
Conference, 83 pp., and from John Toll we received proceedings from
the 3rd and 5th Rochester Conferences on High Energy Physics (1952,
1955) among other reports. From Janet Barton we received materials
(including Ms. Barton's photographs and cassette tapes of talks of
reminiscences) from the Symposium commemorating the Centennial of
Niels Bohr held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1985,
0.5 lin. ft. We received additions to the Gravity Research
Foundation collection (1995 essay submissions), 0.5 lin. ft.; and,
from Hans Reiche, additions to the Fritz Reiche Papers, 1908-1961,
0.5 lin. ft.
Among the interesting miscellaneous items received this past year
were press releases from Westinghouse relating to the construction
and support of the 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory, 1938,
0.5." (received from Mary Ann Mogus); excerpts of a manuscript by
Daniel G. Loomis entitled "Speculations in Nuclear Forces," 1"
(from Hans Reiche); "Report of the 1983 Subpanel on new facilities
for the U.S. High Energy Physics Program of the High Energy Physics
Advisory Panel" (regarding the initiation of the Super Collider),
65 pp. (from John Blewett); correspondence and other items from
William R. Busing dating from his presidency of the American
Crystallographic Association, 1970-1972, 0.5"; and some
correspondence and biographical material from David Middleton
relating to John Van Vleck.
AIP and Member Society records accessioned included records of the
AIP's Office of the Director, records relating to the Chaos
Conferences and the AIP Corporate Associates, 1991-1994, 3 lin.
ft., and records of the American Astronomical Society's History of
Astronomy Division, 2 lin. ft. (from David Devorkin). The American
Association of Physics Teachers and Leonard Jossem deposited the
records of the Commission on College Physics, ca. 1960-1971, 60
lin. ft.
The AIP Center is serving as administrative base for an NSF grant
to Ron Doel for study of the emergence of geophysics in American
academia. In connection with this he is also studying international
relations in geophysics and space science, particularly during the
Cold War. As part of this work, during the past year Doel conducted
oral history interviews with Viktor Abalakin, Duncan Carr Agnew,
Richard T. Arnold, A.I. Eremeeva, Cecil H. Green, Alexander
Gurshtein, J.B. Koepfil, Gordon MacDonald, Thomas F. Malone,
Frederick Seitz and Marie Tharp.
The Center provided transcription for an extensive series of
autobiographical interviews that John Elder conducted with Peter
Glaser. A set of videotapes on Physicists in Medicine are reported
below under "Audio-visual materials--Videotapes." Other interviews
not previously reported in this Newsletter, mainly conducted with
the help of AIP grants-in-aid, were: Tony F.W. Embleton by David
Quirt; Ira Hirsch by David Green; Koichi Kitazawa and Shoji Tanaka
by Bing Liu; Arthur Lane by Joe Tatarewicz; Oleg Lavrent'ev by Yuri
Ranyuk; Gordon McDonald by James Fleming; Daniel W. Martin by John
Kopec; Harry B. Miller by Dan Martin; David H. Sharp by Finn
Aaserud; Louis C. Sutherland by Ken Plotkin and Adnan Waly by
Martin Pope and John Dropkin.
The Center's collection of unpublished biographical and
autobiographical materials is growing more rapidly than ever. We
received a manuscript by T. J. Dolan on Oleg Aleksandrovich
Lavrent'ev's struggles as a Soviet physicist; a manuscript by
Philip J. Hart on John Vincent Atanasoff and the Electronic Digital
Computer, 1994; a memoir by François Ulam about her life with
Stanley Ulam (both were at Los Alamos), 1994; a scientific
autobiography by Dieter Kurath; Robert Sard's recollections of the
Ehrenfest family, 1994 (from Al Wattenberg); a description of
Academician Nikola Pavlovich Barabashov from the conference for his
centenary, 1994; and a brief written recollection and biographical
material relating to Albert Anderson Ardal, 1995 (from William H.
Wehrmacher).
Unpublished or otherwise difficult-to-find materials on
institutional history added to our collection this year include:
the Associated Universities proposal that Brookhaven National
Laboratory be the site for the 200 BEV Accelerator, 1966; a history
of the Yerevan Physics Institute (Armenia), 1943-1993; an outline
of the aims of the Association of New York Scientists, 1947; S. G.
Bankoff's recollections of the startup of the first Hanford Nuclear
Reactor, 1994; Catherine Westfall and Curtis M. Brooks' manuscript
on the founding of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator
Facility, 1994; David Anderson's brief history of the George
Washington University Dept. of Physics, 1994; a description of
selected innovation projects in the field of physics in Belarus (by
Voma Scientific Innovation Company), 1994; Zh. I. Alferov and V.
Ya. Frenkel's manuscript on the A. F. Ioffe Physico-Technical
Institute and its publication of physical journals; a short history
of the University of Hawaii Dept. of Physics, ca. 1994; the Optical
Society of America at 75 by John N. Howard, 1991; two short
histories by F. B. Stumpf on the Central Ohio Chapter of the
Acoustical Society of America and the Appalachian Section of the
American Association of Physics Teachers; two accounts by M ximo
Baron on physics at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1986 and 1994.
In addition we added four more European Space Agency history
publications to our set; they deal with the ESRO telecommunications
programme, U.S.-European cooperation during the 1960s and during
the post-Apollo program, and the scientific program between ESRO
and ESA from 1973-1977.
The Emilio Segrè Visual Archives continues to expand as generous
donations of photographs are received from scientists and their
families. We are most grateful to Mrs. Rosa Segrè, who donated over
fifty photos of people from Los Alamos. The photos were taken, for
the most part, by Emilio Segrè during the time of the Manhattan
Project. In addition, we wish to thank Mrs. Rose Bethe for a gift
of over thirty photos from the collection of her father, Paul P.
