Stanley Wojcicki

Zierler:

Okay, this is David Zierler, Oral Historian for the American Institute of Physics. It is February 11th, 2021. I am so happy to be here with Professor Stanley Wojcicki. Stan, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining me. 

Wojcicki:

Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm looking forward to having a nice, interesting conversation. 

Zierler:

Wonderful. Okay, so to start, would you please tell me your title and institutional affiliation?

Wojcicki:

Okay, I am now Professor Emeritus in the physics department of Stanford University, Stanford, California. 

Zierler:

When did you go emeritus?

Wojcicki:

Oh, gosh. Not very long. Well, no, actually, it's been a while. I would say about four or five years.

Zierler:

Stan, in what ways have you remained connected to both Stanford and your physics research since your retirement?

Wojcicki:

Well, for the last year, essentially, I haven't been connected at all, partly because of the pandemic. Before that, I tried to stay involved in my research, which was basically the neutrino program at Fermilab. We had one major experiment that's called MINOS. It was pretty much coming to an end, so my involvement in it got smaller and smaller. Then, we had another major program called NOvA that I was involved in, but only peripherally. It was appropriate to let the younger guys take over since they're more competent and more familiar. The systems that we have now, both the software and hardware, are so complex that I think maybe I don't have enough brain cells to really handle them.

Zierler:

Stan, of course, you have some very accomplished children. I'm curious if you are involved in their career beyond just being a proud dad, in terms of your science and what they do?

Wojcicki:

You mean, literally children. You don't mean intellectually, children.

Zierler:

I mean your literal, actual children. 

Wojcicki:

Yes. No, I would say the answer to your question is probably no. I mean, I'm just not familiar with the fields that they're in, and also, they're complicated enough and technical enough that I'm not sure that I could contribute. Every once in a while, they flatter me by asking me a question. You know, this is the issue that I have, and I have to decide. What would you do and why, and so on? That makes me feel good, but I don't know to what extent they really need my advice. 

Zierler:

One thing I'm sure you've done as a father is you've conveyed your love of science to your kids. That must be fundamental to what they've gone on to do. 

Wojcicki:

Yes, I've tried to do that, and also, I think some of my grandchildren have really picked up on it. The trouble is that they ask questions about what happened before Big Bang, and stuff like that. Questions I cannot answer. I'm not sure anybody can answer. 

Zierler:

That's right, not even Andrei Linde can answer that one. 

Wojcicki:

That's right. Or at least Andrei Linde and Lenny Susskind can give different answers. 

Zierler:

That's right (laughter). Very good. Well, Stan, let's go all the way back to the beginning. Let's go to Warsaw. First, tell me about your parents. Tell me a little bit about them and where they're from. 

Wojcicki:

Okay, let's see. My father's family were farmers, and he grew up initially on the farm, and was really one of the first- I think maybe the first person in his family to graduate from high school. He was born in 1900, and not surprisingly, was involved in the Polish independence movement. Poland was not independent at that time, so World War I was seen, in some sense, as an opportunity, maybe, to regain independence. So, he was very much involved in that. He was involved politically in the peasant movement, and not only in politics, but also in better farming methods. For example, he played an important role in planting trees in various areas to protect them from the wind and erosion and things like this. He became friendly with a family who were rather well-to-do landowners in the village that he came from. They had, I think, four sons, and one of them was killed in the War. He was the same age as my father, and the family basically adopted my father as a replacement for their son. They were close friends ever since.

We were close to them through World War II and stayed at their house in the country during the summer, and so on. My father then got involved in a more serious way. That family, their name was Linowski, put him through college and law school. And then, in the mid-thirties, or actually early thirties, he finished his legal studies. He was then given an assignment in Białystok, which is in the northeastern part of Poland. That area kept changing hands at that time between Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and whatever. During that time my father met there my mother, who was about twelve years younger than he was. She was still in high school, as a matter of fact. They got married before she finished her high school studies. After this initial position in Białystok, which was a provincial type place, my father was posted in Warsaw, the capital. After that, about a year before the war started, he received an appointment as an appellate judge in Kraków. So, my parents moved then to Kraków from Warsaw. 

I was then about one year old. I was born in '37, and they moved in 1938, and the war started in '39. So, a lot of things were happening at that time. When the war broke out, he was high enough up in the government that he was evacuated with the main people in the Polish government through Romania and Yugoslavia, I think, and then Italy to France. So, he arrived in Paris in the summer or spring of 1940, and then he joined the Polish government in exile. Then, when the Germans invaded France in the summer of 1940, he, together with the Polish government, left France. Actually, I was told, it was on the last boat from Bordeaux to- I don't know whether it was to London, or to one of the British ports. In that government he was one of the representatives of the Polish Peasant Party, which was a continuation of his political leanings from the prewar times in that government he spent the whole war in England. We, being myself, my mother, and my older brother who is two years older than I am, we spent the war years in Poland, in Kraków. We were fortunate to be in Kraków because that was one city that was not bombed or destroyed either in 1939, or in 1945. So, I think we were quite lucky. We did have to quarter, throughout the whole war, two German officers in our apartment. We had to provide two rooms for them. They would change every six or eight months. Some were okay, and some were not, you know, like people are in general. 

The big issue at that time, early winter of 1945, on the international arena was the future situation of Poland. The three great powers, the U.S., Great Britain, and Soviet Union decided to hold a conference, with participation of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin to address these issues. The big contention at that time was what to do with Poland. Poland was the reason why Britain got into the war, and there were competing claims on the eastern part of Poland. Russians and Stalin wanted it to be part of Lithuania, Ukraine and Belorussia. There were two competing Polish governments, the one in London and the one formed by the Russians. The agreement was that these two would be merged and then have free elections, which would decide what's going to be the fate of the country. The members of the Polish government in London were encouraged to come back to Poland and try to collaborate with the Russians and with the temporary provisional government that was formed at that time. I think there were four parties involved in the Polish government-in-exile in London, and the Polish Peasant Party was the only one with members who agreed to go back and try to see whether collaboration is possible, and whether there's enough honesty to make free elections possible and so on. I don't think any of them really had great hopes, but nevertheless, a large number decided to come back. My father was one of them, and he came back in June of '45. 

Zierler:

Stan, what was your earliest memory of the war? 

Wojcicki:

Okay, actually, it's interesting. I was just asked the same question by somebody else yesterday. My first memory of the war was the following: people believed that the war will not last long, that the Germans will be defeated rather rapidly. So, when the German invasion started in September of '39, people felt that what we should really do is escape to the East, away from the German invasion. So, my first memory was actually in a carriage, one of these old-fashioned carriages, with seats for four people inside, and a seat up high for the driver. I remember it being very stuffy inside, and then I found it kind of hard to breathe. Anyway, I asked whether I could get out and sit up with the driver, and my mother allowed me to do that. So, that was my first memory, sitting with him and having a relief, getting some fresh air. 

Zierler:

Did you have any contact with your father from '39 to '45?

Wojcicki:

Yes, we did. We had sort of a continuous contact. I can't remember when the first letter or package arrived. It was not immediately. It was not from France, and it was not from England but through Portugal. So, we were getting regular packages from Lisbon, I think, every couple of months. Maybe more often. I don't remember exactly, but I remember at Christmas we would get a package with things like sardines and raisins, which you know, were not obtainable in Poland. So, that was a big occasion, a big treat. Whether my father actually wrote anything extensive, I just don't remember. I was too young. He might have. I just can't tell you. 

Zierler:

Was your family ever in danger? Do you remember especially as a boy being in danger in the war? 

Wojcicki:

Well, I knew that we were- I don't know whether in danger would be the right way to describe it but, in some sense, we were at the mercy of Germans. I mean, they were in our house, and on a couple of occasions, one of the officers came back drunk and threatened to shoot us because we didn't do something, or they suspected us, or whatever. Also, we would spend the summers out in the village where there was the house of these friends of my father's, the people that he befriended, the Linowskis. There was always some opposition to Germans out in the country. I remember on a couple of occasions just sort of sitting outside, and these four or five men came, and they were the guerillas. Partisans with shotguns, and whatever. We knew that, I think, the day before or two days before, there was actually a large squad of Germans that sort of patrolled the area and were searching in the forest for the partisans. So, in some senses, we were sheltering them. We had peripheral danger, but you know, I was six, seven, eight years old. I didn't really feel it very acutely. I knew there was a danger, but the repercussions always were not very clear to me. 

Zierler:

Stan, young boys sometimes think of heroes and villains. I'm curious, for you, who were the bigger villains, the Germans or the Soviets? 

Wojcicki:

Good question. I think, for me, Germans were bigger villains because I was not familiar with the Soviets. I was familiar with the Germans. There was a lot in the press, the concentration camps, the people shot. There were posters posted regularly about twenty or so Polish hostages being executed in retaliation for a German officer who was shot by the partisans, and so on. So, certainly, at least initially, Germans were the bigger villains. That was not true, necessarily, of my mother. She grew up, as I said, in this area around Białystok, which during World War I changed hands probably three or four or five times between these various countries, nationalities. She remembered the area being taken over by the Bolsheviks -- this was one or two years after the Soviet revolution -- and how they behaved and the cruelty. So, when the Russians liberated Kraków, when the front was moving, we were in the basement for two days. Then, Germans were pushed out, the Russians came in, and I remember we went out in the street, and there were three or four Russian soldiers just walking. Then we went back to the basement, and my mother was crying. I was surprised because I thought this was liberation. She said, I've lived through occupation by these people. I know what they can do, and so on. 

