Interview with George Gamow by Charles Weiner at Professor Gamow's home in Boulder, Colorado April 25, 1968 Listen to Gamow on choosing a field Listen to Gamow on the "big bang"

Transcript

Weiner:

I would like to start by asking you to think back to your early family life in Odessa. I know the names of your mother and father, but I have no information on the occupation of your father and the general background of the family life.

Gamow:

Well, my father was a teacher of the Russian language and literature in high school. In Russia the division between school and the university is different from here; in Russia the last two years in the school is the equivalent of the freshman and sophomore years here. The university then starts afterwards. My father was teaching Russian language and literature in a school for boys, and my mother was teaching geography and history in a school for girls. So it is quite innocent from the point of view of such an origin but if you go one generation back, my father's father was commander of the garrison of Kishinev, a general or something in the Russian Imperial Army. And my mother's father was Archbishop of Odessa and in charge of all the religion for all the lands north of the Black and Azov Seas called New Russia [Novorossia]. And back in the father line, it was all military all the way back, and the mother's line was all clergy. On the father's side, he had four or five brothers-- I don't remember--and all became officers of the Army and were killed in the Turkish war or some other war. The last uncle was killed in the fighting with the White Army against Bolsheviks. And Father was the only man whom my grandfather could send to the university, Odessa University, so he graduated and became a teacher.

Weiner:

Was that because he was the youngest son or the oldest son?

Gamow:

I think the youngest son, but maybe second from the end--I don't know. I knew only one of my uncles, and he was probably older than my father.

On the mother's line, on the other hand, all before was clergy.

My mother was the only girl in the family. One brother was District Attorney of Odessa, or something; another was teaching classical languages; another was a captain of a battleship of the Black Navy; and still another was a chemist and icthyologist. Here the clergy spread into the sciences, so to speak.

Weiner:

In the home was there much of a library?

Gamow:

Oh, yes, Father had a very big library. You see, he was a teacher but he was also connected with the university. He was not a university professor but he had a lot of friends among the philologists and others at the university. As a matter of fact, I was born on a table, on his desk, in his library. That's why I have so many books. What happened is when I was due to come, which happened on March 4, 1904, I was too big and located wrong or something, so the doctors decided in the morning they had to cut me to pieces and get me out piece by piece. In this case the Mother had the privilege. And then a neighboring woman, who later became my godmother, had heard that some famous Russian surgeon from Moscow or something was vacationing in Odessa. And she got him. She got the droshka in the middle of the night, got him out of bed, and the operation was performed --a Caesarian section--in my father's study with the walls lined with books. And it was the doctor, and this neighboring woman who was boiling the water to clean the instruments, and Father was holding the kerosene lamp--that was all who attended. That's why I couldn't have any more brothers or sisters because after this operation Mother couldn't have any more children.

Weiner:

And so this was a good scholarly start in life?

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

You have recalled in the past an interest in astronomy and mentioned that your father bought you a telescope. Was the purchase of the telescope a consequence of your interest?

Gamow:

Probably yes.

Weiner:

You were about six years old when Halley's comet came. Do you have any recollections of that?

Gamow:

Oh, yes, I remember it very well. I climbed up on the roof of the house, and I still remember the comet. An amusing thing was that less than ten years ago, soon after I came here to Colorado (one can check and can find exactly what year and what date it was), I was giving a summer school course on elementary astronomy, and here we have a little astronomical observatory with a small telescope. There is some attendant, and sometimes people from Denver, one day a week, I guess, can come and see the moon or Jupiter. And my students asked me to show them the sky, so I arranged it with the curator of the telescope. In the evening we collected there and when I came he said, "Well, it was a lucky day; there is a comet--look!" And so I have seen my second comet. It was right over the flat lands over there and through the telescope it looked quite impressive, and is the second and probably the last comet I will ever see.

Weiner:

Was this the one that was named after the Japanese?

Gamow:

I don't know. It must have been. I've been here eleven years. Must have been ten years ago, nine years ago.

Weiner:

Now you do recall the earlier comet, Halley's comet, in 1910, but you can't really place whether that got you interested one way or the other. But you do recall the incident of seeing it.

And when your father gave you the telescope, what did you plan to do with it? Did you know what to do?

Gamow:

Just look at the sky. Well, you see, I had the books, Flammarion, a popular book by a French author.

Weiner:

Camille Flammarion.

Gamow:

And, well I got interested in physics and through astronomy in physics. Well, actually I am doing both now. Most of the things I am doing now is astronomy, cosmology.

Weiner:

How did this interest manifest itself? Was it through some studies in school?

Gamow:

No. Well, you see, I was quite ahead. When in school they were teaching algebra, I was studying differential equations at home. I learned Einstein's theory of relativity when I was still in school. I simply got interested.

Weiner:

Did you get it from books or was there someone from the school who helped you with this?

Gamow:

Yes. Then I went to the university. Of course, you see this was just the time when Odessa was kind of the center of fighting, civil war still all around. The city was occupied, by Whites, or Reds, or Greens, or Greeks, or British, I forget now what. And there was shooting--and French and British ships were offshore--shooting shrapnel when we were sitting in a coffee house. School was very irregular, and sometimes was suspended for weeks when there was street fighting. Then it more or less was settled, and the Red Army occupied the city with a lot of fighting with the local groups of Ukrainian nationalists and what not. The White Army was sitting in Crimea and getting evacuated to Turkey. And then I went to the university and studied pure mathematics with two professors. Physics, of course, was not given at all. The professor of physics didn't want to lecture. But there were two mathematicians: Kagan and Shchatunovski. And so from them I learned the basis of real mathematics, like the theory of numbers, topology, theory of infinity, and things like this. So I spent one year in Odessa University and then, in 1922 I guess it was, I was 18 years old, things settled well enough so I went to Leningrad--it was still Petrograd then as Lenin was alive--and got a job there. It was all very indefinite. Father sold some family silver so I got some money to buy the ticket. And one of Father's friends, who had been a teacher in the same school as Father, had become professor of meteorology in the Forestry Institute in Leningrad. This was the only connection I had, and he gave me some job of observing in a meteorological station and writing down the wind and measuring pressure and what not. And then I enlisted in the university.

Weiner:

What did you have in mind to study when you went to the university?

Gamow:

It was physics.

Weiner:

When did you make up your mind that it was going to be physics?

Gamow:

Nuclear physics--already in Odessa I was interested in the work of Rutherford, the discovery of isotopes; I knew the theory of relativity well at this time.

Weiner:

How did that come to you there? Did it come from your teachers or were you reading magazines, journals?

Gamow:

Well, books, magazines. There were no teachers. In Odessa there was schooling, so to speak, only from those two professors, and this was pure abstract mathematics.

Weiner:

But you completed the normal school in 1920. Then you went to Odessa University somewhere between '20 and '22.

Gamow:

Yes, for one year.

Weiner:

By this time you had already become familiar with Rutherford's work, and with relativity, so it was clear that physics was going to be the field?

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Had you known anyone else in your family or through acquaintances who was in physics?

Gamow:

No. You see, one uncle was a chemist on the mother's side, Uncle Arseni. We called him Myishyak Myishyakowich. Arseni--this is a name-- and my grandfather's name was Arseni, so, Arseni Arseniewich. And Arseni is arsenicum and in Russian arsenic, which you use for poisoning mice, is called myishyak, so I called him Myishyak Myishyakowich. He was actually a chemist and ichthyologist. He studied the condition of the water of the Black Sea, chemistry in connection with the fisheries and things like that. My cousin was an astronomer, but he was hanged when I was two years old, hanged by the neck until he died.

Weiner:

Was he in political trouble?

Gamow:

No. This was a son of my uncle who was District Attorney. His wife was Italian, so the boy was half Italian and he went to Italy and there was studying astronomy and getting mixed with nihilists. And when he came back in 1906 or something like that, there was Prime Minister Stolypin of Czarist government. He was strong, active, hanging everybody. There was expression "Stolypin's tie"; Stolypin's necktie was the loop. He [my cousin] was among the group to assassinate this prime minister and there was the provocateur Azeff who betrayed them, actually. So they were all arrested--there were five people--and they were hanged. Seven altogether --five political, including my cousin, and two real robbers. And then Leonid Andreyev, the Russian writer, wrote the famous novel--I think I have it here in English translation--The Seven Who Were Hanged. And my cousin is described there because he got information from my aunt about him, and so on. But this was very amusing--well, not very amusing for him, I guess--but you see, he didn't want to give his name and since he spoke perfect Italian, he claimed he was Italian, named Mario Calvino. In the book he is unknown, called Werner, but actually he was an Italian, Mario Calvino. But of course it was all known.

And then in some high institution in St. Petersburg, to the senators-- something like that--the question was put, "What about this libertine who was hanged, who is the son of attorney in Odessa?" And then I think the chairman of senate, who was something like godfather of this boy, got up and told he investigated it and found it was not this [one] but somebody else. And nobody could say anything more.

His mother, my aunt, profited from it ....Her husband died--I can't even remember him, I was probably a small boy at this time--and then she got the pension of her husband, from Czarist government. It was a good pension, because he had a good position, general attorney or whatever it was, and then the revolution came and, of course, she lost the pension of a Czarist official, but the Soviet government gave her the pension of her son, so she continued drawing money from the opposite end of the fence.

Weiner:

These events--the hanging happened, of course, when you were too young ...

Gamow:

Yes. I don't remember him. They told me he played cars with me and hit me on the nose but he was hanged when I was two years old, I guess or something like that.

Weiner:

There is another family question I want to ask: Since there were some clergy in the background of the family, was there any religious training or influence at home?

Gamow:

Well, yes and no. Of course the home was ... well, I still remember Easter. You see, with the grandfather being archbishop, the house was all filled with clergy on Easter. And at Easter we kiss, you know, sometimes on the cheek.

Weiner:

Is this the Russian Orthodox religion?

Gamow:

Yes, Russian Orthodox. And so my skin was itching, with a couple of dozen priests kissing me with their beards. But there was nothing special.

Weiner:

But you had some religious training, did you, as a child?

Gamow:

Well, of course, in the school, you see, at this time one of the subjects was religion, the Law of God, it was called: The Old Testament, New Testament, church services, and all sorts of things. This was given by a priest. And I was the first student in the class. Well, I was first student in the class in all other things, too. But I remember he called me his deacon or something like that. But I very early doubted. I remember once I had a little microscope and I went to-- what is it called, in Catholic church they give the wine and piece of bread--

Weiner:

The Eucharist?

Gamow:

Yes, the Eucharist. And I put the bread behind my cheek instead of swallowing it and ran home and put it under the microscope to see if it is the flesh of Christ and found it was different; it was just bread, so I think this changed my religious attitude.

Weiner:

A young skeptic. How about the relative economic status of the family?

Gamow:

It was pretty good, yes. You see my father was getting good salary and Mother also. We had some money, I don't know, which was all lost in the Revolution, securities, I suppose.

Weiner:

But when it came time to go to the University of Leningrad, you were able to go with some sacrifice on the part of the family?

Gamow:

No, first of all my mother died in 1913, when I was nine years old. So I lived with Father, and when I went to university I didn't have to pay. It was free education and we lived very close to the university, a few blocks from the university. And Father knew most of the professors in the Philological Department, at least.

Weiner:

I was referring to your earlier statement that your father sold the silver in order to get you a ticket to go to Leningrad.

Gamow:

Well, you see this was only after the Revolution. Father retired when the World War started, in 1914. But then when the Revolution came back, he had to go back to a job, because there were laws that whoever was not working was not eating, so he had to work. They enlisted him in the same school in which he had been a teacher for a quarter century or more, as janitor. He didn't clean the corridors, no, but he was just listed as a janitor so we would get the bread card and some money would come. Well, people lived at this time one doesn't know on what money, from selling something.

