General Electric Company

Grisdale's years at Bell Laboratories from 1930. Graduation as a chemistry major (with strong quantum theory interests) from Harvard University, 1930. Comments on the effect of the Depression and the work environment for researchers at Bell Labs (compared to university research laboratories); nonlinear resistor work, heat treatment (varistor, thermistor), synthetic microphone carbon; involvements in various departments after the war (Electronics Apparatus Department investigating selenium rectifiers) . Concepts of industrial research; the fifth circuit (papers by B. D. H. Tellegen at Phillips Laboratories); Clarence Lester Hogan. Also prominently mentioned are: William Baker, Joseph A. Becker, C. J. Christensen, Goucher, Green, Eloise Koonce, Sidney Millman, Stanley Owen Morgan, Gerald Leondus Pearson, Merle Rigterink, John Clarke Slater, Gordon K. Teal, Addison Hughson White, R. R. Williams, J. Wilson; Bell Telephone Laboratories Electronic Apparatus Department, and General Electric Company.

Early education. Krause and Harry Goodwin as teachers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Observatory work before 1900; assistantship at Wesleyan University, association with Edward B. Rosa, Walter G. Cady, and John Van Vleck, work on vector treatment of alternating currents. Joined Lafayette College. Joined National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in 1902, historical data on and description of NBS, influence of Rosa and Julius Stratton, Irving Wolff's work on EMF and R standards, major work at NBS of standardizing electrical units for industry, beginning of his work on capacitance. Ph.D. at George Washington University, faculty members, research on frequency and temperature and variation of condensers; Munich research with Arnold Sommerfeld and supervisors, 1908. Return to NBS, work with J. Howard Dellinger and Harvey L. Curtis; 1910 Conference on electrical standards and silver voltmeters; time at Colby College, teaching, inductance and capacitance work, Wenner's standard unit. Joined Union College faculty in 1920; attended 1931 Faraday Centennial in London. Later life at Union and association with General Electric.

Varghese Mathai, a faculty member in the Department of Physics at the University of Massachusetts, is interviewed by David Zierler. He discusses his reliance on simulated experiments during the pandemic and the value of this for fluid dynamics generally. Mathai recounts his childhood in Kerala, India, and how his interest in how things flow led to his academic specialty. He describes his undergraduate and master’s work in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science before working at General Electric in the Aircraft Engines Division. Mathai discusses his thesis research at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, where he studied buoyant particles in turbulent flow under Detlef Lohse and Chao Sun. He explains his decision to take a postdoctoral position at Brown University where there was a group focused on soft materials and flows with bio-inspired applications. Mathai describes the opportunities leading to his faculty appointment at UMass-Amherst and his interest in setting up a lab in the middle of a pandemic with clear opportunities to study Covid transmission as a fluid dynamics problem. He explains why the CDC guidance should have taken into greater account the expertise of fluid dynamicists and the protections (and limitations) that masks offer in stopping the spread. Mathai emphasizes the importance of visualization aids so the public can better understand the science of airborne transmission. At the end of the discussion, Mathai explains why, even after the pandemic, he will remain interested in collaborating with biologists to advance human health from the vantage point of fluid dynamics.

Interview discuss John S. Hall's early interest in astronomy; comments about family background and early childhood, schooling in Connecticut and college training at University of Amherst and Yale University. Early contacts and interests in photoelectric photometry, his pioneering efforts in red sensitive cell photometry, work at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT during World War II, postwar research at the Naval Observatory and his co-discovery of interstellar polarization. Also prominently mentioned are: Solon Bailey, A. L. Bennett, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Thomas Cochran, Robert H. Dicke, Harold Ewen, Fresnell, Green, Jesse Leonard Greenstein, Ejnar Hertzsprung, W. A. Hiltner, Gerald Edward Kron, J. A. Miller, Prescott, Jan Schildt, Frank Schlesinger, Harlow Shapley, Theodore Stoller, Otto Struve, David Todd, Robert Williams Wood; Amherst College Observatory, General Electric Co., Harvard University, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Science (journal), Sproul Observatory, United States Navy, and Yerkes Observatory.

Topics discussed include: family background, education at Duke University, graduate work at Princeton University with Don Hamilton, Ruby Sherr and Eugene Wigner, his work at General Electric with Roland Schmidt, Walter Harrison, and Gerry Mahan, magnetic breakdown, optical absorption spectrum of impurities and solids, teaching at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Rochester, electron scattering, involvement with the American Vacuum Society (AVS), his work at Pacific Northwest National Labratory, and his work at Xerox with Chip Holt and Sudendu Rai.