Zierler:

Stan, you were so young, you wouldn't have known these things, but was your sense- would someone like your mom have been aware of the Nazi concentration camps? Would she have known Jewish families that were deported?

Wojcicki:

Oh, yes, look, everybody knew about the concentration camps. As a matter of fact, Kraków was about sixty or seventy kilometers from Auschwitz. Our building was at the end of the street whose end was perpendicular to the railroad tracks. That's where the trains were going to Auschwitz from Kraków Central Station. So, yeah, we were certainly familiar with this situation. We didn't talk very much about it. I think my mother tried to protect us at some level, but it was inescapable that it would be part of everyday life. You expect that the risks of being taken- Germans would do such things as closing off a street and then arresting everybody entrapped and then sending them to concentration camps. So, it was completely random, no connection to anything obvious. 

Zierler:

Stan, when your father was reunited with the family, of course, a father's natural inclination is to protect his family. Did you ever talk to him about if he was ever emotionally conflicted that he was not there during this very dangerous time?

Wojcicki:

No, no. Never discussed that. You know, we talked about what he was doing, and whatever, that he was aware of it, but I don't think we ever got to the point of talking about his personal feelings and personal regrets, or whatever. Look, I think the nice thing was that had he stayed in Poland, he would have been shot within the first week, because one of the first things that Germans did in Kraków is they required that all of the people who were in the government, and also senior faculty at the university, come and report, and then they were arrested and either sent to a concentration camp, or some were shot. The idea was to eliminate all of the people who were intelligentsia and were potential leaders of any kind in the resistance movement. So, it was fortunate that he was away. A lot of my friends did not have fathers at home at that time. They were either killed, or they were in concentration camps, or in prison, or they were abroad. They left as part of the Polish Army, or Air Force, or whatever. My best friend, whose father was married to my mother's childhood friend was actually in that situation. He was an airman in the Polish air force squadron based in London, and his son and I were just friends. We were the same age within one year. 

Zierler:

What was it like for your family to return to life after the war? Was it a difficult transition?

Wojcicki:

Well, for me, it really was not. During the war, we did not go to school. We were homeschooled, and actually went to school for two days. That was at the very end of the occupation, because I think my mother did not particularly want us to be exposed- well, I don't know, really, to the various arguments. I could guess. So, we went for two days to school in January of '45, and then the Russians and the Polish Army came, and we didn't go to school. Finally, we didn't start again until, I think it was spring of 1945. I was in the third grade. The school I was sent to was very good. It was actually connected with the university. It was one of those arrangements where the schools use part of the time as a training ground for the future teachers. 

Zierler:

When did you start to get interested in science? Was it early on?

Wojcicki:

Yeah, I would say it was pretty early on. I’m trying to think- I liked to tinker. There wasn't much to tinker. We didn't have electronics. We didn't get a radio until several years after- well, no, it was about a year or so after the end of the German occupation. So, it was probably at the end of '45, or early '46. I don't remember exactly what kind of programs there were. The thing that I remember listening to on the radio once was actually a broadcast of a soccer match between Poland and Denmark. Poland was defeated eight to nothing. We certainly did not have television. I had never watched television until the States. But I was an avid reader of newspapers, especially at the beginning, when the war was still going on. I was following where the front was, and which battle was going on, and stuff like that. 

Zierler:

What kind of high school did you go to? Was it a large school?

Wojcicki:

I did not go to high school in Poland. I went to elementary school. I actually went to two schools. The first one was the one that was connected with the university. There were about between thirty and forty students in my class. It was all male, at least at the beginning. Then, at the end, there were two girls in the class. I was there initially in the third grade. Very shortly after I went there, I think it was in 1946,  the school was actually closed because it did not follow the presets of the government. I think I was there for a little over a year, starting in the spring of '45 and through '46. Then, later on, I went to more of a local school, which I think was also roughly the same size. I don't remember exactly. I was only there for a short period of time. We started in September, and then we left in December. 

Zierler:

Where did you go?

Wojcicki:

We went to Sweden. That's where we escaped. 

Zierler:

Because of the Communists. 

Wojcicki:

Oh, that's right. Yeah, well, I didn't finish the story of my father. He continued to be involved in politics, and there were elections in February of '47, which were stolen or forfeited. The outcome was that there were 400, roughly, representatives elected to the parliament, and then twenty-five or thirty of them were from the opposition, from the Polish Peasant Party. My father was one of the thirty or twenty-five. Because of his duties, he could not live with us. He lived in Warsaw (the capital and the seat of the Parliament) and would come for weekends every second weekend. Being a representative, he was immune from arrest. He had parliamentary immunity. So, this was in winter of '47, and I think about a year and a half later, it became clear that there was intention to dissolve the parliament and merge all the parties. That was sort of the end of any kind of independence they might have.

So, then, I think it was decided between my mother and my father that we had to leave Poland. Of course, he couldn't leave legally. The borders were closed: they were with Russia on the east, Czechoslovakia in the south, East Germany on the west, and the Baltic Sea on the north. So, through the sea was the only way to leave. To do that, you had to basically bribe Swedish sailors to take risks and smuggle us on their freighter boat, and then take us to Sweden. So, that's what happened in the very, very beginning in 1949, right at New Years. It was chosen to do that during the holidays because of the knowledge that a lot of the border guards would be drunk at that time. So, the watch would not be as careful as it would be at other times. So, then, we spent afterwards almost ten months in Sweden, just about ten months in Sweden before coming to the States.

Zierler:

Was the goal always that Sweden would be a way station before you go to the United States?

Wojcicki:

I'm not sure whether it was clear, whether it would be the United States or Great Britain, but it was not Sweden. I think it was the United States. It was safer. After all, in those days, with a nuclear bomb and all the weapons, Great Britain was not very safe, and there was a Polish government being set up in Washington. So, I think that was always sort of the plan. 

Zierler:

What were your father's career ambitions? What would he have done in the United States as he was planning this move?

Wojcicki:

First of all, I never really discussed it with him at that time, but I think he wanted to be involved in politics. He was hoping that the Russian occupation of Poland will not last a long time, but it will be at most one or two or three years, and that he would participate in liberation. Afterwards when and if Poland were ever liberated, he would be involved in the government. 

Zierler:

What was your family's status coming from Sweden? Were you a refugee family? 

Wojcicki:

Yeah, well- I don't know how much, if any, you know about the Polish refugee community- the Poles involved in the exile government. The leader was a man by the name of Mikołajczyk. Does that mean anything to you?

Zierler:

Yes, yes. 

Wojcicki:

Okay, anyway, he was a good friend of my father's and he was Polish Prime Minister in exile at that time. He escaped from Poland about six or eight months before we tried to escape. So, he was very eager for my father to come to the United States, because he had great respect for him. So, when we left and my father wasn't able to make it, he was the one who really arranged for us to be able to come to the United States. It was very, very complicated because of quotas, and ordinarily, people waited several years. So, if we had to wait for the quota, that would take a very long period of time. Mikołajczyk was able to actually arrange for a Representative from Detroit, from Michigan, by the name of Dingell, to expedite our arrival. I don't know whether you ever heard the name. 

Zierler:

Sure, the famous politician. 

Wojcicki:

Well, it's his son now who was in high school when I was in high school. As a matter of fact, we were in two rival Jesuit high schools in Washington D.C. at that time. So, anyway, John Dingell introduced a private bill to make us permanent residents, and after two years- these things take forever, I learned, that it was officially approved. Then, we were given our green cards, and four or five years later, I was able to become a U.S. citizen.

Zierler:

What was your family's first stop in the United States? Was it New York?

Wojcicki:

That's right, yeah. The boat came to New York, and then Mikołajczyk met us at the port, and we spent two nights in New York, gazing at the skyscrapers. I had two impressions. One was the skyscrapers, and two the size of the food portions. It was not something that we were used to. Anyway, then we went by train with Mikołajczyk to Washington. He published somewhat earlier a book that got reasonably good reception, and I guess that he got a reasonable amount of money for it. So, he was able to buy a house, and we stayed with him at his house for a while. 

Zierler:

Where was this? Where was his house?

Wojcicki:

In Washington, D.C. 

Zierler:

Stan, how was your English? Obviously, your father could speak English, but what about you?

Wojcicki:

Well, let's see. I started learning English in Poland, and also, I was learning some English in Sweden. I was in Sweden for almost eight months, and, I think, at least initially conversed in English, using somewhat broken English. So, it was hard, but I think I learned. Kids learn reasonably fast. 

Zierler:

Now, your family sent you to a Jesuit school. Was your family devoutly Catholic?

Wojcicki:

I don't know whether they were devoutly religious. Everybody in Poland is a Catholic, basically. There are very, very few non-Catholics, and you know, we would go to church every Sunday. As a matter of fact, there was a joke, at the end, my father was staying with us, no longer in Warsaw, but in Kraków, and we had two secret police agents guarding our entrance and following us everywhere we went. So, we were joking that they were becoming very religious because the only place we would go to would be the church. 