Weiner:

Well, now I have you back at the university. And all of this was started by my question about when you got interested in physics, and you made the point that it had already occurred earlier.

When you were at the University of Leningrad, you had the job at the meteorological station. What were your courses? What studies did you undertake?

Gamow:

Well, I was taking the regular course because, you see, in a Russian university, as I guess in most European universities, though not here, it is the state's problem: you don't choose your courses; you choose your direction. Since I chose physics, it was certain that in the third year I had to separate--is it electricity or is it optics-- something like this. The courses were prescribed; one had in a given year to take these particular courses. One could take more, some extra courses which were not required, free courses. There was an old professor, Khlvolson, a famous man. He wrote a five-volume text book of physics and gave the introductory physics, which corresponds to Physics 101 or something like that here. And I never went to his lectures because at this time I was doing much more. You must take into account that then it was all mixed up; there was nothing regular, and I was taking the course of electrodynamics; of all things, on Maxwell's theory. Then I had to pass the exam, with Khlvolson on elementary physics but since I hadn't been in his courses, I decided I should have something to show him. So I went to this Frederichs, who was giving electrodynamics. He was on vacation on a beach near Leningrad and when I went to him, he examined me on electrodynamics in the water, swimming, and put "Satisfactory," or "Very well" or something like that in matriculus in electrodynamics. And then I came to Khlvolson, and he looked matriculus over, and he said, "Passed electrodynamics?" and I said, "Yes." "Well, I pass you in Elementary Physics." So I never passed this exam. It was all mixed up.

Weiner:

What other courses did you have in physics?

Gamow:

I didn't go too much to the courses. I was mostly attending seminars on theoretical physics. I don't remember. There was a course on optics, I guess. I've forgotten what was the name of the professor. Oh, yes, Rogdestvenski, director of the Rogdestvenski Institute. The chairman of the department, an old man, was teaching it. And of course, statistical mechanics and what not. Again, I attended very few courses because I was working on my own. In 1922 I was interested in Bohr theory and things like this. In 1926 wave mechanics appeared.

Weiner:

What about these theoretical physics seminars? Who was in charge of them?

Gamow:

Well, there were three people, theoretical people: one was Professor Krutkov, another was Bursian, and the third was Frederichs. So between them they ran a seminar and they gave the lectures. Then there was a lab, of course, measuring the resistance of wires and what not. But it was somehow immaterial. I was around the university, I was not in the university. I was registered. I was getting credits, in most cases not attending lectures. And other people did very much the same.

Weiner:

Well, this could be attributed to the unsettled state of things at the time and also to the advanced knowledge that you had.

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Did you get much experimental training during this period?

Gamow:

Well, you see, the thing is that when I had to start the Ph.D.-- this is strange reason--I decided to get Ph.D. in experimental physics because experimental physicists have their own room in the Institute where they can hang their coat, whereas theoretical physicists have to hang their coat at the entrance. So I went to Rogdestvenski and he gave me the work. It was abnormal dispersion in the absorption lines of potassium, and that involved two interferometers and vapor of potassium and photographing the interference, thinking to measure the factor of indices and so on. I worked for a year or two. I never made any progress; the photographs didn't come out well. Then it turned out that I didn't realize that the exposure time was given for the room temperature. And the room temperature was in Fahrenheit--it would be some 55 degrees, so it was always underdeveloped. Finally I gave it up. And then I got some preliminary results. [Leafing through some papers] The first paper was published in 1926: Gamow and lwanenko, Zur Wellentheorie der Materie.¹ And then comes Prokofiew and Gamow, "Anomale Dispersion an den Linien der Hauptserie des Kaliums,"² experimental work because I never finished it and so Rogdestvenski gave it to another man who was Prokofiew, who was good experimentalist and he finished it, and we published it. Second paper is highly experimental with tables.

And the third paper is "The Quantum Theory of the Atom Nucleus,"³ and this is the first work on the potential barrier.

1. Zeitschrift für Physik, Sonderabdruck Bank 39, Heft 10/11, p. 865.
2. Zsch f Phys, Sonderabdruck Band 44, Heft 11/12, p. 887.
3. Z Physik, Sonderabdruck Band 51, Heft 3 und 4, p. 204.

Weiner:

That's interesting. This was a result of your attempt to get a place to hang your coat?

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

When you decided you weren't going to be a photographer, what course was open to you then? Did you go back and take another dissertation topic?

Gamow:

Yes. Well, then I talked with Rogdestvenski or he talked with me. In any case we agreed. You see what happened: I actually was not official yet. This was one year. Because I had finished one year too early, completed all courses, so the next stop would be to apply for fellowship or Ph.D.--it was called prepare for professorial title. But I was advised not to do so because this way, since I finished one year early, I would compete with the people who were one year older than I, I mean in educational matters, not necessarily by calendar year. And then I would have no chance because they would get the first. So I stayed for another year in the university as a student without taking any courses. Well, this is not quite true because this resulted in two additional exams. Had I finished at this time I wouldn't have had to do it, but they introduced two new courses which all departments, students in all fields, should take. One was the History of the Revolution; another was Dialectic Materialism, of all things. So, since I was staying for another year, I had to take this, too, and I passed them somehow. But you see it was during this year that I started this work with Rogdestvenski, but it was not yet official. By the time when I had to take something, it was already clear that I would not continue this experimental research. And then Krutkov gave me the topic.

Weiner:

Who gave it to you?

Gamow:

Krutkov, one of the three theoreticians. And this was some rather boring problem about adiabatic invariance or something like this, still in the old quantum theory.

Weiner:

In what year was this?

Gamow:

Oh, gosh, I don't know exactly. Must have been '26. And so I got the fellowship and I wasn't doing much about this, and so I spent two years--no, one year--and I didn't do anything on this adiabatic invariance. And then I managed to go abroad to Göttingen for summer school. At this time it was just a question of the money exchange. This old man Khvolson recommended me especially, so I was permitted to change my money, to collect my fellowship in German marks instead of rubles. I went to Göttingen. And then in Göttingen I did this work, so I never came back and never finished the thesis with Krutkov. Nobody else finished it either and now it's of no interest because it's Bohr's mechanics anyway.

Weiner:

Talking about those years a bit ... when and how did you become aware of the new quantum mechanics and wave mechanics?

Gamow:

When I came in the library at the Institute and there was Annalen der Physik with the paper of Schrödinger.

Weiner:

Had you realized that there were some problems with the old quantum theory?

Gamow:

Well, yes. I think I heard for the first time about the waves when in seminar this Professor Frederichs was reporting on the de Broglie paper which was published earlier, on the basis of which Schrödinger developed his equation. So this was the first time I heard about de Broglie, I guess.

Weiner:

But up until that time was the old quantum theory taught as pretty comprehensive?

Gamow:

At this time I was mostly interested in relativity. And actually when I was doing relativity there was Professor Friedmann, the man who has shown that Einstein is wrong and that his cosmological equation has a time-dependent solution--it was in 1922, the same year Hubble found the red shift, the distance to Andromeda nebula. And I actually thought I would work with Friedmann, Alexander Friedmann. He was pure mathematician or applied mathematician maybe. He was a professor of mathematics, but he was interested in the application of mathematics and what he was mostly doing was hydrogen aerodynamics. And he had a big plan to take the cube of atmosphere and measure the velocity. He was director of geophysical lab, geophysical observatory. He would measure by balloons-- there were no rockets at this time --the temperatures and the winds and so on and then put it in the differential equation. But it encouraged me. And he was also interested in mathematics of relativity, and then he found this mistake of Einstein and reported what is now known as Friedmann universe ... And he was giving a course on relativity--the first formal course on mathematical relativity which I took was from him, and now this new book on cosmology which I am writing is dedicated to Friedmann, with his photograph, which I got by luck with some troubles.

And so I was supposed to become his student, but unfortunately he was flying on one of his manned balloons and got severe chills or something and died of pneumonia. So I was lost and then Krutkov took me and gave me this adiabatic invariance.

Weiner:

But he gave you that within the old quantum theory?

Gamow:

Yes, I can tell you exactly what it was.

Weiner:

I think it would be interesting.

Gamow:

You see, this notion was introduced by Ehrenfest, adiabatic invariance. And this is the reason: suppose you have a pendulum and you can shorten the length of it. You have the weight, string, and go through the loop. The pendulum swings, and while it swings, you pull the string so the pendulum becomes shorter. And the question was: what remains constant at this time? Well, it can be shown from classical mechanics what re- mains constant is the energy of the pendulum divided by frequency. So you put it equal to h. You see, the energy equals h And at this time Ehrenfest and other people were looking for what should be quantized. I mean, in Bohr's atom it was clear you quantize this, but not in other cases. And Ehrenfest put the postulate that what should be quantized is the quantities which are adiabatic invariance, which do not change at very slow variation of the parameters. And there was a big search, which of course lost all its sense after wave mechanics.

But in any case, Krutkov gave me what I was supposed to do--sounds silly now--you see, if the pendulum goes, you quantize it. You take the integral pdq in the old Bohr theory for swing to and fro. You use this at half-period and back. You integrate one to the right and back to the left. Now suppose the pendulum's amplitude is larger and larger. Then pendulum almost gets vertical and goes swing up again, almost vertical. You still quantize this way. But if you have a little more energy, then the pendulum begins to go over the top and a rotator begins. And then you quantize only on one circle. You see, if the pendulum doesn't reach the top by one degree, you quantize all the way down all the way back. If it goes over the top, then just one time around. So it is a factor of two. I was supposed to find out what the trouble with it is, and I couldn't find out, so far as I know nobody found it out after me and nobody cares. But this was the thesis.

Weiner:

Was there any discussion of the new papers? You discovered the Schrödinger paper in the library when it came out. Had anyone called it to your attention, or did you just find it?

Gamow:

I don't remember; maybe somebody was reading it. But you see at this time there were three--three musketeers, if you want to call it this way--it was me and Landau--you know he died recently?

Weiner:

A couple of weeks ago.

Gamow:

And Ivanenko. So we formed the nucleus of ... The total number of students in the physics department was probably a dozen: there were three theoreticians and then about ten or less experimentalists. A few of them were girls. And so we were talking together and discussing things.

Weiner:

Did they enter the university about the same time as you did?

Gamow:

Ivanenko, yes, I guess so. Landau came later. He came from Baku but he was in the university. We were on the same level, the same semester. But Landau did something before. Maybe Ivanenko ... I think I came first, and Ivanenko came later. He may have one year of the university in Poltava. He was from Poltava, from Ukraine, and Landau's from Baku. But we were on the same level, maybe, the same year.

Weiner:

So were the new developments in quantum mechanics discussed among the three of you?

Gamow:

Yes. You see, there was this Borgman Library ... Well, Borgman was a professor who had a big library and when he died, he willed it to university, so it was a physics library with easy chairs, and this was the center of theoretical cultures.

Weiner:

But they were also participants then in the theoretical seminars of various types?

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Was there a colloquium or regular discussion group of any kind, either formal or informal?

Gamow:

I remember there was a colloquium on statistical mechanics at which I was. There were some meetings--I don't remember whether it was weekly or not. You see, the people were around and talking anyway, so these meetings didn't change much I think. If there was, it was a formal meeting. But the main thing was sitting and talking in the library, just as it was happening in the Bohr's Institute in the years I spent in Copenhagen. There the Institute and library and there were people--me and Mott and Delbrück and Rosenfeld and Casimir and others--and we were just around, reading magazines and talking, playing ping pong and what not.

Weiner:

Then it was informal discussion in which the ideas evolved?

Gamow:

Yes, mostly.

Weiner:

What journals were you reading in Leningrad?