Family background and early education; early science interests (telegraph and radio transmission), wins American Chemistry Society Contest in high school. Caltech for both undergraduate and graduate studies, 1926-1934, comments on courses, teachers (Richard C. Tolman, Paul Epstein) and fellow students (Chet Carlson, the inventor of Xerox). Joins Charles Lauritsen's group as graduate student (nuclear physics), gets involved in research projects. J. Robert Oppenheimer's interest in their work, Ernest Lawrence's interest and objections to Lauritsen/Crane work on the radiative captive process (Enrico Fermi), Merle Tuve's involvement. Involvement in building machines for the Kellogg Laboratory (Seeley W. Mudd); Ph.D 1934 (The capture of protons by Carbon-12). Accepts offer from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; planning and building of a high voltage accelerator. Department involvement in applied work (GE, Ford), strong interest in biology; rising biophysics interest in the department. Wartime work. Recruited for MIT's Radiation Laboratory, later involved in Tuve's proximity fuse project; Manhattan District interest. Establishment of Biophysics Lab within Physics Department in Ann Arbor. The Racetrack Synchrotron. Also prominently mentioned are: Carl David Anderson, Ted Berlin, Sir John Cockcroft, John, Sir, Walter Francis Colby, James M. Cork, Leo Delsasso, David Mathias Dennison, William Alfred Fowler, Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Halpern, Fred Hodges, Lampe, Otto Laporte, Gilbert Newton Lewis, Edwin Mattison McMillan, Harrison McAllister Randall, William Ralph Smythe, Robert Thornton, George Eugène Uhlenbeck, A. E. White, Robley Williams, Ralph Walter Graystone Wyckoff; and Randall Laboratory of University of Michigan.

Family background and early education; early science interests (telegraph and radio transmission), wins American Chemistry Society Contest in high school. Caltech for both undergraduate and graduate studies, 1926-1934, comments on courses, teachers (Richard C. Tolman, Paul Epstein) and fellow students (Chet Carlson, the inventor of Xerox). Joins Charles Lauritsen's group as graduate student (nuclear physics), gets involved in research projects. J. Robert Oppenheimer's interest in their work, Ernest Lawrence's interest and objections to Lauritsen/Crane work on the radiative captive process (Enrico Fermi), Merle Tuve's involvement. Involvement in building machines for the Kellogg Laboratory (Seeley W. Mudd); Ph.D 1934 (The capture of protons by Carbon-12). Accepts offer from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; planning and building of a high voltage accelerator. Department involvement in applied work (GE, Ford), strong interest in biology; rising biophysics interest in the department. Wartime work. Recruited for MIT's Radiation Laboratory, later involved in Tuve's proximity fuse project; Manhattan District interest. Establishment of Biophysics Lab within Physics Department in Ann Arbor. The Racetrack Synchrotron. Also prominently mentioned are: Carl David Anderson, Ted Berlin, Sir John Cockcroft, John, Sir, Walter Francis Colby, James M. Cork, Leo Delsasso, David Mathias Dennison, William Alfred Fowler, Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Halpern, Fred Hodges, Lampe, Otto Laporte, Gilbert Newton Lewis, Edwin Mattison McMillan, Harrison McAllister Randall, William Ralph Smythe, Robert Thornton, George Eugène Uhlenbeck, A. E. White, Robley Williams, Ralph Walter Graystone Wyckoff; and Randall Laboratory of University of Michigan.

Recollections of Solvay and Volta Conferences, associations with Franck, Bohr and Mme. Curie; development of AHC’s cosmic ray interest, world cosmic ray expeditions 1931-34, anecdotes and memories of places visited; Compton-Millikan controversy; comments on Century of Progress Exposition 1933; memories of stay at Oxford on AHC’s Eastman Professorship 1934-35, associates at Oxford; recollection of European colleagues Aston, Fermi, Heisenberg and Sommerfeld. About AHC: Chairman of Physics Dept. at Chicago 1940-45, earlier contacts with Chicago, relation to Michelson, widening of philosophical interests, long-term consultant to General Electric Co. (1926-45), consultant to National Cancer Advisory Council and Chicago Tumor Institute. Disappointment in Compton family life, close working relationship between AHC and Betty, relation of physicists’ wives to their husbands’ work; Betty’s assessment of her career.