Zierler:

Stan, what work did your father ultimately find in Washington?

Wojcicki:

My father never made it. That's a long story that I don't really know. I've tried to find out, but I didn't completely succeed. We were supposed to leave on a boat, my mother, my father, my brother and me. Then, we were in this sort of a safe house right on the coast for four or five days, waiting for the boat that was going to take us. Then, on the night that this was supposed to happen, the man who was paid and organized the details of the trip, came in and said that there's only room for three people on the boat. So, then, there was an argument between my father and mother, who should go, and then it was decided that my mother should go because it would be easier for a single male to make the trip than a single female afterwards. So, we made it, but my father did not. He was arrested about a week or so after we left. 

Zierler:

Who arrested him, the Swedish authorities or the Polish authorities?

Wojcicki:

The Polish authorities. It took me a long time to find out exactly what happened, and then I got contacted by a Polish historian, this was five or six years ago, who was actually writing a book about opposition to the Communist government. He wanted some details from me about how we left, and about another colleague, and whatever. He had some relatives in the States, so I arranged for us to get together and talk. I asked him to get me copies of a lot of the documentation from the secret police, and so on. I thought there was going to be one or two pages, or whatever, something trivial. So, I didn't feel bad. I was sort of badgering him to get it for me. And then finally he came to the States, so I went to visit him. It was somewhere on the East Bay, and he had a stack of papers yay high, photocopies of all of the documentation. The trial and the interrogation, and whatever. It was really, really incredible, and then I got a lot of the details from that, exactly what happened. Apparently, the security of the guys organizing the trip was not very high. So, actually, police were tipped off earlier already, but there was some rivalry between the federal police and the city police. Each one wanted to get credit for the arrest, so they didn't report it right away or anything. That's how we were able to leave. So, my father was actually in prison for about five years, and then Stalin died and there was an amnesty. So, he was released. He was sentenced, actually, to ten years of prison for three things. One of them was trying to illegally escape. The other two had to do with his political activities, some even before the war.

Zierler:

Were you in contact? Was your family able to write letters? Did you have any idea if he was alive?

Wojcicki:

Yeah, well, first of all, we first found out that he was arrested on the Polish radio, which was about a month after we left, and about a month after it happened. Then, later on, we got letters -- I can't remember when we received the first letter, but it was several months after he got arrested. Afterwards, I think he was allowed to write one letter a month. So, I kept contact with him at that level. 

Zierler:

What happened after he was released?

Wojcicki:

After he was released, I told you he had legal training- he tried to get a job, and he was able to get a job as a legal counselor to a fish cooperative in Sopot on the coast. He stayed with his brother who lived there and had an apartment in Sopot. My father had a big family, large number of siblings, I think about four or five brothers, and one sister. So, it was a family of six, I believe. My father stayed with one of those brothers, the youngest one. We haven't seen my father, of course, for a long time, until things got a little bit milder, politically. We wanted to get together, but he could not leave. He tried to leave, but he would not be given a passport. I was afraid to go back to Poland, since I left illegally. In principle, I was subject to the Polish military draft, and I didn't want to serve in the Polish Army. 

Then, let's see, when was it? Was it 1963? early 1964, actually, I just finished my studies and my PhD, and then I received a year and a half fellowship from National Science Foundation. We were planning to spend the first nine months in Geneva, and then the last nine months in Paris. Then, we thought that after Paris, we might want to go to Yugoslavia and hopefully meet him there. Yugoslavia was sort of in a funny political situation at that time. It was Communist, but it was also not hostile to the Western countries. So, we thought that we would try to get a visa to go there for a month, and also hope that my father would get a passport. That worked out on both counts. He was allowed to travel to Belgrade. He had to go via- let's see, how did he have to go? He was restricted on how to go. Vienna, I think, was the most direct way to go there, but he had to go through Budapest, just to stay in the Communist territories and not go to non-Communist countries.

So, we spent a month there. It was a very nice month, and we traveled all over the country, we met him in Belgrade. We drove in our car from Geneva, and he took a train from Poland to Belgrade. We made reservations for him in a hotel there. He got there before we did, and we parked in front of the hotel, on the other side of the street. The hotel was on the left side, we parked on the right side. Then, just as we were getting ready to go into the hotel and ask about him, I saw this man coming out of the hotel. I said to my wife, "This is my father." This was '64. I mean, it was a good five or six years after I last saw him previously. No, no, it was more than that. Five or six years after he was arrested, and then there were another five or six- I don't know, it was a while. Anyway, so we spent a very nice time together- it was in September. A lot of the tourist season was sort of past the peak, so it wasn't chaotic.

Anyway, then, the year after that, we again spent a half a year, or maybe a year, in Geneva, at CERN. I got involved in an experiment at CERN, and they were willing to pay my expenses to come for half a year, and continue coming, and continue participating. Then, things got a little complicated, I spent some time in Geneva, and then some time in Paris. When we were in Paris, we tried to get my father to come to Paris, and he was not able to do that. He still could not get a passport. So, my wife went to Poland and spent the week over there, because, again, I didn't want to go. The following year, I was able to go to Poland for a conference. Things were really much better then. Next time we were in Geneva my father was able to come, so he spent actually two months in Geneva, staying with us. We managed to get a small apartment for him, and that was a very successful trip. Our kids- let's see, do I have a photograph here? I could show you the age of the kids. They were of a young age, less than five years old. We had already three kids. It was amazing. He was in his early seventies, but he had plenty of energy. He would get up in the morning and he would get up and take a walk through the countryside. He was very, very interested in the farming technology, so he would talk to the farmers. I asked him, "How did you converse?" He didn't speak French. He spoke English. He said, "Oh, well, I spoke Latin whenever I could." The advantages of classical education. So, anyway, that was it, and then a year after that, we actually went to Poland. I took my whole family there for a week. We traveled through all of France and Germany, and then Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Switzerland, about a month for the whole trip.

Zierler:

Stan, with all of these ups and downs, how did you maintain enough educational continuity to be admitted to Harvard? 

Wojcicki:

Well, let's see. First of all, one of my long stays was my seventh year at Harvard. No, I'm sorry. The initial thing was I was after I was an undergraduate at Harvard, so I really had no obligation during the summer. Then, afterwards, I was a graduate student at Berkeley, and so I had some free time. But then, after that, when I got a faculty position, the first time that there was a lengthy stay away was my seventh year. So, I basically took a sabbatical leave of absence. 

Zierler:

When you got to Harvard, did you know you wanted to pursue a degree in physics?

Wojcicki:

No, I was not certain. I thought there was a good possibility. The three fields I was thinking about were physics, chemistry, and engineering. My brother was one year ahead of me. He did a degree in chemistry, and I didn't particularly want to follow in his footsteps. Engineering, I don't know. I took an engineering course, and it was not very interesting to me. It was a lot of drawing, and this sort of stuff.  Again, I did not want to follow it. 

Zierler:

Why, ultimately, did you choose physics? Was it a particular professor? 

Wojcicki:

Well, yes and no. I was interested- I was always good in mathematics, but mathematics was too abstract for me. I did not think that I wanted to really devote my life to doing that. Therefore, the natural thing would be to go into a field where mathematics was important, was the basis of it. So, that was one of the reasons. Secondly, during that time, this was after the war when physics and science were really in the forefront, it looked like exciting things will happen in science. I think, in retrospect, the field I went into, namely particle physics, or elementary particle physics, was very similar to what cosmology was four or five years ago, in the sense that the field was just opening up, to a large extent because of the new technologies and detectors. So, it was wide open for novel experiments and one might be able to really make breakthroughs and discover really new things. So, it just looked like the right field to go into. 

Zierler:

Stan, who were some of the professors in the Harvard physics faculty that you might have become close with, or who were intellectually formative for you?

Wojcicki:

Good question. Let me think. I worked at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. Do you know?

Zierler:

Yeah, but you mean, as an undergraduate you went to California?

Wojcicki:

No, no. 

Zierler:

I'm asking, during your Harvard years, what Harvard professors were formative?

Wojcicki:

Oh, actually, I did not have much contact with the faculty at Harvard. The undergraduates were sort of isolated. I had to work part time in just menial jobs to really put myself through college. I was always short of money. So, I did not really do any research. There were people that I was impressed with, but it wasn't somebody that I would just, walking down the hallway, stop by their office and chat. What's new today in physics? It wasn't that. 

Zierler:

Did you get any advice about graduate programs to apply to?

Wojcicki:

Yeah, my advisor was Kenneth Bainbridge. He had quite a big involvement in the Manhattan Project during the war, and then he went back to Harvard. He spent some time during the summers in Berkeley, and he thought very, very highly of Berkeley. So, yeah, Berkeley had a very, very good reputation, especially in particle physics, partly because of the cyclotron, and Ernest Lawrence, and some of the other big names. So, I applied to three schools. University of California in Berkeley was one of them, and sort of my favorite. My first choice. Caltech was the second, and the University of Illinois in Champagne was the third. 

Zierler:

Did you get into all three?

Wojcicki:

Yeah, I got into all three, and Berkeley also gave me a- made me a teaching assistant. So, at least, I could earn enough money to be able to eat. 