Gamow:

Well, Zeitschrift Physik, Annalen der Physik, Physikalische Zeitung, Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Weiner:

The ones that were the standard journals at that time?

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

How about the Russian journals? Were they as up to date as the German and English journals?

Gamow:

Well, I'm not sure there were Russian journals at this time because everybody who was publishing, as you can see from my two papers from Russia, was publishing in Germany. I think there was a magazine which was coming out which was called The Advances of Physical Sciences. This was something like The Review of Modern Physics. There probably was a journal of the Russian Physical Society but it probably was not being printed at that time at all. It was easier to send it to print in Germany.

Weiner:

You were reading German then. Did you pick up the German language in the university or back in Odessa?

Gamow:

No. You know there is a rule that a person cannot have a good pronunciation unless he learns it before the age of eight or ten or something like that. Now French I was taught by my mother, who spoke French. She was not French, but at this time, you know, the daughter of archbishop had a French education. So I learned French from my mother and then I went to private school, run by a friend of my father. And to this one goes at the age of ten; before that one goes to public schools. I didn't go to public school; I had two teachers at home, two women. One was for the general education, whatever it was; I don't remember what she was teaching me. Another was a very fat German woman; her name was Urbach, I remember, and she was teaching me German. So I was learning German from this private teacher and French from my mother. And English I learned much later, after the Revolution, I guess. So, as a result, my French and German pronunciation are very good. My English pronunciation is bad. And I feel much easier speaking German or French than speaking English. Of course now, living so long in America, I have more vocabulary probably in English than in anything else. The second best is German because of all the time in Copenhagen. Now the Danes forget how to speak German after the Hitler invasion, but at that time Bohr's Institute was all German. Pauli and Heisenberg and Bohr--I spoke to Bohr, to Niels Bohr, in German, of course. So in Göttingen and Copenhagen, I had a good training in German for a few years and I didn't forget it. This summer I have to give the lecture in Berne in July in memory of Houtermans who was my friend. They have asked me to and I am going to speak German, of course. Of course, in German I'm terribly poor in der, die, das, and my grammar is horrible, but pronunciation good. It flows, and the people understand it.

I remember when I was in Germany the last time in Heidelberg, with Barbara, six or seven years ago, they asked me to give a talk--this man called Hans Jensen, of shell structure--about whatever it was, cosmology, I think. And so, although I could speak English, I spoke German and without any difficulty, except that it turned out afterwards I made one mistake. I was speaking about brightest stars, which is important in Hubble work of estimating distance of galaxy theory, to see which are brightest stars. And in German, of course, it is "die helligste Sterne" and I was speaking about "breitigste Sterne," the widest stars. This was the only mistake. But my German pronunciation is certainly better than my English, and so is my French. In French I have had very little opportunity. Oh, I was taken to Paris as a tourist for a couple of weeks but I never was actually working, so my vocabulary is poor but still pronunciation is quite good. And I remember years ago--let's see, it was just the last year before the war--I was going to the international congress organized by the League of Nations in Warsaw one year before it was destroyed by the German Luftwaffe.

Weiner:

The 1938 congress?

Gamow:

1938, yes. And then de Broglie asked me to give a lecture in Sorbonne, on "L'Evolution des étoiles," and I planned--I was a little bit scared about this--to write it down in French, have it corrected, and then memorize the corrections and so on. But on board ship I never did it, and there I was and so I just had to talk French. I couldn't find out ... I had to speak about white dwarfs, "les naines blanches" and I didn't know what it is so I had to say it in English. And somebody, de Broglie himself or whoever was sitting in the front row, was giving me the French words for it. And after the lecture I told de Broglie that I am very sorry, I planned to prepare it. And he told: "Look, Gamow, it's very good that you didn't because you know last year (it was some special annual lecture) R. H. Fowler from England came here ..." and the English don't know French, as a rule) and, in any case, he wrote it down, de Broglie personally translated it, and then he either memorized or read it in French. But as a result, de Broglie said that after the lecture a group of students came to him and told: "Monsieur le Professeur, nous ne comprenons pas parce que nous croyions que M. Fowler will speak English, and we all understand English. He didn't speak English. In that case, what was the language?"

Weiner:

It was French.

Gamow:

Yes, and de Broglie had to say, "Francais. So this is the danger.

One amusing incident in the same vein: Ten years ago, when I just came here, I was asked to go to Caracas, Venezuela, to visit there for Asociación Venezueliana para Promoción de la Sciencia. And the big lecture should be in Spanish, and the small seminars could be in English. And my Spanish is non-existent. I know a little bit of Italian because I spent a summer in Italy and studied a little for it and was trying to talk in it. But somebody told me I have to write it down so I wrote down in English and when I came to Caracas it was all translated into Spanish. And the idea was that I would speak it and the man would trans- late it, so it's twice as long. (I did it in Japan; it's very tiresome.) And I told them, "Look, after all I speak French, I know some Italian, and I can understand what's written here. It's simple; Spanish is the same language. So I went through a rehearsal a couple of times so we had the correct Spanish pronunciation, but I delivered the lecture in Spanish, reading it from the list. I have it in Spanish on the tape recorder, it's over an hour. But the funniest thing was the danger spots, just because Spanish is so close to Italian but not quite, was the pro- nunciation of the letter "c". In Spanish it is pronounced "piscina" for swimming pool or"conocer." In Italian it is "sh", "conóscere" and "piscina." And this thing I marked specially, but after first ten or fifteen minutes of reading, I got tired and started losing my guard and got into Italian. And as a result the Caracas newspaper next day carried the article, saying the Russian professor from the United States, lectured in Spanish with a heavy Italian accent. That is gospel truth.

Weiner:

Getting back to the mid-twenties, you certainly were reading in German, the scientific publications, most of which were appearing in German journals.

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

And did the trio of Landau, Ivanenko and yourself stay together pretty much? Did you discuss the same problems?

Gamow:

Oh, yes. We went to the movies together, we played tennis together, there were several girls around, and what else. There was also scientific discussion among physics students.

Weiner:

Did any of the professors get attached to this trio in any way?

Gamow:

No.

Weiner:

Did you have the feeling that you were more up to date on some of the new developments in wave mechanics than some of the professors themselves were?

Gamow:

I don't know, really. Maybe.

Weiner:

I know that by the time you went on to Göttingen in the summer of '28, you apparently had a very solid background in the newest wave mechanics.

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

And I'm trying to determine how--whether it was just from the reading and discussing with your friends ...

Gamow:

Reading and discussing it with Landau and Ivanenko and so on.

Weiner:

But there was no formal teaching of the new wave mechanics that you recall?

Gamow:

Maybe there was a course. I didn't listen to it.

Weiner:

Did you have any visitors there during that period, anyone from other countries to come in?

Gamow:

Oh, early, yes. Raman was there once, passing through. I remember Fraulein Spöner was there once.

Weiner:

Herta Spöner?

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Do you know that she died recently?

Gamow:

She died. Is Franck still alive?

Weiner:

He died several years earlier [in 1964]. What about the relative position of the University of Leningrad in physics in Russia? Was it the major institution or were there others that were equally good?

Gamow:

Leningrad and Moscow were the only two places which operated. Odessa was dead. And such places as Kazan, where Patechevsky probably was, was dead. Leningrad and Moscow were more or less even, I would say. Probably in Leningrad there were more theoretical people than in Moscow, more experimental--something like that, but we had constant exchange. You see, there was an overnight train. We often went for some occasion or another on the overnight train, so we knew very well the Leningrad and Moscow people and vice versa.

Weiner:

Who were the principal people at Moscow?

Gamow:

Well, there was Andronin Leontovich--I don't know what has happened to him now. I don't hear these names; maybe they died during the war or something. Then I knew quite well Mandelstamm's son. Leonid Mandelstamm, the professor, was director of the Moscow University Physics Institute and he discovered Raman effect together with Raman. And was too slow to publish it; he missed it. And I knew very well his son, ? Mandelstamm whom I saw just two weeks ago right here in Boulder. He was semi-theoretical ... I don't know. He came here in connection with the upper atmosphere research and so on. And I was often in his house in Moscow. He lived with his parents. And let's see who else. Oh, a number of people.

Weiner:

At this time Kapitza was in England, wasn't he?

Gamow:

Kapitza was in England, yes. Kapitza was captured in Russia the same year as I left Russia, and many people ascribe the fact that they didn't let Kapitza go out because I didn't come back. And I know this is not true; otherwise I would be unhappy, but it isn't true because the thing is that I knew Kapitza very well. Just before I was leaving for the United States for the first time I stayed in Cambridge... You see, I came to Solvay Congress in the fall of 1933 and wrote this letter to Sam Goudsmit to come to America, but I had to live through the winter, so I was "distributed" between Madame Curie, Bohr, and Rutherford. Madame Curie kept me for two months on fellowship, and then Bohr, and then Rutherford. experimentalists? You said that Bohr, you know, needed this and that you need it, too.

Gamow:

Well, you see I can tell you how I came to this idea bout the potential barrier. It was this way: I was sitting in Göttingen. I came to Göttingen for the summer school and I didn't go to any lectures. Alexander Fock was there, and I just was staying around, and I decided at this time everybody was applying wave mechanics to atoms and molecules and getting more and more complicated, and I hate such things. Now I'm not a nuclear physicist any more; two decades ago it became too complicated for me. But then I decided that I wanted to learn something about the nucleus. I remember I decided while still in Leningrad, reading the papers on radioactivity and things like this, just to get away from this solution of Schrödinger equation for diatomic molecules. And in Göttingen I was doing just this and was trying to think how the alpha particle comes out and maybe spirals and so on and why it takes such a long time. And then in the library in Göttingen I found the Philosophical Magazine, with the article of Rutherford in which he was shooting the fast alpha particles-- from Radium C or something--on uranium, and hoping to observe the abnormal scattering and there was none. It was inverse square scattering, which was a contradiction. And Rutherford in this article proposed a theory, which was quite amusing. You see, Rutherford had thought about neutrons actually some five years before neutrons were really discovered and the Cambridge people were doing experiments, never published, which tried to kick neutrons out of the nucleus and failed. And gave up. That's why Chadwick knew it was the neutron because he had been trying years ago to get one.

And so Rutherford had a theory in this paper: how the alpha particle can go through the barrier which is higher than its energy. And being a classical physicist, of course, he thought that the alpha particle goes with two electrons. Well, four neutrons, actually, polyneutron. Mass 4 charge zero gets out of the nucleus. And at a certain distance it drops two electrons which go back, fall, into the nucleus. I don't know where they start getting accelerated. Well, at this point when I read this, I thought, "My gosh, it isn't." It is exponential solution of the equation of Schrödinger. And the next day the paper was ready.

Weiner:

Really? You mean that this thing seemed to you ridiculous, in a sense, did it? What was your reaction when you read Rutherford's paper? Did it make no sense at all?

Gamow:

[repeated several times during preceding question] Yes.

Weiner:

How did that get you to this next step of seeing that the Schrödinger equation applied?

Gamow:

Well, because I knew--this was 1928 and wave mechanics was two years old--and I knew that the solution does not vanish. If there are walls then the thing [or anything] becomes exponential and does not vanish. So I thought exponential--very simple.

Weiner:

And you actually just worked it out overnight, as quickly as that?

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Had you thought about it before that, before reading Rutherford's paper?

Gamow:

No. I was trying to have this spiral around, some crazy thing.

Weiner:

That's amazing.

Gamow:

You see, Condon--Gurney and Condon--actually Gurney had the idea, of course; Condon just helped him. Gurney got to it from another point of view. I don't remember ... His article begins with the electrons in the symmetrical state of crystals that can go through transitions and so on. But this was just Rutherford's paper and that's all.

Weiner:

When you worked on , did you discuss it with anyone there at Göttingen?

