George Washington University

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Chryssa Kouveliotou, professor of physics at George Washington University. Kouveliotou recounts her childhood in Greece and her early interests in physics. She describes her studies and political interests as an undergraduate at the National University of Athens. Kouveliotou explains her work at the University of Sussex where she pursued research in optical astronomy. She recounts her work in extraterrestrial physics at the Max Planck Institute and she describes the origins of gamma ray astronomy. Kouveliotou discusses her cultural introduction to the United States and her work at the Goddard Space Flight Center where she studied gamma ray bursts for her graduate thesis. Kouveliotou explains her academic work in Greece after her graduate studies and her research at the Institute for Space Physics, Astronomy and Education where she worked with data from the BATSE project and continued research on gamma ray bursts. She explains her move to NASA headquarters and her current work as a faculty member at GW. In the last portion of the interview Kouveliotou explains her long-term work in the field of magnetars.

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.

Gamow's involvement with nuclear physics. His later work in astrophysics and his interest in biology. Personal anecdotes about Gamow's childhood in Odessa, student life with Lev Landau and Dmitriy Ivanenko at the University of Leningrad, his fellowship at Göttingen, work in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr, and at University of Cambridge with Ernest Rutherford. Emigration to America in 1934, subsequent work in the United States. Work on penetration barriers, saturation, the beta decay rule, and the nuclear droplet model. Also prominently mentioned are: Hans Albrecht Bethe, Hermann Bondi, Walter Bothe, Maurice de Broglie, James Chadwick, John Cockcroft, Edward Uhler Condon, Francis Crick, Critchfield, Marie Sklodowska Curie, Max Delbrück, Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, Paul Ehrenfest, Enrico Fermi, James Franck, Alexander Friedman, Barbara Gamow, Thomas Gold, Ronald Gurney, Fred Hoyle, Petr Kapitsa, Krutkow, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Nikolaivitch Luchnik, Chester Nimitz, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli, Léon Rosenfeld, Dimitri Rozhdestwenski, Martin Schwarzschild, Edward Teller, Merle Antony Tuve, James Watson, John Archibald Wheeler, A. M. Wood; Associacion Venezueliana para Promocion de la Sciencia, University of Cambridge Press, Carlsbergfondet Fellowship, George Washington University, Institut de Physique Solvay, Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi universitet imeni A. A. Zhdanova, Moscow M. V. Lomonosov State University, National Academy of Sciences (U.S.), and Odessa I. I. Mechnikov State University.

Session two is a joint interview with Robert Herman. Family background and early education, work at Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, studies at George Washington University, wartime employment and studies, work with Navy on detection of mines; graduate studies with George Gamow while working at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, early universe theory, first encounter and later work with Robert Herman, interaction with physics community. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and L. R. Henrich, neglect of Alpher and Herman work by astronomical community; General Electric projects: supersonic flow, re-entry physics, the Talaria project; the Penzias/Wilson observations; honors, marriage. Miscellaneous recollections about youth in Washington, D.C., service on scientific committees, public education efforts, work at General Electric. Meeting of Alpher and Herman, their collaboration, cosmological theory, work with George Gamow, Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Edward Condon, cosmic background radiation, controversy with steady-state adherents and others; systematic neglect of their work, nucleosynthesis in stars, reactions to awards, discussions with Arno A. Penzias at the time of Nobel Prize award (with Robert W. Wilson), correspondence with S. Pasternack about P. James Peeble's cosmology papers, Alpher paper on neutrino and photon background calculation, James Follin, C. Hayashi, Steven Weinberg's presentation in his book The First Three Minutes; current cosmological efforts, A. Zee's papers on cosmology, views on the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, Fred Hoyle's recent writings. Also prominently mentioned are: Niels Henrik David Bohr, Albert Einstein, Richard Phillips Feynman, Lawrence Randolph Hafstad, Robert Hofstadter, Huntington, and H. P. Robertson.

Session two is a joint interview with Robert Herman. Family background and early education, work at Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, studies at George Washington University, wartime employment and studies, work with Navy on detection of mines; graduate studies with George Gamow while working at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, early universe theory, first encounter and later work with Robert Herman, interaction with physics community. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and L. R. Henrich, neglect of Alpher and Herman work by astronomical community; General Electric projects: supersonic flow, re-entry physics, the Talaria project; the Penzias/Wilson observations; honors, marriage. Miscellaneous recollections about youth in Washington, D.C., service on scientific committees, public education efforts, work at General Electric. Meeting of Alpher and Herman, their collaboration, cosmological theory, work with George Gamow, Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Edward Condon, cosmic background radiation, controversy with steady-state adherents and others; systematic neglect of their work, nucleosynthesis in stars, reactions to awards, discussions with Arno A. Penzias at the time of Nobel Prize award (with Robert W. Wilson), correspondence with S. Pasternack about P. James Peeble's cosmology papers, Alpher paper on neutrino and photon background calculation, James Follin, C. Hayashi, Steven Weinberg's presentation in his book The First Three Minutes; current cosmological efforts, A. Zee's papers on cosmology, views on the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, Fred Hoyle's recent writings. Also prominently mentioned are: Niels Henrik David Bohr, Albert Einstein, Richard Phillips Feynman, Lawrence Randolph Hafstad, Robert Hofstadter, Huntington, and H. P. Robertson.