Zierler:

Stan, you graduated in 1957, the year, of course, of Sputnik. Do you have a sense that the U.S. response to this was really beneficial to your ambitions in your career prospects?

Wojcicki:

Oh, yes, yes. From the point of view that it was clear that there's going to be a major federal support, and that redirecting some of the research and development funds towards basic research is something that this country has to do. So, yeah, I think that helped quite a bit. I guess, it happened when I was at Harvard. I'm trying to think. I think I was a junior at Harvard at that time. When was Sputnik? '57, did you say?

Zierler:

'57. Stan, did you start at the rad lab right away, or did that come later on?

Wojcicki:

Well, it was almost right away. Let's see, I came to Berkeley in September of what would become then my first year. I started talking to- you know, make a couple of visits to the Rad Lab to see what they were doing, but there was nothing professional, and too scientific. In the system that we had then, we had qualifying exams in January of your first year there. Then, after that, you had an oral exam with two or three professors, and then you were supposed to start doing research. So, that would be in the summer, at the end of the first year, or in the fall of your second year. I did very well on the qualifying exams. Actually, a couple of faculty members approached me whether I wanted to work with them. So, that was fun and gratifying. 

Zierler:

Who, ultimately, was your graduate advisor?

Wojcicki:

Officially, my graduate advisor was Art Rosenfeld. Do you know him? I don't know how much you know. 

Zierler:

Yeah, yeah. 

Wojcicki:

Okay. But I did not have that much contact with him because I worked on an experiment that was actually led by two other people. One was Harold Ticho, who was a full professor at UCLA, who came for the summer to Berkeley to work on that experiment, and thought it would happen quickly, but then actually lasted two years. And then the other person was Bud Good, who was an experimentalist with a postdoc position at Berkeley in the group. So, he was there on a semi-permanent basis, and then he left to become a professor, first at University of Wisconsin in Madison, and then at Stony Brook on Long Island. But we maintained very, very close contact. So, those were the two important people plus Art; Art was not that much involved in the grubby details of my work. He was more involved in- I'm trying to remember; I think he was already beginning to get involved in the energy conservation that he really became a pioneer in at that time. 

Zierler:

Stan, did you enter Berkeley with strong ideas about whether you would pursue experimentation or theory, or did you develop that as a graduate student?

Wojcicki:

No, it was clear to me I wanted to do experiments. Maybe it was partly the inclination. I was not that great in theory. I don't think I had a real abstract mind. I was more inclined towards experimental science. And Berkeley was really known, at that time, for its experimental science. It had a couple of Nobel Prize winners, and the work that they were doing was really at the frontier. Undoubtedly, it was the number one place in the U.S.

Zierler:

What do you remember as a graduate student as some of the most exciting advances in experimental particle physics at that time?

Wojcicki:

I think what was most exciting was our work. I hate to be self-centered, but I think it was. I don't think that I realized then the potential that our work had to revolutionize our thinking about elementary particle physics. 

Zierler:

Tell me about your work. How did you go about developing the research?

Wojcicki:

Well, it was sort of through the back door a little bit. I'm going to need to get a glass of water. 

Zierler:

Take your time, please. 

Wojcicki:

I'll be right back. Okay, I'll get some water and then we can continue.

[BREAK]

Wojcicki:

So, anyway, to answer your question, it's a little difficult because in particle physics, certainly in those days, and also today, a graduate student cannot just come in and say, "I will do this. I'm going to build this and analyze this and discover, and so on." So, it's really a question of connecting with an ongoing program. There was, at that time- the ongoing programs- maybe I need to backtrack a little bit. There were several groups in Berkeley at that time. Maybe five or six experimental groups. They were basically connected or centered around some detector technique. A lot of these detectors required a large support group, and therefore had to be institutionalized a little bit. One of those was the one that I joined, namely the group of Luis Alvarez. That was a group using hydrogen bubble chamber. Louie (as he was referred to in the group) decided a few years earlier that bubble chamber is the technique in particle physics where the big advances will come from, and that's why he wanted to build a group, which would require a large number of people, and then develop that technique. There were others like cloud chamber, and electronic detectors, and these were more classical techniques. So, I liked the bubble chamber technique, because you actually looked and you saw what has happened-- to me, that was very, very attractive. Secondly, it looked like a very futuristic type technique that this was just starting. Chances were that it would develop, and then new things could come out of it. Looking at things and seeing the actual event was just very, very attractive. So, that was an attractive group to go into, and they always wanted the graduate students because when you require looking at a lot of film and large number of events, you need a lot of people to do that. People were trying to do automatic scanning techniques, and I did some work on that, but it never really got very, very far while I was there. It was just very, very hard. So, that was one thing, and then second thing is, there was an idea to build a K-meson beam to look for a predicted particle called cascade particle. That sounded very attractive to me, and these two people that I mentioned, Harold Ticho from UCLA, and Bud Good from Berkeley, were the ones interested in that, and ready to take a lead role to develop this.

So, that's what I joined, and the first step was building a K-meson beam, which was never done before. Again, it also required pushing some novel technologies. So, there was that, and then we went ahead to build the beam. We took some data, and then we started scanning, measuring, and analyzing it. We got involved in doing some automatic analysis, automatic measurements for example and so on, so we could get a large sample of data. I worked with another graduate student, Bill Graziano, originally from Illinois. We became friends. And then we got the results from the first sample of data, and we saw these bumps in the spectra which were not expected prior.  So, then, there was the question of interpreting it, and people got excited. But it's something that we sort of fell into, you could say. Actually, that's not completely true. Bud and some others thought that in an analogy with another phenomenon, pion nucleon scattering, maybe you would see some things like that. 

Zierler:

Stan, this was a time of great interplay between particle theory and particle experimentation. So, I'm curious, what theoretical advances may have made the work you were doing possible, and the inverse, in what ways was the research you were doing advancing the theory at the time?

Wojcicki:

Second, not first. Actually, I felt very, very acutely that Berkeley did not pursue certain theoretical ideas. I found it a little bit difficult to find people to really give me advice about how you could interpret some of the phenomena that we were seeing. You could make some simple suggestions, or whatever, but the fact was that at that time, when you talked about elementary particles, you talked about electron, proton, neutron. In this picture there were very, very few elementary particles. It wasn't clear what actually defined an elementary particle. Which particle is elementary, which particle is not elementary? Our work changed entirely this conception of what is elementary; there's nothing magic about the fact that the proton is the elementary particle. What's magic about it is that it has a relatively small mass, and because it has a small mass, it's stable. It doesn't decay into something. But a particle with a higher mass would decay very quickly, not live a very long period of time. But it would be still, as far as overall theory is concerned, would still be elementary. Later on, Murray Gell-Mann at Caltech was the one who really got interested in that. 

Zierler:

Would he come up to Berkeley? Would he make that trip?

Wojcicki:

Oh, yeah. I remember a number of occasions; he would come up. It was really great. He would just sit at the table and talk, and you could ask questions and he'd try to answer. It was really very nice. It was clear that if this was going to be right, he was going to win a Nobel Prize. So, it was a real great honor to sort of sit at the feet of the guru in that particular area. 

Zierler:

Stan, when did you know you had enough to defend?

Wojcicki:

To do what? 

Zierler:

To defend the thesis. How long before your research was sufficiently advanced that you were ready to defend the oral portion?

Wojcicki:

It was of the order of months. Months. My thesis actually was sort of more mundane part of this work. It was something that required calculations. But yeah, I think so. It was quick. I mean, I think, certainly, in the group, I did my thesis earlier than anybody else. That's because I wanted to get out and people were willing to get rid of me. 

Zierler:

So, you said that it was the second, that the experiments were really driving the theory. Specifically, in what ways? How did the theory advance as a result?

Wojcicki:

Well, have you ever heard the term SU(3)?

Zierler:

Of course. 

Wojcicki:

Okay, well, nobody heard of SU(3), except mathematicians, before our work. So, the point is, it then became clear, or at least likely, that there is a whole slew of particles. The way to think about them is that they can be classified into groups. Specifically, SU(3) group is the one that is relevant. So, just a few years back, people saw that there are some analogies between neutron and proton. First of all, they both appeared to be elementary, and they both appeared to have very similar mass to each other, within a fraction of a percent. So, then, our work showed that it's not only neutron and proton, but there's a much, much larger group of particles, which belong together, in the sense that they have a number of similarities. The only reason that they don't look like they're really together is because the masses are somewhat slightly higher and that allows the individual members to behave in a somewhat different way. 

Zierler:

Were you recruited by Berkeley Laboratory while you were a graduate student? How did that connection happen?

Wojcicki:

Well, let's see. As I said, you took your qualifying exams in January of your first year. So, you came in- let's see, when did I come? I have to write down- anyway, you were still taking graduate level courses, and the qualifying exams basically covered the undergraduate work. So, I am trying to remember. It was one or two days of exams of all of the mechanics, electricity, optics and quantum mechanics. There were five different topics, and these were written exams. As I said, I did very well on the written exams. So, Art, actually, was the person who contacted me, because I think I was taking his graduate mechanics course, but I came in contact with him on several topics. So, he asked me whether I would be interested in working at the Rad Lab during the summer. So, we discussed that, and he showed me what I would be doing, and then I agreed to come and work in his group. He was sort of a lieutenant to Luis Alvarez, but he was really the one that was carrying out week to week type work in the group. So, I joined, and I was there for the summer, and I got along with the people, and people got along with me. So, they decided that I will continue part-time. I don't remember whether I had to take graduate courses still in my second year, or whether I was finished with that. 