Gamow:

Oh, I told it to Wigner, I remember, and Wigner was quite impressed. And then I had this friend of mine, Fritz Houtermans--he was a friend.

Weiner:

But Wigner was there at the time, too?

Gamow:

Yes, Wigner was there, and Dirac was there. Houtermans was experimental physicist, but he was interested in Russians, so to speak, so I got to be friends with him--he was communistic direction. Well, my second paper is Gamow and Houtermans which follows this [rustling list of publications]--this is the first paper [#3 on list] in which I just give the simple thing and say this is the Geiger-Nuttal Law. And this is Gamow and Houtermans [04 on list], and this is just tedious, more details, calculations of the things, just follow up.

Weiner:

When you told Wigner, Houtermans, and others there, what was their reaction?

Gamow:

They liked it. The reaction of Bohr was very interesting. When the semester finished, I ran out of money and I had to go home. I had a return ticket. I wanted to meet Bohr, and I probably had a return ticket through Stettin, but I changed it to Copenhagen/Stockholm and Finland. And I had some $10 left, just enough for one day. And I came to Copenhagen and stayed in some cheap place and got a bed in some rooming house and went to his Institute and met Frøken Schultz, Bohr's secretary, who just retired recently in January; I sent her a wire, "Congratulations on a half century"--she was for fifty years secretary of Bohr. She was hired when the Institute was formed, and in January she was 70 years old and 50 years Bohr's secretary.

So I told her I am only there one day and could I see Bohr. And it was arranged, and Bohr came to the library where I was waiting and asked what I had been doing. I told him about this--it was not published yet.

Weiner:

Had it been submitted?

Gamow:

Yes; it was already submitted; it was sent from Göttingen. And then Bohr told me ....You see, when Frøken Schultz first told me that the Professor is very busy and I'd have to wait probably a couple of days, I told her, "I have to leave tomorrow because I have no money to pay to eat anywhere." This was already an emergency. And then Bohr said, "My secretary told me you cannot stay more than one day because you have no money. Now if I organize for you a fellowship, a Carlsberg Fellowship at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, would you stay for a year?" I told him, "Yes, I would." Right on the spot!

Weiner:

Would it be difficult to stay and to extend this short summer trip?

Gamow:

No, not at all, my official passport was good for a year. You see, at this time there was no problem.

Weiner:

But what about your work back in Leningrad? Had you taken your examinations in the spring before you left?

Gamow:

No, I'm a fake Ph.D. I never got a real degree.

Weiner:

Oh, you dropped that adiabatic problem?

Gamow:

Well, I dropped this and sent instead the manuscript of this (pointing to #3).

Weiner:

Of the penetration barriers?

Gamow:

And I have not the slightest idea what happened with it. And at this time there was no Ph.D., anyway--now I think it's reinstituted-- but the title was "Learned Physicists, Learned Chemists," because they went away from the titles. No generals, no ministers, you know. Now it's all back so I suppose I have a Ph.D.

I sent this instead, and then when I returned to Leningrad I didn't think about it. And nobody thought about it. And, forgive me but really I didn't care, and nobody cared.
Well, you see, at this time it was entirely different. When I went abroad the first time to Göttingen, the problem was just that of changing money. And since I was recommended by Khvolson, the famous professor, I got the permission to change my money, and that was all.

Weiner:

And you were still on the same fellowship?

Gamow:

I didn't exchange all the money that I could because I didn't have enough rubles to get all marks. And then Bohr gave me the Carlsberg fellowship for a year, but the fellowship is small and he said, "Look, Gamow, you probably will spend more than 1/12 of this amount...." You see, it's not paid monthly; it's just given in cash. "You stay as long as you can do this." So I was doing this as a Carlsberg Fellow for a year, "but if you want to leave sooner I wouldn't hold you And so I now stayed until spring 1929.

Weiner:

And you went there when--in October?

Gamow:

October or something. You see, this is dated--"Zur Quantentheorie der Atomzertrümmerung" [#5 on list].

Weiner:

10th of November.

Gamow:

This "Atomzertrümmerung" is already from Copenhagen, you see. The original one, with Houtermans, was still from Göttingen [pointing to article on desk] and it was August. So I probably came in September or something like that.

Weiner:

Yes. And you had only been in Göttingen just a few months then.

Gamow:

Just two months, yes.

Weiner:

A good productive two months.

Gamow:

And so in the spring I ran out of Danish money. In the meantime Bohr organized for me the Rockefeller fellowship (American money) to spend a year in Cambridge, beginning September, October, or something. And so I was there in the spring, and I had to live through the summer and I had no Danish money. I didn't want Bohr to ask for more, and the American money would come in only in the fall. And in Russia I had the money because my Russian fellowship was going on and it accumulated. So I went to Russia for the summer. I came to Leningrad, stayed maybe for one day or something, probably with Landau in his room because there was no place to sleep, and took a train and went to Odessa to visit my father and went to Crimea and stayed at an observatory there in Simeiz and went to the beach. And by the fall I came back to Leningrad, and my passport was ready. I got the passport and went to England. There was no problem, no problem whatsoever.

Weiner:

Very convenient.

Gamow:

And then, of course I stayed in England for a year. Then Bohr asked me to come to Copenhagen for another year, so I stayed two years almost. And it was during this time that the thing became bad.

Weiner:

I want to ask you more about that a little later. I want now to ask about the year in Copenhagen. What did you do between September or October of 1928 and the spring of 1929?

Gamow:

Well, I was first doing waves. I was applying this to Rutherford experiments.

Weiner:

Well, of course, the first paper on penetration barriers was an application to Rutherford's experiments, too.

Gamow:

Yes. The first was alpha decay. This is the bombarding; this is the plain wave. [Rustling papers] This, from Copenhagen, the "Atomzertrümmerung." And this is the curves, the Rutherford curves of dependence of the breaking of the aluminum nucleus by alpha particles as a function of energy.

#5. "Zur Quantentheorie der Atomzertrümmerung," Zeitschrift fur Physik, Sonderabdruck Band 52, Heft 7, 8.

Weiner:

Just for the record, I want to make sure that I refer to that paper. That would be the paper done from Göttingen, the original paper on the penetration barrier is paper #3 on this list.

Gamow:

Yes. Then with Houtermans, it was just brush up of the first paper.

Weiner:

So that would be #4 on this list.

Gamow:

And then "Atomzertrümmerung," which is this one.

Weiner:

And that #5 on the list and this applies directly to the work that was under way at the Cavendish Laboratory.

Gamow:

Yes. And then, you see, "The Discussion" [#8 on list]* February 29 in Royal Society for Rutherford [rustling papers]--Aston, Chadwick, Ellis, Gamow, Fowler, Hartree and Richardson--because Bohr sent me to Rutherford for just a few weeks after Christmas, after New Year--you see, this is the February meeting. I went to England specially to get acquainted with Rutherford and to participate in this discussion, and this was also the droplet model.

Weiner:

I see. This was the winter of '29.

Gamow:

"An equation connecting the energy of alpha-particles with the surface tension of the imaginary 'water-drop.'" This is where I could have predicted fission, if I'd been smarter.

Weiner:

This was the time when you had stopped off to see Ehrenfest on the way to England. [Brief pause] I was trying to get something straight on the chronology. You mentioned that during the time you were in Copenhagen, from the fall of '28 through the spring of 1929, that during this time you took a short trip to England?

Gamow:

Yes, to England, stopping in Leyden.

Weiner:

Just to see Ehrenfest?

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Had you ever been in touch with Ehrenfest before that?

Gamow:

I don't remember. He may have been in Copenhagen before and then invited me to come. I don't remember.

Weiner:

What was the nature of the discussion with Ehrenfest?

Gamow:

Nothing special. Well, essentially the droplet, the droplet model. I remember he told me that I should put it all down. And I didn't, so when Bohr and Wheeler formulated, I was not quoted then.

Weiner:

Where did it come from? Were you thinking of the physical analogy of a water drop, a vapor drop?

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Did this come from discussions in Copenhagen, because Bohr had always been interested, even from his first paper, in liquid drops.

Gamow:

Probably.

Weiner:

But anyway the discussion with Ehrenfest carried it somewhat further?

Gamow:

It was quite interesting, my arrival in Leyden. At this time Holland did not recognize Soviet Russia and I had a Soviet Russian passport. And the problem was to get special documents. And the Dutch Embassy in Copenhagen was trying their best. But I had to leave and I still didn't get an answer from Rotterdam or from Den Haag. And I came to the last moment. Of course Kramers was there, and the Dutch Embassy knew Bohr very well and knew that I was going to Ehrenfest. They were very kind and they told me, "Well, all you can do is just take the chance. Just take the chance. Go by train." They gave me some papers saying that I had applied but the answer was not received. "So, try it; and when you come to the Dutch frontier, maybe they will let you through." So I had to leave and I sent Ehrenfest a telegram, since Ehrenfest had invited me to stay in his house and he said he would meet me at the station or something like this. So I wired him that I will arrive by this train but I am not sure I would be permitted to go through, but if I get through, I would be there. And the delivery of this telegram waked Ehrenfest, as I learned later, at two o'clock after midnight, and he was mad and he took the telephone and called the Premier of the Queen of Holland--no, I don't think he called the Queen--but he certainly called the prime minister of Netherlands and somebody else and made a big hell about it. And as a result, I was met when I came over by train from Copenhagen. Things were happening in Holland; Ehrenfest giving orders-- getting out of bed to get the telegram, first was mad with me for sending the telegram and then was mad with things, waked up the prime minister, and prime minister wakes somebody else. As a result the telegrams went to all entry points of Holland because they don't know where I am coming, to let me through. So when I humbly came to the frontier, I told them, "Here, I have this paper." This was amusing.

Weiner:

How long did you spend with Ehrenfest?

Gamow:

A couple of days, few days.

Weiner:

And when you raised this idea--did you call it nuclear fluid?

Gamow:

Nuclear fluid, yes.

Weiner:

And how did he take the argument a little further? How did he add to it? In what way?

Gamow:

Well, he wanted me to do actually what Bohr and Wheeler did many years later. When I told about surface tension and so on, he told me that I should calculate the vibration periods and things like this.

Weiner:

So ... ?

Gamow:

I didn't.

Weiner:

And he didn't either?

Gamow:

And he didn't either. You see, neutrons were not known so the question was: is it all right? Probably from these accounts which I give here one could read it. [searches papers] I knew that as a matter of fact it goes down and goes up, but, so what? I mean, the only excitation of the heavy nucleus would be--alpha particle would never come close enough-- and the only excitation is by gamma rays. And the chance of this is very small. This is before fission so nobody worried about it.

Weiner:

You speak in this paper that was published (paper #8 on the list which is in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which must have been February '29) of "our ignorance of the behavior of nuclear electrons."

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

I want to get back to that somewhat later. In your 1931 book, every time you discussed nuclear electrons, you flagged it with a special mark to let the reader know that you are now engaging in speculation.

Gamow:

Yes. Actually the picture was ... I had a stamp of a skull with two crossed bones, and bones were two beta particles which, you know, looked like bones, and I stamped it on the manuscript but Oxford Press wouldn't take it.

Weiner:

But they put in some mark on it, they put in a little squid in there.

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Did you save that manuscript? That would be good to see. [Gamow nods negatively.] You don't know what happened to it? Had you been in touch with Rutherford before this trip?

Gamow:

No.

Weiner:

You had two papers which directly related to his work prior to that time and

Gamow:

That's it. And you see Bohr wrote him a letter about me, and Bohr was worried that Rutherford ... You see, Rutherford wouldn't recognize all this innovation like wave mechanics and wants his two electrons going back. So I contradicted his theory, and Bohr was afraid that I will not be welcome. So he wrote him a long letter about this, so when I came I found Rutherford quite friendly, but that is the first time I saw him.