Ewald. A valuable part of the collection are reference photos for
which we cannot make copies ourselves; we make researchers aware of
them and send those who need copies to the copyright holder. Robert
Palmer kindly donated copies of over ninety excellent informal
portraits he has taken of scientists at meetings, conferences,
etc., chiefly in high-energy physics. In addition, a beautiful set
of Albert Einstein photos taken by Lotte Jacobi was received
through a combined effort of Gerald Holton, Leon Blitzer and A.
Richard Kassander.
Manuscript collections have been another important source of
photos. Two recently processed collections, the Karl K. Darrow
papers and the Nancy Grace Roman papers, have included large photo
collections as well as manuscript materials. We also gratefully
acknowledge gifts from Victor Frenkel, Robert Lindsay, Wolfgang
Panofsky, Norman Ramsey, Françoise Ulam, Rolf Wideröe, and Emil
Wolf. In addition we thank AIP's Member Society presidents and
presidents-elect for donating portraits of themselves to the AIP
Gallery of Member Society Presidents.
Film and video. We received 13 reels of film of Richard Feynman's
Messenger Lecture series "The Character of Physical Law" at Cornell
University, 1964 (from John Free, also commercially available); and
1 reel of film from the American Astronomical Society Education
Office, "Science and Engineering TV Journal." We also accessioned
5 videotapes from a series "Vignettes of Early Radiation Workers"
by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1977- ca. 1980
(from Edward Landa); the Cornell University Department of Physics
celebration of Hans Bethe's first 60 years at Cornell, 1 videotape,
1995 (from Robert Rieger--contact the Cornell Department of Physics
to purchase copies); and video interviews conducted by the American
Association of Physicists in Medicine History Committee with John
Laughlin, Gail Adams, Craig Sunan, John Lenihan, Donald Kerst, Juan
Del Regato, and Jack Fowler, 8 videotapes, 1990-1993.
Miscellaneous Tapes. We received 29 cassettes of sessions from the
International Conference on the History of Original Ideas and Basic
Discoveries in Particle Physics, Sicily, 1994; "A tribute to John
Verhoogen" from the American Geophysical Union fall meeting, 1
cassette, 1994; ceremonial sessions from the American Association
of Physics Teachers winter meeting including the Oersted Medalist
Address by Robert Beck Clark and the Richtmyer Lecture by Joseph
Henry Taylor, 2 cassettes, 1995; the American Association for the
Advancement of Science Colloquium session "Science--The Endless
Frontier Plus Five: Decisive Impacts of the Early Cold War," 2
cassettes, 1995; memorial sessions for Eugene Wigner and Julian
Schwinger at the American Physical Society/American Association of
Physics Teachers joint meeting, 4 cassettes, 1995; the Harvey
Fletcher memorial sessions on "Psychological and Physiological
Acoustics" from the Acoustical Society of America spring meeting,
6 cassettes, 1995; and lectures by Silvan Schweber and Freeman
Dyson from the symposium "Celebrating 60 Years at Cornell with Hans
Bethe," 1 cassette, 1995 (from John Miner). In addition we
received, from Rose Bethe, a 7" tape of Max von Laue's 80th
birthday party, 1959.
While the Niels Bohr Library is able to purchase older books thanks
to the annual monetary gifts from its Friends, even more important
is the direct donation of volumes. Mr. and Mrs. E.J. and N.M. Dowdy
donated several hundred books, many dealing with the fight to
control nuclear weapons. John Blewett donated 30 physics books and
Stephen Brush donated 16 volumes, largely historical works.
Individual books on a variety of topics, not otherwise easily
obtained, were donated by Achim M. Loske, Jrgen Renn, Edward
Landa, Philip J. Hart, and Adolfus Dargys--this list of donors
spans countries from Mexico to Lithuania.
Researchers visiting the Library find it useful to peruse the large
collection of finding aids and inventories to collections around
the world. From U.S. repositories the Library has received new
finding aids to the Archives of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington and the Dudley Observatory Archives in Schenectady, New
York, and an updated finding aid to the Archives of American
Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. Finding aids have
also been received to the papers of: Harold Grad and Serge Korff at
the New York University Archives; Llewellyn Thomas at the North
Carolina State University Archives; Robert J. Cashman at the
Northwestern University Archives; Fritz Rohrlich at Syracuse
University Archives; Floyd Watson at the University of Illinois,
Urbana Champaign, Archives; Arthur Rich and William L. Williams at
the University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library; James
Arnold, Keith Brueckner (administrative records), and Leo Szilard
(updated finding aid) at the University of California, San Diego,
Dept. of Special Collections; and Carl Henry Eckart at the Archives
of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of
California, San Diego. From foreign repositories we have received
Volume 2 of the catalog to the Sakata Memorial Archival Library,
Nagoya University, Japan, and finding aids to the papers of: Robert
Boyle (manuscripts and microfilm) at the Royal Society, London,
England; Sir David Chilton Phillips at the Bodleian Library,
Oxford, England; Bertil Lindblad at Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien
Centrum för vetenskapshistoria, Sweden; and Rolf Wideröe at the
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zürich, Switzerland.
Most libraries discard science books when they are no longer up-to-
date. The Niels Bohr Library book collection has achieved its
notable status as a repository for hard-to-find works largely
through generous donations from the collections of scientists. We
especially seek significant older textbooks and monographs in
geophysics (covering a variety of fields from meteorology to
vulcanology); we began building collections in these fields only
recently, after the American Geophysical Union joined the AIP as a
Member Society, and still have many gaps.
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American Institute of Physics,
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Phone: 301-209-3100; Fax: 301-209-0843
RETURN to Fall 1995 Newsletter Table of Contents