Zierler:

Was this considered a postdoc, or was this a staff position for the Laboratory?

Wojcicki:

It was neither. It was a graduate student position. The Laboratory has, as its function, training graduate students, so they have to provide support. So, I think for three years, I was engaged on that basis. Then, finally, I had my thesis signed by three faculty members. Art was one, Lynn Stevenson was the second one, and the third one was actually an electrical engineer. They had to have someone from outside the department. Once I got that, then I became a postdoc, if the Lab wanted to hire me. Most importantly, there was a sizable increase in salary. 

Zierler:

Now, as a postdoc, were you continuing with the same research, or you took on new projects?

Wojcicki:

Well, let's see. No, it was a new project, but related project. As I said, what we were doing was working with bubble chamber technology. That was, expose the bubble chamber to a beam of particles, see how the particles interact. What happened at that time in the group, Luis had this vision of really big bubble chambers, because the bigger they are, the more events they get, and therefore, the better statistics you have. So, to do that, it required more and more automatic technology to both scan and to measure the events so that both the reliability would be good, and at the same time, you could process a large number of events. So, the group was planning the next generation of experiments, also with a K-meson beam, but with a different beam, more sophisticated. So, there were opportunities to contribute to that effort, and specifically, to developing the algorithm, scanning algorithms and measuring algorithms to allow you to process a large number of events. So, the idea would be that I would be involved in that work. You know, it's something that would have maybe twenty or thirty people. Also, by that time, other institutions would join the effort. So, this is really a very fruitful line of endeavor. So, there were also- I remember getting a couple of job offers from outside institutions. Anyway, I don't know whether that answers the question that you posed. 

Zierler:

What were the opportunities leading to you becoming an NSF fellow at CERN?

Wojcicki:

Oh, in those days, the National Science Foundation had the fellowship program for the  post-graduate PhD scientists. So, you just applied. One year was typical. You could apply for longer. I applied for a year and a half. You chose where you wanted to go and what you wanted to do, and then you applied. Then, you gave three or four names of people that could provide references. Then, you send it away, and if you're lucky, you get a thick envelope telling you that you received that. So, I did. It was a grand total of $500 per month, I think. No, sorry, it was $5000 per year, and I got a $500 supplement for my wife. So, I was making $5500 for a year, which was okay. I could live on that, but it really wasn't great.

Zierler:

What were your impressions of CERN?

Wojcicki:

Oh, I was very, very impressed. I loved it. I made good friends, and I liked it. It was reasonably casual. You'd get together for coffee in the afternoon and talk about things that you are doing. Do you know Geneva at all?

Zierler:

Yes, beautiful. Were you there long enough to do substantive research?

Wojcicki:

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I worked on a new facility called K-4, a new K-meson beam. I worked with two other physicists. One, a German one, who moved to CERN in Geneva with his family, and the other one, Rene Dubuc, who was a French physicist who had one of the French appointments. He would come occasionally to work with us at CERN. So, I think, from the point of view of timing, the arrangement was very successful because I was there long enough to be able to build a beam, and to debug it, and then look at the first pictures. I was not involved in the analysis of the data from the K beam exposure. I was involved in the analysis of the data from the antiproton beam, which went on later for a couple of years. I continued studying it, and that was part of the nice aspect of this that when my fellowship ran out, CERN was willing to pay my expenses of coming there twice or three times a year for a week or two weeks. I think I was coming twice a year, or something like this. I don't know. I don't really remember. But it was fun, and I thought that I was really able to contribute to the whole effort. 

Zierler:

Stan, being in Europe, did you ever have any desire to go back to Poland and see your hometown?

Wojcicki:

Oh, yeah. Look, that's the reason we wanted to go to Yugoslavia. I couldn't see Poland, but I could see my father. Then, afterwards I went- I mean, the first time I really went to Poland was, I believe, I'm not sure if it was the year before the Yugoslav trip, or after it. But it was actually a conference in Warsaw for a week. Then, I went there to participate, and I gave a talk. Then, afterwards, I went for a day, I flew to Sopot to see my father. That was the first time- that was before the Yugoslav trip. I was confused on whether that was before or after. Anyway, yeah, I went back to Poland, but I didn't go to Kraków until afterwards when I went with my family. Then it was really interesting.

I don't know whether you know, but later I had this appointment from Stanford that was tremendous fun. At that time, they had a program, junior year abroad program in Kraków. I was in charge, and it was a very small program. twenty kids. It was not very serious, but anyway, I had a nice situation of just basic simple responsibilities, pretty much free. I would give some seminars about my research, and I would organize different talks about different topics relevant to Poland at that time. For example, I would get an expert to talk about solidarity. That was one. Another talk was, I remember, about the pollution and climate. There was a big issue at that time in Poland having to do that. Then, there were practical things, like we went to visit a bank to talk about how they do things, and I think, a car dealership. So, it was nice. We were in the city that I grew up in. Where the lectures were held was a ten-minute walk from our apartment where we lived in Poland during the war. So, it was a tremendous, terrific time to spend time there, because the government had just changed a few months before, and there were all kinds of things that were happening that could not have happened six or eight months earlier. For example, the kinds of movies that they had, the kinds of stores, the kinds of newspapers, the kinds of books you had.

There was everywhere a revolutionary spirit that the country waited for ten years to be able to have access to, and then finally, got it and so now enjoyed it. I remember there was a book on the political goings on-- I don't know whether you know the Polish, or that part of the Polish history. Probably won't be able to find it. Oh, here it is. This is interesting. This is a book that was written by a man by the name of Jaruzelski, who was a Polish general- I don't know whether you're familiar with the name but he took over the government when there was this unrest and people were afraid that Russians would come in and take over. So, he actually carried it out, sort of a coup d'état. It was favored by some, and not by others. The book just came out when I was there, and I remember once walking in the main square, and I held the book like that. You could see what it was, and there were some people in a cafe nearby, and a couple of guys, who started yelling at me. "Don't read that crap. It's just a bunch of nonsense. You should read something more revolutionary," and so on. So, he was a controversial figure. The title is “Dlaczego” which means” because.” He tries to rationalize why did he go and take over the government through martial law? Have you ever been to Kraków or Poland? 

Zierler:

No, no. 

Wojcicki:

You should go. You should absolutely go, because it's still one of the cities that has not changed through the war. A lot of these cities, even Warsaw, are very nicely reconstructed. But it's new. Anyway, where was I?

Zierler:

Now, when you got back to Berkeley, did Stanford recruit you? Were you on the job market?

Wojcicki:

Yeah, I guess I was on the job market, and I guess I was being recruited at some level. I came from CERN from my fellowship, and then I gave myself a year to find a job and do that. I didn't advertise myself, or anything like that. But when people said, "Are you interested in potentially coming?" I said, "We can talk about it." And they would invite me to come and see the place, and whatever. So, I got several- I don't know, five or six job offers. But I didn't really look very intensively. I know that there were about four or five faculty members in Luis's group. They had a meeting and then they decided that they would want to support my candidacy for a faculty position in Berkeley. So, Luis told me that, but at the same time I had two other offers that- well, a number of offers, but the two that I was talking seriously about, one was assistant professor at Harvard. The second one was associate professor at UCLA. Harold Ticho was the person who was really pushing that. And then basically the position at Berkeley. 

Zierler:

So, UCLA was offering you tenure. 

Wojcicki:

That's right. Also, from Wisconsin, I was told that I would get a tenure offer. Also, I think UC Irvine was just starting. There was a new campus that was just starting, and that looked very attractive. I liked the area, but anyway-

Zierler:

So, at Stanford, it was the Department of Physics you were talking to. It was not SLAC.

Wojcicki:

That's right. That is correct, yes. 

Zierler:

And during those years, the rift between the physics department and SLAC was significant.

Wojcicki:

Well, that's right. Yes. They were different institutions, with different philosophies, and all of that. Different missions, the way they saw it. I don't know, the general opinion outside, I think, was that the Physics Department maybe was a better position for somebody like myself. I am not sure whether that's necessarily true. The nice thing about SLAC was the support. They had a big contract, whereas if you- when I went to Stanford, they were nice to me- well, let me backtrack. The reason I went to physics department rather than Harvard, or something else, was Mel Schwartz. Have you ever met Mel?

Zierler:

I did not meet him, no. 

Wojcicki:

Mel was one of the most inventive people that I've ever met. He was also one of the most fun of the people to really work with. Overall, this position, but also his range of ideas. He would sometimes come up with such crazy ideas that it was a- I remember we worked on this experiment, so, anyway, he convinced me to come. He just accepted a full professor position at the Stanford Physics Department coming from Columbia. He became a full professor in an incredibly fast time over there. Anyway, so he wanted me to- I was at that time thinking- I decided not to go to UCLA. That just seemed too easy. So, it was a question of going to Harvard, which probably meant that I would just not have a permanent position, but really have to look three or four years later, look again. 

Zierler:

Stan, at this time, Stanford did not have a strong reputation for promoting assistant professors. 