Weiner:

Do you think that he learned of your work then, of those two papers which were really just recently published?

Gamow:

No, these two papers were not yet ....Well, no they came out ..

Weiner:

Well, the first one might have been anyway.

Gamow:

Well, yes. You see, what happened was this: since I sent my paper to Zeitschrift für Physik and told it to Bohr, as it had appeared only [shuffling papers]--where is date when appearance is?

Weiner:

On the cover sheet.

Gamow:

Oh, yes, on the cover sheet. It appeared in August, you see, but before this there appeared in Nature the article by Gurney and Condon, which was sent--I think Condon told me; I didn't check--two days earlier or two days later, but appeared sooner.

Weiner:

But this shows--if it's the same one--that

Gamow:

No, this is my article. It says September 22, and very interesting ... published in Nature September 22 by Gurney and Condon.

Weiner:

Well, maybe this date then is not accurate on yours of August 28.

Gamow:

So you see Condon's appeared--maybe it is not accurate.

Weiner:

Well, we can find that out.

Gamow:

But in any case this appeared, and then Bohr told me that I should write it. And I wrote this, and this was published in Nature and I wrote it ... well, Condon and Gurney, they did the same thing--and got this, but I say I did more. And this is artificial disintegration.

Weiner:

Here. You're right. Your paper was not yet published because you say in this letter [#7 on list], which was written September 29--it was a week after you saw the Condon-Gurney paper--you refer to your article and you say: " ... in Zeitschrift fUr Physik, in course of publication." So what I'm getting at is that this pencilled date on the cover is a misleading date.

Gamow:

Yes, I am probably wrong.

Weiner:

But anyway that clarifies it for me. So, by that time he [Rutherford] knew of Condon-Gurney's paper; if he read Nature he would have seen your comment on that, referring to your paper which was in press. And your paper then came out after that sometime, and he heard from Bohr by letter about your work.

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Then what happened when you got there? Was there deep interest?

Gamow:

Oh, yes.

Weiner:

Did they discuss it in terms of specifically how this changes the energy requirements that they thought was necessary for their work?

Gamow:

I think so, yes. Well, you see here in Rutherford [pointing to paper], "There have been attempts during the past year to avoid this impasse ...This problem has been attacked by Mr. Gamow, whom we are very glad to welcome here today, and also by Gurney and Condon." [p. 378]

Weiner:

I see.

Gamow:

These are Rutherford's words.

Weiner:

Did you have a chance to meet the other people? Of course, Aston was in this discussion but how about Cockcroft, who was already doing work which was very definitely influenced by your paper.

Gamow:

Well, I suppose ... You see, I don't remember exactly whom I met during this visit because this was in February and then I came again to England in September for a year. Whether I met Cockcroft before or after, I really don't know.

Weiner:

I talked with Cockcroft last year, before he died, and I saw him again [after the interview] in England. I recall that he said he remembers your coming on a short trip and that there was considerable excitement from his point of view because this very definitely affected his work. Well, then, I guess because of that short trip, you laid the basis for returning?

Gamow:

Yes. You see, Rutherford asked me to calculate what is the chance of proton penetration. And I told him, what energy the proton needed, we just take the exponential [series] until the charge is one-half and the energy should be this. It turned out one MeV is enough to get the same penetration.

Weiner:

Now he asked you on the spot, while you were there, you mean?

Gamow:

Well, this was just during the period later on ...

Weiner:

When you spent considerable time there?

Gamow:

I think this was when I was living in Cambridge.

Weiner:

Now the rest of that time in Copenhagen--was Delbrück there on that first trip? Yes, you mentioned in your book that Delbrück was there in 1928-29 and that you lived in the same rooming house. Let me see. [rustling papers] Yes. Max Delbrück and G. Gamow--1931.

Weiner:

That would have come in your return trip to Copenhagen?

Gamow:

This was on the return trip, the second time. And here is a famous paper about fine structure.[#13 on list] I express thanks to Rosenfeld and Peierls for the opportunity to work here, the Piz da Daint, Switzerland. We went with Peierls and Rosenfeld for a hiking trip in the mountains, and that's where I conceived this idea. So I wrote the paper in the Hütte, sleeping before we climbed this mountain. And I took it and was signing it on the top. This is Rosenfeld and Peierls took the picture. And the thing is, when I came back to Russia, they said, "Piz da Daint?"--that's the name of it; it means in old Romanic "the peak on the right," right side, right peak. But when I came to Russia, nobody believed me; they thought I invented it myself because "Piz da Daint" sounds very much like "piez da dai" is slang expression for woman's sexual organ and "dai" means "to give." Just never occurred to me; I had to get a map of Switzerland to show them it really existed. They thought I had invented it myself: piez da dai.

Weiner:

Did they expect that from you? Were you known for that kind of joke?

Gamow:

No.

Weiner:

This was already on another trip. What I meant to find out is who else was there on your first trip to Copenhagen.

Gamow:

Well, Max Delbruck came later. I think Mott was there, because I remember when I came to Cambridge for good--I mean for a year--and rented a room in a little house, with an ugly housekeeper, and the student has the front room and bedroom--Mott came to visit me and told: "How did you find this house?" I told, "Well, I just saw it said 'For Rent' so I got it." I told, "Do you know what's the name of the house?" I told, "No." You know, they have the names ... Crick has "The Golden Helix" now. "Well, come out and look." I went out; it says "Kremlin." But this I remember of Mott. So I knew Mott well at this time. So Mott was there and Hartree and Casimir apparently.

Weiner:

What was the main work that you were involved in in your first trip to Copenhagen from September--did you continue the penetration barrier?

Gamow:

Sure. Atomzertrümmerung, and the droplet. You see, I reported on droplet.

Weiner:

Right.

Gamow:

I never did more about this. Weizsäcker did more work on this and detailed formulae.

Weiner:

Now I want to get back to Cambridge and talk about that year there. By this time your work was definitely of major interest and relevance to the experimental work that was going on there. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you continued working in the same direction. And I'm not at all clear about what happened during that year on the Rockefeller Fellowship at Cambridge.

Gamow:

Nothing much. But let's see. [looking through papers] There is something here probably with Delbrück. But there is one paper from the Reale Accademia d' Italia, the old Congress to which I was not permitted to go. There might have been one article.

Weiner:

On this list article #10 shows, "Mass Defect Curve and Nuclear Constitution",

Gamow:

Yes, here. Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. Here is the formula for surface tension and the Hartree self-consistent equation and this is the first step in elementary droplet, in nuclear droplet model.

Weiner:

So as I see the sequence of the work: in Göttingen you started the penetration barrier, continued that in Copenhagen, and started on the nuclear fluid in Copenhagen and continued that in Cambridge.

Gamow:

Yes. And then in Copenhagen again it was all the gamma rays and I think the paper written in Switzerland must have been the second time in Copenhagen. I remember we tried--Max Delbruck and I and Rosenfeld and everybody--tried to fit in gamma rays into the levels.--I mean what Maria Mayer and Hans Jensen finally did.

Weiner:

In the shell structure.

Gamow:

But we tried; we had the different expositions; everybody did different things because precision was not enough. I remember having five different schemes for the same element.

Weiner:

During this period in '28 when you started applying wave mechanics to theoretical understanding of the nucleus, were there many other people doing that?

Gamow:

Well, Gurney and Condon.

Weiner:

Yes, but how about in Europe?

Gamow:

[after a pause to reflect] No.

Weiner:

When do you think theoreticians started ...

Gamow:

Well, you see, after my paper appeared, there were a number of papers by von Laue and by other people who tried to improve, so to speak, my solution, to discuss it. Laue considered it as a step ....At this time I didn't know exactly what "psi" meant, you know. So there were a number of papers. Somebody published a paper about shape of the barrier for which an integral can be taken analytically. This is a typical mathematical approach for you. And that is inverse square form [laughs]. If you cannot take it analytically, then don't. But they had the special barriers for which analytical solutions were possible which didn't exist in nature. And I remember Pauli, who was there at this time, whenever new papers [appeared]--there had been half a dozen of them--he used to say, "Es Gamow't wieder," like "Es regnet wieder." [It's raining again.] Guido Beck was trying to do some systematics of ....

Weiner:

Let me ask another question about this period, to refresh my memory. In the first paper in 1928 from Göttingen where you're talking about penetration barrier, you start out in the first paragraph talking about forces, but you drop it as if to say it's not profitable to discuss this. You were talking of the classical electromagnetic forces but you didn't pursue it; you went on to the coulomb and to the important point that you were trying to make in the paper. What was the problem in the forces then? Why was it that very few people were doing anything with it except to think of it in terms of classical electromagnetic forces, and this was before the time....

Gamow:

Well, probably because I vaguely remember it as sort of something rotating, you see, I wanted to have magnetic field or.... But the amazing thing is that when I was doing this thing, which I completely forget now what it actually was, then there was in Göttingen on the same semester a Russian mathematician, N. Kotshchin, and I have complicated equations to solve, and he helped me with them. This was all thrown out. And then finally I came to this integral to take or whatever it is, to solve this equation [rustling papers, then pointing to the particular integral], and I didn't know how to take it--I am not good at mathematics--so I went to Kotshchin and asked him how to take this integral--he told, "Substitute." He put U equal to the CoSin here or something and you get it. So I did. And at the end, you see, it expresses thanks to Kotshchin for the help with mathematics. He helped me later with more complicated mathematics which was no good and was never used.

Weiner:

But you gave him the credit?

Gamow:

I gave him the credit, and he told me he became the laughing stock because he was thanked. I probably took this integral myself-- really don't remember.

Weiner:

But anyway, for the record, this is a reference to page 211 of the 1928 paper from Göttingen, paper #3. You first heard of the Condon and Gurney paper through Bohr then. He called your attention to it in Nature?

Gamow:

I don't know.

Weiner:

But anyway it was on his suggestion?

Gamow:

Either I saw it myself or somebody had seen it before.

Weiner:

Oh, remember what you said, it was that ...

Gamow:

Bohr insisted.

Weiner:

....that you write. I see. Now when you were at Copenhagen and at the Cavendish, was there a genuine difference of approach to nuclear physics between Bohr and his group as compared to Rutherford and his people? How would you characterize such a difference?

Gamow:

Well, one was purely experimental and the other was purely theoretical. Of course, Dirac was in England but Dirac was not at the Cavendish, you see. Well, Fowler was but he was not a physicist anyway; he was a mathematician. He was just doing things for Rutherford, deriving formulae.

Weiner:

Apparently during this period in 1930, Bohr made a speech indicating he had severe doubts about the application of quantum mechanics to the nucleus and, in fact, in your book in 1931, you referred to the same point, about the failure of conservation of energy--I guess in relation to beta decay.

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

How widespread was this? It began to put into question how useful quantum mechanics was going to be because it had been so successful in every other aspect, but here was a case where there seemed to be a little difficulty.

Gamow:

Yes. Bohr wanted to have non-conservation of energy.

Weiner:

Non-conservation of energy?

Gamow:

This was a big fight between Bohr and Pauli. Pauli said there's a neutrino, and Bohr told, "No neutrinos; there's non-conservation of energy." And this was settled only when Sedgwick in England measured the spectrum of beta ray and showed that if there is ... Bohr wanted to have statistical conservation of energy, the mean energy of beta decay, and there is a forking, alpha-beta or beta-alpha, after radium-C or thorium-C or actinium-C. So if you add ... there is 1 alpha and then beta, or 1 beta and then alpha, and if you add the upper limits of the beta spectrum, which Sedgwick measured, to the energy of alpha particles, you have conservation; if you add the average energy, you don't. This was it.

Weiner:

Well, did Bohr's view influence some people to take a more phenomenological approach?

Gamow:

I don't know. Fermi, of course, took Pauli right away. But Bohr went farther than this. Bohr was thinking that energy production of stars--this was never published--is due to this. Namely he told this: that the star has a nucleus, this nuclear model; the core is nuclear density--this was called now neutron star--and surrounded by regular body. And now let's see how it was. It's like evaporation; the electrons were evaporated from this nuclear fluid. Or electrons into the regular matter around, above it, and beyond it. And other electrons were coming in.

Gamow:

It was this way. Suppose this is the surface of the nuclear core. So below the surface it is just polyneutron, nuclear density. And here, completely ionized gas, plasma, as we call it. Now there is a dynamic equilibrium because the surface of the neutron core makes beta particles of well-defined energy--or a certain distribution of energy--but well-defined distribution, corresponding to the completely flat surface. Apparently he wants to have beta decay of different nuclei connected with the curvature and pressure, or vapor pressure of the curved surfaces. And the flat surface--for the sufficiently big nucleus it is flat--there is a definite spectrum of emitted electrons subject to non-conservation of energy: some go fast, some go slow. And they go into the regular plasma. And plasma has electrons with Maxwell distribution of energy, which are absorbed. Now, normally there is equilibrium, but if the plasma loses energy by radiation of the star, then the average energy of the plasma electrons is smaller than the average energy of the emitted electrons. So on the average electrons that are emitted with higher energy wraps up with smaller energy because of non-conservation of energy. If there are no energy losses, there will be equilibrium, nothing happens. But since a star radiates material, the temperature of the outer plasma will be always a little lower and therefore by virtue of non-conservation of energy energy is produced by star for eternity. And this is my Bohr theory.

Weiner:

And he talked it, you mean?

Gamow:

Sure,

Weiner:

And he developed it. And was there a challenge to it in any way?

Gamow:

Well, there is now. Of course, Houtermans and Atkinson had a paper much earlier; they did it right after may paper on Zertrümmerung, still in 1928. But Bohr wanted to have non-conservation. You know there were units ... Somebody had units, you know, like a unit of self advertising. You know what is a unit of cell quantitizing? One "can." One can is a unit of self advertising. It's a very large unit because usually it's measured in millikans.

Weiner:

Very good.

Gamow:

Now along the same line, and this was in German. Somehow I was called ... Gamow was "ein zerbrochene Herz per kilometer" or something like this. And Bohr was "ein versagende Begriff per Monat," one failing notion. Well, this is Bohr-Kramers-Slater, you know, so it still in the same line. "Ein versagende Begriff per Monat ist one Bohr," so he wanted to have it ...

Weiner:

Now, as far as you know, he didn't develop it further? Although he did make the statement about the non-conservation in a speculative way, saying "It is possible that conservation of energy doesn't hold ..." He said this in 1930 in a speech to the Faraday Society, I think; it was published in 1932. But in 1931 you make the same point in your speculative section of your work.

Gamow:

Yes.

Weiner:

Now in that, too, you talk about Dirac, and I'd like to know what the general reaction was to Dirac's work, the hole theory, in the years ...

Gamow:

About the anti-particles?

Weiner:

Yes.

Gamow:

Well, it was this way, that I was sitting in the Maxwell Library of Cavendish, in 1929. And Dirac came in and he wanted to tell me something and he told me well, he just made a theory of protons, the anti-particles. But you know, he believed that he could get the Dirac holes heavier, 1836 times heavier so they would be protons. And he told me he was trying to see if some ... Well, it wasn't quite clear, but he was quite enthusiastic about it and he explained protons. Then I wrote about this to Bohr, and Bohr was very much opposed to the idea. And then Bohr-- he always liked elephants for some reason--Bohr proposed the idea of how to catch elephants, a method to catch elephants in Africa; namely, one would find a watering place of elephants and--this is all unpublished-- put a big sign, giving the main idea of the Dirac paper about anti-particles. And the elephant which is a clever animal, comes and reads it and stands stunned, shocked, so that gives the time for hunters to run from behind the trees and tie his legs. This is how to catch elephants according to Bohr.

And Pauli at this same time then calculated that if the proton is such a hole, then in hydrogen atom the electron will jump into the hole. He just calculated on the formula for annihilation of pairs correctly. So the hydrogen wouldn't exist more than 10 to minus-whatever-it-is seconds, and he formulated what was known as Second Pauli Principle, that whenever a theoretical physicist proposes a theory, it becomes immediately applicable to himself. And when Dirac thought about this idea, his pro- tons would be all hydrogen atoms and other atoms, too, would be immediately annihilated. There was quite strong opposition.

Weiner:

In the meanwhile, about that time Oppenheimer published, demonstrating that it couldn't be protons, didn't he?

Gamow:

I don't know.

Weiner:

There was a paper of Oppenheimer's, specifically on the subject.

Gamow:

Well Dirac, when he was telling it to me, was sure he can prove that these particles are heavier, the holes are heavier than the missing electron. And then he gave up.

Weiner:

I think that what Oppenheimer did was to demonstrate that couldn't possibly be. But what you're saying is that not only was it not taken seriously, there was strong opposition to it and you're implying there was ridicule.

Gamow:

Oh, yes. Quite so, until Anderson discovered the positive electron.

Weiner:

Well, do you remember where you were then? You were in Leningrad at the time of the positron discovery. That was 1932. So you were back?

Gamow:

Yes. I was in Leningrad, yes.

Weiner:

Do you remember anything about that?

Gamow:

No. I just read it in Nature, apparently.

Weiner:

You see, if people had not taken Dirac seriously, then it's not automatically clear that when the positron was discovered that they would relate it to Dirac's theory. If they had taken it seriously, then they would have related it, so that's why I tried to find out what your reaction was to the discovery of the positron, if you remember; it may not have been that important to you.

Gamow:

I don't remember. Probably I was too busy worrying about which frontier of Soviet Russia is easiest to cross. I didn't do much physics in Russia at this time.

The amusing thing is that Kapitza has shown to me, when I saw him afterwards, when I got out and just before he left for Russia, because the positrons were discovered when I was in Russia, so the first time I could see Kapitza was in 1934. He has shown me the book of the so-called Kapitza Club which is simply the seminars, with the photographs and so on, and there was a paper of Skobelzyn, the Russian physicist who was giving the talk, and the photograph was glued in. And Skobelzyn had the photo- graph which looked like this [rustling papers, showing something]. This is the piston of the chamber and magnetic field like this, taken several years earlier. And the theory was that this is cosmic ray electron which is reflected, and there was long discussion at this meeting how could it be that the electron is reflected exactly backwards. That is photograph.

Weiner:

Those books are photographed. The Kapitza Club books are all on microfilm, so I'm going to look at this. Do you recall how long before your discussion with Kapitza this was in the book?

Gamow:

I don't know. It was before the positron was discovered, I know that. That's why Kapitza had shown it to me.

Weiner:

Good. Sounds great.

Gamow:

But it was a beautiful picture of pairs.

Weiner:

If I can find that, I'll send you a copy. It will be good to see. Well, I know that then, after the discovery of the positron, many people reexamined plates that they had, and they found it. But it's interesting to find that there had been a specific discussion ....

Gamow:

Yes, why it bounces straight back. And then, you see, Rutherford once ... for some reason he was proposing that nuclei are flat discs--I think it was involved with maybe flat and bounces maybe like the ping pong racket or something like that.

Weiner:

Now during this period when you wrote the book in 1931, which was just prior to the discovery of the neutron, were you again too preoccupied with other thoughts to react to that? I should think that might have made an impact on you. That was discovered in 1932, when you were back in Leningrad.

Gamow:

[Leaves table, searches for something] Here I will show you something ... more books.

Weiner:

What is the book? Oh, The Structure of Atomic Nuclei.

Gamow:

This is the second edition of it, doubled in volume. And the first edition was published just before the neutron was discovered, though the book came out on the shelves months after the neutron was discovered. But this is the second edition and this is the letter from Oxford Press: "Dear Dr. Gamow: Glad to be able to send you an advance copy of your book. It looks rather stouter and handsomer this time, as benefits maturity. And I hope you are safe from unfortunate radical discoveries in the next year or two" This reference was to the "unfortunate discovery" of the neutron.

Weiner:

But you were prepared for it because when you knew that there was some problem, you flagged it with a special mark and said that these discussions are difficult since there are speculative things and all sorts of problems. And you talked specifically of the need for a new quantum electro-dynamics. I can show you a particular quote in that book which I thought was very appropriate. I think in a sense your book wasn't obsolete because all you have to do is substitute those sections that you had already flagged. Of course, after the second edition came out, then you had a problem of the compound nucleus just coming out.

Gamow:

This is the third thing; this is with Critchfield* in 1949. So here we have fission and ...

Weiner:

Compound nucleus, yes. Poor book--you see, "safe from unfortunate discovery." It wasn't unfortunate discovery. I think I put it in the preface; that's how he learned about it. I managed to put it in the preface, but not in the book.

Weiner:

I see.

Gamow:

But here, when this book came out--this is after Hiroshima, I think, it turned out that they sold out the first printing in no time. I recommended this book for my classes in Washington, and Critchfield, who was at this time out in Minneapolis, recommended it to his class, and the bookstore answered, "The book is sold out." So I wrote a rather disquieting letter and this is the answer again from Oxford Press. Read it all or just whatever you choose. It's the commercial point of view.

Weiner:

December 1, 1949, A.M. Wood from Clarendon Press, Oxford, writes: "Thank you for your letter of 23rd November to Mr. Sissum. You may not know but Mr. Sissum retired from the press about eighteen months ago, and I have to look after the science books in his place. We have been finding out definite information about why you were unable to get copies of Gamow and Critchfield. We sent 175 copies to our New York branch immediately on publication, and they have since ordered 200 more. Unfortunately the demand for this book has been somewhat heavier than we expected...."

Gamow:

[laughs, pointing to word] Look at

Weiner:

They sure use that word "unfortunately." "...and we had not bound up enough copies to meet it. We immediately put in a fresh binding order and are getting a delivery of these next week. Two hundred will be sent by the first available boat to New York, so your students should have no difficulty in getting the book in the near future. I cannot understand why you were told that the book was out of print. It was temporarily unavailable in America, but that will soon be past. We do not usually do photographic editions of our science books in America. Usually books of this sort do not carry a sufficient sale to warrant doing a separate edition in America where the production costs are extremely high. If you have noticed any errors which would need putting right in a reprint we should be glad to have them so they can be dealt with."

Gamow:

Read the second one.

Weiner:

Then the second one is 15th of December, 1949, "Dear Professor

Gamow:

Thank you for your letter of 6th December. I am sorry to hear that Gamow and Critchfield has not been advertised in U.S.A. I am taking this up with our New York branch. We have been very surprised by the demand for books on nuclear physics and an edition which before the war would have lasted us five or more years is gone in as many months, and it is hard to plan in conditions like this."

Gamow:

Isn't that funny?

Weiner:

"However, we are gaining experience of the change of interest, and we hope we shall get the measure of it. We don't like making bad guesses, and this is undoubtedly what has happened with your book. We printed more or less the same number as we did for the previous edition and, quite clearly, it was not enough. I wonder how long this great interest in nuclear physics will go on." That's fantastic. "It seems to be more in evidence in U.S.A. than here, but even here it is clear that there has been a great changeover. Yours sincerely, A. M. Wood." I guess it's the problem of the two cultures.

Now the third edition came out just after the pion was discovered, but at least you included it in the appendix.

Gamow:

What is in the third?

Weiner:

The pi meson. Because you refer in Appendix I to heavy and light mesons, which was first reported in 1947 but the discussion of it ....