Wojcicki:

That is absolutely correct, yes. 

Zierler:

Did you have any assurance that that would not be the case for you?

Wojcicki:

No, no, no. Well, the assurance- yes, at some level. Leonard Schiff was chair of the department, and when they sent me the letter, he asked me to come have lunch or dinner with him at the faculty club here. So, we did that, and we talked. It was going to be a three-year appointment, and then he said, "Well, if it doesn't work out for three years, we can always give you a reappointment for the fourth year." That was his reassurance, if you like. But Mel told me, "Look, I'll fight very hard. You'll be recognized for whatever you do, if anything." So, it was fun, and I was lucky. If it weren't for Mel, I would not have gotten the tenure position, because one really needed somebody to push very hard. Since he just sort of came, he was still welcome, and faculty members tried to be nice to him. 

Zierler:

Stan, what was your research at this point, from the transition from assistant to associate professor?

Wojcicki:

Mel and I worked together. We got a couple of post-docs and one or two graduate students, and that was it. We were basically working on something called CP violation. So, that was the first experiment with that beam of K-mesons, and then the second experiment was also with that. The first one was quite successful; the second was not very successful.

Zierler:

What was the instrumentation? What were you using for these experiments?

Wojcicki:

It was spark chambers. Spark chambers and counters and so on. 

Zierler:

Had you used spark chambers before?

Wojcicki:

No, no.

Zierler:

How relevant was your work on bubble chambers for spark chambers?

Wojcicki:

No, it was not at all. It was completely different. I think it was a little bit outside of the mainstream of what was being done at SLAC. What people were doing at SLAC was electron scattering and studying the structure of the proton when you bombard it with the electrons. 

Zierler:

Would you spend time at SLAC at all?

Wojcicki:

Oh, yeah, I had an office. I still have an office at SLAC. I tried not to be touched by any conflicts between SLAC and the physics department. I had very good relationships with people both at SLAC and at Stanford. As a matter of fact, before I came to SLAC, before I came to Stanford, and committed myself to it, I went up and I talked to Pief [Panofsky]. He knew that they were making me an offer, and then I asked him what the possibilities are and what he felt about that, and whatever. Then, he said, "Look, we'll welcome you with open arms and whatever you want to do, I'm sure you're welcome." And he just went quickly through various groups and what they're doing, and where they could use extra manpower to do that. 

Zierler:

What groups did you join? What kind of work did you do with SLAC in the early years?

Wojcicki:

Oh, well, we worked together with Mel Schwartz, so in some sense, it became a very new group, a very maiden group.

Zierler:

So, you're saying your collaboration with Mel happened mostly within the SLAC environment. 

Wojcicki:

That is correct. I don't quite know what that means, when you said SLAC environment.

Zierler:

I mean, physically, you were at SLAC. You were doing this work at SLAC. 

Wojcicki:

Well, yes and no. We actually did something which turned out not to be too useful, and that is developed some scanning facilities. The way it worked was that you would take the film at SLAC in the beam over there, bring it to the physics department, have a graduate student then scan for events following the instructions, and so on. So, it was not that much different than if you have two different offices down the hall at SLAC, and you use one. Some work you do in one office, and other work you do in the other office. I think it worked pretty well. Nobody got antagonistic to us, and then later on we did experiments which were collaborative with SLAC groups. For example, with Dick Taylor's group, we had an experiment. 

Zierler:

Stan, how did you get involved in advisory work for Fermilab?

Wojcicki:

Yeah, how did I get involved? One of my follies. Somehow, I got a reputation as somebody who's willing to do advisory work and tries to do it reasonably carefully or conscientiously. You know, each laboratory that has an accelerator, generally has an advisory group. It's called PAC, standard name. Program Advisory Committee. That is, people submit proposals. Those proposals go- this is the way it works, go to the laboratory, and the laboratory has a technical staff that evaluates these proposals from the point of view, whether it's feasible. For example, how many protons they claim they need to be accelerated to get a meaningful answer. This kind of thing. Can you really do that, and so on? Is the background going to be manageable and/or low enough, and things like that? So, they evaluate that. Then, two or three times a year, they have a meeting of this program advisory committee that looks at all the proposals, and looks at the laboratory technical evaluation, and they come up with a recommendation to the director. The director can either accept it or reject it or request further information.

So, anyway, one of the first ones of these that I did was actually at Berkeley. Berkeley had still an ongoing accelerator called Bevatron, that actually, I did my thesis on. And then I was asked to serve on that, and I agreed. I don't know, I guess, they felt that- I don't know, maybe that's how I got a reputation, or whatever. I don't know. But anyway, a few months later, or maybe it was a couple of years later, I got requested to be on the Fermilab PAC. I liked the idea. It was very nice, because you had a couple of meetings per year at the lab, and then you had a weeklong meeting in Aspen during the summer to really have more of a detailed look at the program. I already had a request or proposal for an experiment at Fermilab, so I was already involved at Fermilab. I think this was- trying to remember whether the machine was working already or not, or whether they were still finishing it. Anyway, they wanted somebody with some familiarity with the laboratory and how things work there, so you don't start completely from scratch. At the same time, somebody who would take it reasonably seriously. At least, that's the way I rationalized.

Zierler:

What were some of your experiences doing advisory work for the Department of Energy, for HEPAP?

Wojcicki:

Yeah, I don't know. I don't really- there were two aspects to it. I don't know how much you know about how HEPAP works. Basically, there is a standing committee that has about fifteen or so people, that has a chair, and has members, and they meet two or three times a year. Maybe once or twice at the lab itself, and then once or twice at some other lab, or at the university, or what have you. They review the program, and sometimes they have specific questions. In addition to that, there are HEPAP sub-panels, which are separate groups that are theoretically appointed by- I don't know whether theoretically they’re appointed by HEPAP itself, or by DOE itself. Anyway, it's an independent- not independent, but a separate group. They have a specific charge, and the charge depends on the sub panel, and it could just be for one meeting, or it could be for more than one meeting, to address a specific question. For example, a specific question might be, do you want to upgrade this facility, or do you want to start work on this facility, or whatever? So, it's a very project-oriented type recommendation. Now, why was I selected to do it? That's a good question. It was a very controversial charge- I don't know. In retrospect, I'm kind of sorry that I didn't just walk away from it. 

Zierler:

Why is that?

Wojcicki:

I don't know. It took a lot of work. It wasn't clear that there was an obvious solution to which I could really contribute something that was- some brilliant ideas. Well, let me tell you, the project was ISABELLE. Are you familiar with that?

Zierler:

Sure.

Wojcicki:

It's a facility, proton storage ring and accelerator to be built at Brookhaven with superconducting magnets. Technically, it was very advanced, and there were all kinds of technical difficulties connected with it. So, the project was taking longer than originally promised. It wasn't clear that it was going to meet its specifications. So, the Department of Energy seriously considered whether it should be canceled. So, that's why they asked HEPAP for advice about that, and they appointed this panel. They anointed me as the chair of that panel. There were about twelve or thirteen people on it. The thing that made the role very, very difficult, and I was foolish enough and already knew that it's going to be like that, but I accepted nevertheless –

Zierler:

Stan, were you involved with SSC planning from the very beginning?

Wojcicki:

Yeah, I'm getting to it. There was sort of a natural flow of events, and so on. There was an ISABELLE project. Then Fermilab proposed its own project, basically a new accelerator which would be less expensive, and whatever. And then, at the same time, CERN already completed the LEP, and they were talking about upgrading that to a proton machine, LHC, which would be much, much higher energy, almost a factor of five or ten. Then, when ISABELLE was proposed, a lot of people in the U.S. said we should cancel the ISABELLE, and we should do a project which is a rival to the one at CERN, or even better than the one at CERN. So, that made the whole thing very, very difficult because it involved, for example, extrapolations, how well you could do that, and very importantly, also, is this realistic? I mean, you're talking about, at best, $3 billion, is what people were talking about. I'm not sure that I really could know how to evaluate the costs at that level. Okay, so anyway, the bottom line, what happened after all of that, and what the panel decided- it was a very narrow margin; it was almost like impeachment of Trump, that close- to cancel ISABELLE, actually, and recommend fast advancement in the research on the SSC. It was given a name, SSC, at that time. So, there was the recommendation. So, the question is, how do you bring it about? They create this thing out of nothing, so the suggestion was that the URA, which was the parent organization of Fermilab, and also had a national role since Fermilab was run as a national institution, would be the parent institution. I think there were eighty or ninety universities that were a part of URA, and URA was sort of the board of trustees with fiduciary responsibility over Fermilab. Oh, yeah, one of the things that made it sort of difficult and unpleasant for me is that at that time I was on the board of trustees at Brookhaven. So, I had to quit. But actually, I didn't quit until after the decision was made, which was probably a mistake. Things just didn't look right. Anyway, we said to cancel the ISABELLE. So, then, the SSC R&D effort was formed, and then Maury Tigner was chosen as its director, and he asked me to be the deputy director, sort of in charge of external relations, both within physics, abroad, universities, Congress, and whatever. 

Zierler:

So, you would be the public face, essentially. 