Gamow:

You see here also we have the theory of the origin of elements, alpha, beta, gamma [rustling papers, pointing].

Weiner:

"Origins of Elements," right. I see. Well, I think a good way to compare changes in nuclear physics would be to compare the differences in the editions of your book.

Gamow:

Yes. Well, between the first and second--this second one doesn't seem to be much thicker because we dropped a lot of the material. I had in the first edition a lot of experimental material, work of Bothe and things like that. We dropped it out, so that's why the book didn't grow much.

Weiner:

I have the first edition with me; I was looking at it on the Plane.* There's something in one of the sections which you flagged with your special curlicue which means--and you explain it in a footnote-- that "these signs mark the more speculative passages about nuclear electrons." And on page 56--this gets back to what we were talking about, about Bohr and conservation of energy; that's the statement I was thinking of--you say: "This would mean that the idea of energy and its conservation fails in dealing with processes involving the emission or capture of nuclear electrons. This does not sound so improbable if we remember all that has been said about the peculiar properties of electrons in the nucleus. While we have no relativistic theory and only very few experimental data, it is very difficult to give an explanation, but there is no doubt that the question is of fundamental importance and will lead to revolutionary changes in our present picture of the physical world." You protected yourself pretty well.

Gamow:

Yes. I was under the influence, so to say, of Niels Bohr.

Weiner:

Well, that's very good. And then you went back--from '30 to '31--to Copenhagen, and by this time you had already published on the nuclear fluid. Was this the period when you were beginning to write the book? I notice the book was published in '31.

Gamow:

Yes. I was writing it. I remember that Landau was helping me with the mathematics, with calculating the perturbation and so on. And these formulas were all derived by Landau.

Weiner:

Well, you acknowledge thanks to Bohr, Casimir, Houtermans, Landau and Mott.

Gamow:

It was done in Copenhagen, yes.

Weiner:

Oh, yes, I see: 1st of May, 1931 you completed it. Did that occupy most of your time in that year?

Gamow:

This and gamma rays. I think this paper at Piz da Daint on the mountain, probably was this winter. I will bring something else to show you, [shows invitation or announcement] to which they didn't let me go.

Weiner:

Was this a meeting which was an invitational one?

Gamow:

Yes. "Reale Accademia d'Italia, Convegno di fisica nucleare, Roma," organized by Marconi. Here are the members, and here is Marconi, and here is Bohr and Aston and Ellis, Bothe, Blackett and ...

Weiner:

Millikan.

Gamow:

... Mott. And I was supposed to give the principal talk here, and the paper was read for me, "Quantum Theory of Nuclear Structure," because they didn't let me go, you see. This was mostly about the relation with gamma rays and levels and this was an attempt that didn't succeed until Jensen and Maria Mayer took it up. Maybe you have not seen this at all?

Weiner:

No, I've never seen this edition of the Proceedings.

Gamow:

And these are original signatures. And here is a postcard which was sent to me from Rome when they found that I am not coming. And this is quite a collection of nice signatures.

Weiner:

Mott and Bohr and Guido Beck and Sommerfeld and 0. W. Richardson, Madame Curie, A. H. Compton, Robert Millikan, Sam Goudsmit, Patrick Blackett, R. H. Fowler, Bruno Rossi, Werner Heisenberg, Franco Rasetti, Hans Geiger, one I can't make out there--Pauli, Fermi ...

Gamow:

Some of them must be Italians you might not know.

Weiner:

Gian-Carlo Wick.

Gamow:

Oh, Wick, yes.

Weiner:

C. D. Ellis, Aston, Lise Meitner, Bothe, Corbino. There is a name that looks like it's written in Russian. Brillouin is there.

Gamow:

Oh, Russian? It's Wataghin, the Russian who left after fighting in the White Army against Bolsheviks. He's professor in Turino.

Weiner:

In other words, no one from Russia went that conference?

Gamow:

Nobody else was invited.

Weiner:

I see. How, how did this come about? I'd like to know the story of it. You received a personal invitation, is that it? It didn't go through the government?

Gamow:

Well, you see I got the invitation--I got a letter from Marconi-- in Copenhagen to attend this congress. Now the situation was this, that this was during my second stay in Copenhagen. And I planned after this, as I explained, to return to Russia--my passport was expiring in the spring. Actually I had gotten it for a year in England and to stay with Bohr--Bohr I think talked to the Russian Embassy and they extended it for half a year. So I had to get home in the spring of this year, and I got invited to this congress in the fall. And I didn't know by this time that if I had asked some Russian friend, he would have told me then "Don't come back." But I couldn't ask, didn't think about it. But I thought it is more reasonable to stay in Copenhagen all through the summer, just two or three months, then go to the Congress to Rome, then go from the Congress to Istanbul, to Odessa, visit my father again, and go back to Leningrad. And this was all straight and then there was a girl I was interested in in Copenhagen and so on. And so the problem was to continue to get my passport extended another three months. So I went to the Soviet Embassy, and Ambassador--I don't remember his name; I know that he was a mathematician; he started his career as a mathematician and then became a politician and--you can find out--was Soviet Ambassador in Copenhagen. He was very nice; he was apparently the man who on request of Bohr extended it for me for half a year to stay in Copenhagen. And I explained to him the situation and he told: "Yes. I will write to Moscow and see what happens." And then a couple of weeks later I got a telephone call from Soviet Embassy, telling that Ambassador Such-and-Such wants to see me. So I went to the Embassy, as a good Soviet citizen, and he tells, "Look, I got the answer from Moscow: I wrote all the reasons for your extension-- but they (he held the official paper in his hand) tell here that they want that you should come back and then go ... before you go to Rome because you have been away for almost two years and they just want to see you and to be sure you are all right." And then he told me, "You'd better go, and I am quite sure you will have no trouble." So, I was a little perturbed, partially because of the change of plan, partially because of the young lady I was interested in. Well, in any case, I went. I flew to Moscow and then went next day to the Commissariat of Education or whatever it is to file the application for a new passport, something like this. They weren't very enthusiastic. And then I had nothing to do in the summer, but I had money somehow, I don't remember.

Weiner:

Maybe from your old fellowship?

Gamow:

No. From the book or.... So I remember I went on a trip on the Volga, I guess, and then to Crimea, and then came back to Moscow at the time ... I was told to come two weeks before time I have to depart. And they said, "No, passport is not ready yet." And then the next two days later it was not ready, and my talk was long, the opening talk, here, it would be--now it isn't because somebody read it for me--and then finally it became quite late. Then they told, "Even if you go now, you miss the beginning." And I thought, "Well, at least I will have the last few days to see people." And then I came again two days later, and they told me: "It is not ready yet." And they told me sillily, "Now, even if you get the passport tomorrow, the meeting is over tomorrow." And I told, "Well, you know, the people are staying there for a week, so I can still go and talk to people." They told, "Well, it is not done, and you'd better sign here, "document, application for the cancellation of my application for the passport." So I signed, on the dotted line, saying that on the advice of the Soviet Government, I decided to withdraw my application for the passport to go to Rome.

Weiner:

What had changed in the intervening period? Was it a conscious, gradual, or a sudden change in policy?

Gamow:

No, apparently very sharp, very sharp. It is a dialectic matter, you see. I had to get a passport to go to England after I came from Copenhagen--Oh, wow, Russian boy gets a Rockefeller Foundation to go work with Rutherford, how wonderful! And it was quite a different gesture. But there is capitalistic science as it is continued now--capitalistic science and proletarian science, so to speak, were racing each other like the space races and this sort of thing and the people are not supposed to fraternize; they should continue enemies and things like this. And officially--no, not officially--I don't exactly remember whom I heard it from: I think it was the editor, somebody who had a connection with the Kremlin, I think he was editor of Gosizdat, the State publication, which published the Russian translation of this book.

Weiner:

Of your 1931 book? Yes.

Gamow:

And I think he found it out. So the situation was this, that the same year that the congress was taking place was 100 years since the birth or death of Hegel. And Hegel was the German philosopher who founded the theory of dialectical materialism, which then was taken by Engels and Marx and Lenin and Stalin and so on. And in Germany--which was Nazi Germany at this time, there was a big celebration, in the Berliner Akademie or someplace, of the Hegel anniversary, and Russia was not invited. They invited representatives from all the other countries but they did not invite the people from the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. And because the German Academy of Sciences, because Hitler didn't invite the Russians to celebrate Hegel's birthday, they decided not to let me go to Mussolini to Italy to attend this congress.

Weiner:

This was before Hitler came to power. Although ... it was two years before, so what you're saying is that the changed situation in Germany might have affected it.

Gamow:

I don't know. You may try to find it out, who was celebrating the Hegel ... although I believe I checked it quite recently. I never thought about it, and some conversation came up and I looked when Hegel was born and he was born 100 years before this date, so apparently there was something in his honor. And why they didn't invite Russians is another matter. And so it goes ever since.

Weiner:

Did it become clear to you with this refusal that, in fact, the situation had changed as far as your career was concerned?

Gamow:

Oh, yes. Well, this was the same time they attacked genetics and Vavilov.

Weiner:

Meanwhile when you went back in 1931, you had a specific appointment in Leningrad as a professor?

Gamow:

When I went in '31, then I got five jobs.

Weiner:

How do you mean?

Gamow:

Well, we had to get five salaries to get enough money to live: I was professor at the university, I was a member of the Physical Research Institutes attached to the university; I was in the Academy of Physico-Mathematical Institute; and I was in Radium Institute, where I lived, and I was also consultant or something at the Joffe Institute. A lot of time was occupied by collecting the salary--there was no checking system-- every two weeks we had to go collect salary and stand in line at the cashier's desk, at five different places. Or was it once a week, I guess. Every week. At five different places to collect five salaries.

Weiner:

How did you split your time, though? Was it possible?

Gamow:

I was doing nothing. I was trying to get out of Russia. I'd been traveling to Crimea and Murmansk and so on, trying to get out.

Weiner:

How did one do that? When you say "trying to get out," is this through actually passing the border without being stopped or does it mean ...

Gamow:

Actually the only real attempt was this attempt to cross the Black Sea in a small boat, which was a crazy attempt. We--me and my first wife--spent three days in a storm on the Black Sea and finally were thrown ashore, 60 miles away from the place where we started. I tried different things, investigating, and always found that ... We never did it again. This first attempt through the Black Sea could have cost us our lives because this was in a little kayak, and my wife and the boat were the same weight as I was without boat--just a rubber thing, but it could have made it, if the storm hadn't come--we could have crossed.

Weiner:

Did you carry anything with you?

Gamow:

Oh, food for five days, two bottles of brandy.

Weiner:

Any belongings?

Gamow:

No. Just five dollars which somebody, a friend, gave me and an English driving license, Cambridge, and the plan was when we got to Turkey (this was 170 miles across) I would say that I am a Dane--I spoke Danish-- and ask to be taken to the Danish Embassy in Istanbul from where I would telephone to Niels Bohr. Childish plan. And the rest we just found was impossible. One way or another. We went to Murmansk and tried to investigate if one can get some Eskimo to bring us across the border to Norway and found that the people talk quite freely about that. And, yes, but the thing was that all the Eskimos there were promised by guards if somebody hired them to go across the border to bring him into the guard house and keep any money he would collect from this man and get additional compensation from Soviet Government for it.

Weiner:

Without taking the trip?

Gamow:

Without taking the trip. And so nothing happened.

Weiner:

But apparently these efforts didn't come to the attention of any authorities because you were given permission later to go to a meeting, and if they had known that you were doing this

Gamow:

I don't know.

Weiner:

That's right; you had no way of knowing. Was there no legal way to go out, to say that you wanted to emigrate or that you wanted to study somewhere?

Gamow:

No.

Weiner:

That had changed completely.

Gamow:

You see before, for example, in this company with Landau and Ivanenko and me, and on the girls' side there was a person called Yevgenia Kanegiesser, a student of physics a couple of years, lower in grade progress, a younger student, married Peierls--the German physicist, you know--

Weiner:

Rudolf Peierls.

Gamow:

Rudolf Peierls. Peierls was visiting Russia, and they fell in love with each other. And she married him and she got official permission from Soviet Government to drop the Russian citizenship and become a German citizen. And then Hitler came, and they had to become English citizens, and we visited them in Oxford last time we were in England.

Weiner:

They went to Manchester, I guess.

Gamow:

And they went to England. But in any case, she got official permission. And at a time when I was stuck in Russia, these two years, she came back to visit her parents, with her, whatever it was, German or English passport, without being afraid of anything. She visited me. Because she had been permitted to drop.... Now there is a law that Russian citizens are not permitted to marry foreigners. It is a law, not permitted to marry, unless the foreigner decides to stay in Russia and take Russian citizenship. And if you go without permission, as I did, then you are a criminal.

Weiner:

Is it possible that you were considered a special person because of your stature as a physicist? The fact that you held five positions means that by this time not only had your colleagues come to think that you had an important position in the world of theoretical physics but that this was recognized within the Soviet Union by the government.

Gamow:

Well, the more famous a man is outside, the less is the chance they let him go.

Weiner:

When did you get married? Was this 1931?

Gamow:

1931. You see, it was this way: I was staying in Moscow, waiting for this passport. At this time I met a girl, a graduate in physics of the Moscow University, and actually the day I signed the document of not going, of withdrawing my passport application, I got her to be my wife, or something like this. And she came to Leningrad in due course, because it took some official thing for her to be discharged from her job, and we started making plans to escape, and succeeded in less than two years.

Weiner:

During these two years you did do some work with Landau, isn't that right, on a couple of things.

Gamow:

You see, this is published. Well, actually I didn't do anything especially good.

Weiner:

This "Nuclear Alpha and P-Levels,"* and "Internal Temperature of Stars.**

Gamow:

Oh, yes, this is Khibini. Khibini is near Murmansk; this is where we were trying to get across the border to Norway. And we went there with Landau, and Landau knew about this, of course, about the plans-- only two people knew, Landau and Bronstein--and Landau went back to Leningrad and we tried to investigate it, and we finally came back to Lenin- grad, too.

Weiner:

"The Internal Temperature of Stars," with Landau, was published in Nature.

Gamow:

It was written Ksuchia, which is also a joke.

Weiner:

What does that mean?

Gamow:

K.S.U. means the Commission for Helping Scientists, which is a special commission, government organization to help scientists, a kind of trade union of scientists; they have an organization of science clubs, and one good thing which they did is in various places--in Crimea, in *"Nuclear Alpha and P-Levels," Physikalische Zeitscrift der Sowjetunion, Band 1, Heft 3, 1932. **"Internal Temperature of Stars," with L. Landau, Nature, October 7, 1933. Caucasus, in Murmansk--they had the kind of lodges to which one can go for vacation, because otherwise you couldn't. In Hungary, you couldn't go and stay in a hotel.

Weiner:

It's the same kind of concept as a workers' place.

Gamow:

Yes. So there were a number of them, and when we were trying to-- in Crimea we stayed in one of these KSU, and another KSU was in Murmansk, beyond the Polar Circle, just for skiing, or something like this. A very nice place. One has to get a special permission, what is called "to be delegated," if one is good enough, have connections or something.

Weiner:

But is it meant to be a vacation retreat, nothing that has to do with any conference?

Gamow:

Vacation, 30-day vacation. And we used to call Ksuchia Baza, Ksuchia means like beach, Ksuchia is sand of the beaches, ksu means sand. The one interesting thing about this was that Landau would try to calculate the thermonuclear reactions in the sun, and we needed to remember the cross section or what not. But I remembered the distance to the sun, because it is 8 light minutes, but the diameter of the sun we didn't know. We needed it, so we had to measure it. I remember I built from a pen knife and wood a special instrument to measure the angle of diameter of the sun.

Weiner:

My goodness. It sounds like the ancient Babylonians and Greeks. There was no other way of doing it, of getting the information. I see it is only a brief note, only a page. And then there was another one in '33, "Mechanism of Gamma-Excitation by Beta Disintegration."* They were brief notes, all of them. "Nuclear Energy Levels,"** and so forth.

Gamow:

Yes. [Pointing to list] This is Solvay Conference.

Weiner:

Now let's get to that point.

Gamow:

This is Solvay [pointing].***

Weiner:

When did you get the invitation to that Solvay Congress?

Gamow:

Very late. You see, I did not get an invitation ....In the summer, we (my first wife) went to Caucasus, to Lenkoran, south of Baku, to see if we can get across the Persian border there and out of the country. Then we returned to Leningrad, took a train to Khibini, to investigate ... all the travel just special for this purpose. And then we came to Leningrad in the fall, and I found the note, must be September, I guess, from Kremlin, from Moscow, saying I am delegated to Solvay Congress. And my passport and documents will be ready by this time and just informing me that I am delegated.

Weiner:

Is that the procedure, to delegate someone?

Gamow:

No. What happened actually was this: You see, Bohr was very worried about me; and when I got stuck, when I didn't come to Rome, this was the first warning for me and for my friends. And then Bohr tried to get me to Copenhagen to a meeting and I applied for the passport, and it was "No." And then I got an invitation from Goudsmit, this Ann Arbor business, for which I have the letter. [Aside, called to wife, Barbara:] We have this very nice letter here, written by me to Sam Goudsmit, from Paris, 35 years ago.

Weiner:

And I would like to take a look at

Gamow:

The photostatic copy of it.

Weiner:

I can leave this; I have another copy he made me.

Gamow:

Oh, yes, that would be nice. [Again to Barbara:] You can see how my spelling is poor here. This is after Solvay Congress. I wrote to Goudsmit at Ann Arbor, saying that now I can come. Read it aloud.

Weiner:

There are two letters. Mrs.

Gamow:

"Two last years I spend sitting in Russia and trying to get permission for going abroad. Finally I succeeded in this very difficult business and could come to nuclear Solvay Congress, even taking my wife with me, which is now...."

Gamow:

[laughing] You read like a Japanese lady. Mrs.

Gamow:

"...nowaday in Russia nearly a miracle. Well, now when it is done I naturally decided to stay out as long as possible and at any case not to go back before next autumn. My main Anhaltspunkte here are Paris, Cambridge, and Copenhagen, and I wonder whether the kind (k-i-n-d-e) invitation to lecture in Ann Arbor, which I got last summer and could not follow in spite of all attempts, could not be postponed on this summer. Now nothing except the collision with iceberg in Atlantic Ocean could prevent my arrival. I shall be very grateful if you write me about possibilities. And, again, I am looking for to see the skyscrapers and atom splitters of U.S.A. and I also hope that there will be no collision with iceberg in the Atlantic. Our plans for nearest future are as follows: the day after tomorrow we start to England and stay in Cambridge. Address: Cavendish Lab. About two months. In the beginning of March, es geht los" (I don't know German--or is it Danish in this case?) "to Copenhagen, where I am invited by Bohr. Thus we start to U.S.A. evidently with Swedish Line and go direct to Ann Arbor. I think it will not be too late if I ask for U.S.A. visa just when I arrive to Copenhagen. Three months will do? But I think it will be good if you send me an official invitation to show there. After Ann Arbor, the plans are not yet definite. I am building up now my own five-year plan, you see, for staying outside of Russian boundary which was so difficult to jump over. If it will be possible, I will stay in America for longer time. I have spoken with Lawrence in Brussels and he promised to try to arrange the things. Thus I hope that from Ann Arbor we make a cross-country run to California. I will be very grateful if you could write me to Cambridge what is the mean price of life in U.S.A. I mean for two persons if we do it in quite a simple way. Do you have perhaps in Ann Arbor some university buildings for foreigners in order not to stay in hotels? With best wishes for a Happy New Year, Yours truly,"

Gamow:

You have a copy?

Weiner:

Yes, he made two copies; he thought you'd like one. Mrs.

Gamow:

His handwriting has grown much bigger. It's funny, you know.

Weiner:

His spelling ... is unchanged. Mrs.

Gamow:

The spelling is unchanged. Unchanged. That's right.

Weiner:

Well, that's the best way to get the whole flavor of that period. We've been talking a long time and what I'd like to do is just talk a little bit more about the Solvay, and getting you up to the point of this letter, and then maybe that'll be all for today.

Gamow:

Well, from my point of view at that time it was that we just failed to cross the border in Finland and Norway and here I am sent to Copenhagen--I mean to Brussels. Now, I think I told you wrong here; I got this invitation several months ahead, I am sure. Something is mixed up because there are lots of things which happened since. So I got this invitation, sometime in the summer--I think this September date was just wrong. We apparently went to Murmansk the summer before that or something because after I got this invitation I stopped trying to cross the border. But the problem was to get my wife with me because I knew that if I went abroad now I would not want to come back. On the other hand, I didn't want to have my wife staying there, so I have to come back. And so the problem was to get her out.

I happened to know one high politician, Bukharin, who was very high, you know, right hand of Lenin, Bukharin. Bukharin was already on the downfall--actually he was executed, as you know, probably a few months after I came to the United States--but he was in a position something like Vannevar Bush here, he was in charge of research and development of science, and I knew him through Academy of Sciences, you see. And he was the man who proposed to me to use all the energy of Moscow District for a few minutes every night to make the thermonuclear reactor wake up a while by heating it up, which I declined.

So I went to Bukharin; I went to Moscow and I went to him and told that I am going to, I am being sent to Bruxelles as a delegate, you see, and I would like to take my wife with me. And he didn't ask why do I want to have my wife with me--probably he wants to be delegated, too, and have his wife with him. But he told me the only thing he can do for me is make me an interview with Molotov. Molotov was the President of the Soviet Republic. And so I stayed in Moscow for several days. I went alone.

Well, my first wife's name was Rho, Lyubov [Vokhimzeva] actually, but nickname R-h-o, like Nicolette Rho--so Rho was staying in Leningrad; I went alone to Moscow and stayed in her parents' apartment and actually slept in her bed instead of her, waiting for this call. And in a few days--maybe two days or something--there was a telephone call from Bukharin's secretary, saying that you have appointment with Molotov. Appear at the East Gate of Kremlin at two o'clock in the afternoon tomorrow.

So I did, and I was escorted with two soldiers--I remember their bayonets--to the office of the President of the Soviet Republic. And at the desk at which Lenin was sitting once, there was Molotov. And then we had a conversation, since I was a delegate. And he told, "Well, if you think so, what you are going to tell there, and so on, and then why did you want to see me?" And I told, "I would like you to help me to get my wife with me." And he smiled. He thought, well, if you're going for two weeks ... I thought well, then I told the truth--only truth but not whole truth--I thought, I remember, that if I would like to build up a case I could tell you that my wife is a physicist, as she was, and acts as my secretary, and I can't attend a big information meeting without her help, taking notes and working and everything, but it is not true. She has never been abroad and I want to take her to Paris afterwards, show her Paris and buy her some clothes. So he smiled and made a note and told me, "Well, there probably will be no difficulty." And would I come in the fall--so this must have been in the spring, early summer apparently.

Yes, I remember I came out of the Kremlin, kind of dancing, and I dropped in the first picture store and bought a framed portrait of Molotov, and took it with me to Leningrad and hung it over my bed. Yes, really and truly.

And then in the fall I came in a few weeks before as requested, and I was met by the secretary of the Kremlin office or something. He wanted to tell me that my case was considered and it was decided that I should go alone, and I asked, "But why?" And he