Wojcicki:

That's right. One of the public faces. I didn't want to overtake Maury. That would not be the thing that I would want to do. And I also wouldn't then serve the community well. So, anyway, that's how I got into it, for better or for worse. Okay, so it was clear that there was going to be R&D on the machine for at least one, probably two years, before you can really go with actual plans to construct something. So, there was sort of a small side search to find an optimum place for the R&D effort. There were several different laboratories and universities that proposed to host the design group, which wasn't big. I mean, it had twenty or thirty PhD physicists, or machine physicists, I should say. Berkeley looked like the optimal place, to a large extent because they do have a good technical group, and they do have a strong accelerator group to do accelerator physics. So, then, I was debating whether I want to do that or not, because that involved seriously leaving the university, at least for a while. The fact that it was at Berkeley made it possible because I could commute every day, and stay at home, and continue at least part time on my research. It was just a very, very hard decision. 

Zierler:

Stan, with all of these administrative responsibilities, you were able to keep up with your own research?

Wojcicki:

Not really very much. Theoretically, yes. I told Maury and the URA people that one day a week I will spend on my own research. I think I did at some level, but not really. Not only that, but also, I was on leave of absence from the physics department also. I think I had one or two graduate students. So, it was more than just my own research. There were some university obligations. 

Zierler:

Stan, when do you remember Waxahachie being raised as a serious contender for the site? Was it early on, or did it come later in the process?

Wojcicki:

No, I think it was from the very beginning. The point is- again, I would have to stop and think- just to remind you, the process was that there was an official request for the site, and in the response to that, there were, I think, about fifty or so proposals from almost all of the states. Maybe two or three states did not make a proposal. Some states submitted two proposals. Waxahachie was already one of them at this stage. Texas, I think, had two or three proposals, and they were all very serious. I do not remember where the second one was, I think near the panhandle. Then, there was a committee formed to really look at these and choose a few as optimum- I think the number was eight. Eight that were the best. I was on that committee. You see me on all committees, you see? Once you get sucked in, you can't get out. So, it was- let's see, trying to remember where was the other one. So, anyway, there was this committee that considered it, and chose eight, and Waxahachie was one of those. Then, we had site visits that were DOE-conducted, and there was a ranking obtained. I think Waxahachie came out number two or number there. It was Illinois and Texas, Waxahachie. Fermilab was the linchpin of the Illinois proposal.

Zierler:

What were your feelings on these debates? Where did you want to see it be built?

Wojcicki:

I had mixed feelings, and it's mainly because I did not really understand all of the problems. On one hand, there was a tremendous advantage of doing it at Fermilab. One of the sites was Illinois, and they would use the Tevatron as an injector, and a lot of the infrastructure for that. Using Fermilab had great advantage, not only because that would provide some ready hardware which could be used, and therefore would reduce the cost, but more importantly, they had staff. So, therefore, it would be easier to recruit people, and also, they had an ongoing physics program already. Therefore, when you tried to recruit people, you could say a third of the time they could spend doing their own experiment, and we have this machine, and it will be working, and whatever. So, those were the two top contenders. The reasons, as you see, were very, very different. The arguments that were being given- you could give the counter argument to Waxahachie. It would be easier to recruit people when it's a brand-new site, not coming into stagnant old institutions, and whatever. But Waxahachie was a good site. You could go through these arguments, and which side of the arguments you come out on maybe depends on- I don't know on what. A lot of people were saying that Illinois is not going to be successful because it's in the middle of cornfields of Illinois. But, you know, Bob Wilson was a great guy. He managed to pull it off, and he was a good accelerator person, also. The thing that was worrisome, was his philosophy which maybe was okay up to Fermilab size, but not clear that it would be okay for the SSC size, from the point of view of the risk. If you build 1000 or 2000 magnets, you could afford to redo them. If you build ten or twenty thousand magnets, it is not clear that you would be able to do that. 

Zierler:

Stan, at any point, did you consider leaving your faculty position for SSC full-time, like people such as Roy Schwitters or Fred Gilman did?

Wojcicki:

Did I ever consider it? I think the answer is yes, but not very seriously. I could just see- we were pretty well established by that time. We've been here for many years, or close to that. I don't know. I guess, I would have to write down the- it's been a while since I did real quantitative type analysis of what I would do when, and how that would affect things. What grade my kids would be in, for example. Palo Alto has an extremely good school system. Are you familiar with this area?

Zierler:

Sure, it's Palo Alto!

Wojcicki:

So, my wife had a good job at Palo Alto High School. She liked it.

Zierler:

Stan, of course, the big question with SSC is, what were your first inclinations that there was a big problem, that the SSC would not come to fruition?

Wojcicki:

Good question. My first problem was before it was anointed, very, very early in the game. There was just such an immense number of questions that you had to answer, and then get the right answer before it would really happen. Not only technical, but also sociologically, and all of that. And then there was the whole question with Europe. Would there be a peaceful transition to a big machine compared to Europe? A lot of people felt that we should not be building the SSC. We should be building LHC at CERN, and then maybe plan for a next generation machine afterwards. BJ, for example, gave me once a whole lecture arguing that point-

Zierler:

BJ Bjorken, you mean?

Wojcicki:

That's right. You know, he was right on some level. So, I guess, if you would ask me the, what do you think are the chances of the SSC being created? I would say, certainly less than fifty percent. I think, part of it has to do with the U.S. government. We have a reputation of maybe not planning things very well. We don't commit at one time to a year or two of funding. We don't have a reliable long-range funding plan with which one can plan how much money I'm going to have three years or five years from now. Like, when the analogy was used- I think it was in the Secretary of Energy speech to Congress where he said that when we build a battleship, we don't allocate money year by year, because we can't say, well, you can build this cannon, but not this one this year. Maybe next year, we'll let you build this one. Just in case they work that way. I think this was sort of a similar type beast. So, I don't know, I felt that you could get people to come to Waxahachie, and that it was a relatively pleasant place to live. It's close enough to Dallas, and Dallas, I think, is a reasonable place. I don't know about schools. They're probably not as good, but it's the money. For example, this issue, space station or SSC?

Zierler:

Right. A binary choice, in some ways. 

Wojcicki:

That's right, yeah. The space station people could understand. SSC, people could not.

Zierler:

Stan, from your vantage point as an experimental particle physicist, not in an administrative capacity, but when the SSC seemed viable, that there was a chance that it would be built, what was so exciting about that for you? What was going to happen as a result of SSC, and how would that move the field forward? Were you thinking about the Higgs, for example?

Wojcicki:

Oh, yeah. Well, I wasn't thinking so much personally about the Higgs, but I was thinking more in terms of a new frontier. Ever since I was a student in this field, there have been many, many proposals, and there was much rationalization given to them. Generally, what happened was that the machines were very productive, but the most exciting discoveries that were made were not what they were proposed for, but for something else. 

Zierler:

Were you thinking about supersymmetry at all during these years?

Wojcicki:

Oh, yeah. Supersymmetry was one of the many proposals that were thought of as a way of explaining what happens at high energies, and what kind of models you have to have for a self-consistent theory. You know, the Bevatron, for example, was built to discover antiproton, but so what? Everybody knew that antiproton was there. The phenomena we observed were really much more interesting in the long run, because they really revolutionized how we thought about particle physics. This was a whole big family of things. The AGS at Brookhaven was another example: It was built to study pion scattering and things like this. But probably the most exciting thing was the J, let me call it that. Right? I mean, that was- what else? There are a couple of other examples you could think of. Anyway, that, I think, influenced my thinking about this machine as far as physics is concerned. I could not get too excited about doing calculations and producing books 200 pages long, with graphs.

Zierler:

You left the Central Design Group in 1989. By the time you left, was the SSC still viable? Were you thinking that it was possible that it would still go ahead at that point, or the writing was already on the wall?

Wojcicki:

No, it was still viable. I guess the question maybe should be to what extent did the chances look better then, than they did two years earlier when the initial design was formed? I'm not sure that things changed drastically during that two-year period. 

Zierler:

Except that the budgets kept getting bigger and bigger.

Wojcicki:

Yeah, I was going to just say that. The financial aspect looked worse. The budget always goes with the timescale. If you extend the timescale to build something, the budget also goes up. The great thing about the SLAC accelerator was that it came exactly on time, and therefore exactly on the money. Same with Bevatron and also the 400 GeV machine, as it was called in those days, I guess. So, yeah, there was a potential problem, and then there was this thing, do you want to reduce the scope of the machine to save money? If you do, how do you do it? Do you reduce the circumference? The trouble is, once you start doing that, then a lot of people are beginning to lose interest in the machine. They're giving up because you get closer and closer to what CERN is planning to do, and they're going to do it probably earlier. But that issue came up after I left, if I remember correctly. There was, again, a HEPAP subpanel that Sid Drell, I think, chaired, that recommended that you don't change the scope of the machine. 

Zierler:

Now, as chair of HEPAP, right in the middle of this, '94-'95, when the SSC might be really done, you must have been right at the center of existential questions about the future of high energy physics in the United States. 

Wojcicki:

That's right, but it was not as strong as you might think, as it should have been maybe. It was sort of assumed passively- I wouldn't dare to go up on a podium in Congress and say, "Well, of course, you've got to do that. What kind of stupid thing to even propose thinking about?" 

Zierler:

Was there a sense during these meetings when you chaired HEPAP that people recognized that the United States was ceding leadership in the field to Europe?

Wojcicki:

Oh, yes. Absolutely. I think a lot of people used that as an argument, actually, for canceling ISABELLE and not to go ahead quickly with the SSC. I don't know whether it was really a very good argument, necessarily. These machines could be- the argument that was also given frequently is that if you don't have a frontier machine in a large region, like the United States or Europe, then it's really difficult to have a top-notch frontier program also in the field there. I'm not sure whether I believe that argument or not. The Japanese have done very, very well, I think, both with their e⁺e^- machine, and with the underground facilities. So, I think it's possible. 

Zierler:

Stan, it's not a perfect comparison, but given that LHC has not seen anything beyond the Higgs, to what extent does that provide reassurance that maybe not so much was lost as a result of the SSC not coming to fruition?

Wojcicki:

That's right. No, look, I must confess that I always have doubts about whether we really know what we're doing, or whether it's just the error bars are so huge that you cannot be certain whether you're doing the right thing or not. 

Zierler:

But these are doubts that are more prevalent later in your career. At the beginning, you were involved in so much fundamental work at the frontier that I'm sure you never thought like that. 

Wojcicki:

Well, that's true. I didn't. At least, not very firmly. 

Zierler:

Stan, you've been involved in so much advisory work through the nineties and the early 2000s. Did you ever return to research as a central part of your portfolio?

Wojcicki:

Yeah, well, I think so. Never one hundred percent, but certainly more than fifty percent. 

Zierler:

What were some of the research projects you were involved with later on?

Wojcicki:

Well, let's see. One of the things I was involved in is basically looking for charm particles at Fermilab by looking at produced muons. That was one. Another one I was involved in was at SLAC. I actually had a young guy in the group by the name of Jasper Kirkby who was really doing the work. It was really his experimental program, but I was involved as a sort of advisor to really try to understand spectroscopy of the charm particles. The other thing that also made my life more complicated was that I also was then chair of the department, which took some time. So, the moral is, don't do too many things. 

Zierler:

Stan, there are multiple reactions to being chair. One is that it's your time to serve, and you'll do it dutifully. Others see it as an opportunity to put their stamp on changes that they see. Where do you feel like you fell on that spectrum?

Wojcicki:

Well, I don't know. Sort of both. I felt that sooner or later I had to do that. Secondly, I think that there were some alternatives, which surely were not very good. I felt I had to really do that. 

Zierler:

If you didn't learn your lesson once, they asked you to do it again. You could be chair all over again. 

Wojcicki:

Well, they were desperate, and also, the other thing is, the second thing- partly, I was willing to do that because they would allow me much more freedom as far as teaching schedule and going away. I had commitments, I think, at Brookhaven, or Fermilab, or whatever, and so on. So, it helped my experimental program, strangely enough, probably at the expense of how conscientious a chair I was. 

Zierler:

Stan, a more recent development. What were the decisions and opportunities leading to the endowed professorships in your name?

Wojcicki:

That was my retirement. My daughter and Sergey wanted to do something for me.

Zierler:

This is Sergey Brin, you mean.

Wojcicki:

That's right. That seemed like a good thing because also Stanford had this gift from Hewlett, I think. It was a big gift dedicated to humanities and sciences, which allowed the University to match for certain things. One of them was chairs like that; I'm not sure the University would have been willing to put up the whole amount, but they were willing to put up fifty percent. So, that was a nice gesture, I think. 

Zierler:

Yeah. Stan, one aspect of your career we haven't talked about is your work as a professor. I'm curious, for teaching undergraduates, what have been your most favorite classes to teach them?

Wojcicki:

You know, I hate to admit it, but I think my teaching got worse with time, partly because it was boredom, and partly because I could not put in as much time into it as I wanted to, as I needed to really do that. 

Zierler:

Because of all of your advisory commitments. 

Wojcicki:

Well, that's right, and research. Basically, when I started, I was teaching sort of junior level type courses. Quantum mechanics. I think that was good. I liked that. It was a lot of work, because some of that material I did not have in my comparable course when I was an undergraduate. So, I had to relearn things, or I forgot that. I think I did well, and I think students felt that I did well. Then, later on, partly because I did not want to spend that much time preparing, I was teaching elementary courses either for engineers or for future doctors, pre-meds. At first, I was doing quite well on that, because I had some original ideas. But with time, I was getting worse and worse because it was sort of- it was boring to me, and it was boring to the students. It's boring to students who recognize that it's boring to you. Then, there was the question of how do you do that? Do you use transparencies, or do you write on the blackboard, or do you come in with something prepared, like transparencies? One year, I actually asked the students for their choice. In the first lecture, I talked first for just fifteen minutes- I would write on the transparencies, and then leave it on the projector so students could see it. It was like a blackboard. Then secondly, I would do that on the blackboard. And thirdly, I would come prepared with ready-made transparencies. The last one I thought would be the best, but it was the worst from the point of view of student opinion. By that time, which I think was relevant, and I'm not sure that I appreciated it sufficiently, students could get that material from Wikipedia, or other source material- they could look a lot of the things up, and I was just repeating, not only the text from the textbook, but also from what's available and visible on the internet. So, it was not received well. If I had to do it again, I would do it completely differently. I would really try to think through how to really make it original so the students can really get something out of it. My attendance was dropping precipitously. It was almost embarrassing. 

Zierler:

Stan, on the graduate side, who have been some of your most successful graduate students?

Wojcicki:

You know, I haven't had very many graduate students for a variety of reasons. I maybe should mention the students that I worked with closely, but they were not formally mine- I don't want to claim ownership, because I worked with them only part time, and helped them, and made a contribution to them. I think if you include people like that, then I would say maybe Bob Cousins. Do you know Bob?

Zierler:

Sure. 

Wojcicki:

I think he's a very talented guy, and we interacted closely. He was a postdoc at UCLA working on our Brookhaven experiment. Previously he worked with Mel as his student. So, I got to know him very, very well, and also his abilities. But then I had another, Tingjun Yang, who was entirely my graduate student, who got a prize for the best thesis at Fermilab one year. That's a Chinese guy, and he's now at Fermilab. He was too nice a guy, and he had trouble getting a job, because I think he just did not have that viciousness in him that is necessary sometimes for success in high energy physics. 

Zierler:

Stan, for the last part of our talk, I'd like to ask a few broadly retrospective questions about your career, and then we'll ask one to look forward. First, on your affiliation to Stanford. You've been with Stanford for so long, I wonder if you can reflect on in what ways, since your early time with Leonard Schiff, in what ways has the department really changed over the decades, and in what ways has it remained the same? 

Wojcicki:

Okay. Well, let's see. First of all, when I came, it's true that Leonard [Schiff] was the chair, but he died, if I recall correctly, within a year or two years afterwards. Leonard died and also- Felix died shortly afterwards. No, it was a little bit later because I was the chair already. 

Zierler:

Felix Bloch.

Wojcicki:

Felix Bloch, yes. But anyway, how has it changed? From the administrative point of view, I think it's changed quite a bit. One thing that we already talked about is the SLAC -  physics department relationship. The physics department was very, very protective of its turf, and SLAC was clearly the most obvious enemy on the horizon. I don't know whether that's completely gone, or whether it's much, much less than that. Just to give you an example, when I came, we did not have any joint appointments. Now, I think that more than half of the faculty in the physics department are joint appointees, either with SLAC, or with applied physics, or with electrical engineering. Those are the three main areas. There are some- I think there is one or two people maybe in mathematics. Anyway, the point is that it happens very frequently- it's not an issue at all. As a matter of fact, when we look for new faculty members, most of the time in these fields it's a joint search committee, with the understanding that either it will be a joint appointment, or if it's not a joint appointment, because the area of the person is much more physics than applied physics, then the applied physics people will be enthusiastic about it and will not think that it's bad to do that. So, I think that's a good thing- there is this feeling of working together with other departments that really cuts through a lot of the different areas. That actually happened very shortly after my first chairmanship.

My regret is that I agreed to be a chair because I thought I could accomplish a little bit of that, but I failed. But Sandy Fetter who came after me did a very good job of that. Shortly after the start of my tenure a very bad thing had happened (at least from my point of view), the administration insisted on having an external review of the Department. One of the big issues became such a visiting committee, I have no idea why this became such a sore point, but physics- senior people in the department, thought that it was an insult to have a visiting committee that would come in and judge whether we're doing a good job or not. And then administration wanted to do that, so we were fighting over issues which we should not be fighting. I wasted my time on that. Anyway, it's different now, and I think we're a better department for that. I can list a bunch of areas that we have a common interest with other departments, and I think it's working well. Our graduate students, for example- this is a good example. I would say the half of our graduate students end up working for somebody in other departments, other units. I think SLAC is probably a major example, but applied physics is also very, very important in that general area. 

Zierler:

Stan, looking back at all of your work as an advisor, from the Department of Energy, to all of the national laboratories, to being in charge of external affairs for SSC. What are some of the big lessons you've learned over the course of all of this work about federal science policy, and about how to create partnerships that really ensure that the government is supporting the right kind of science in the right way? 

Wojcicki:

Oh, boy. I don't know. I think it's a very, very difficult thing to really do optimally. I think I empathize with the government. First of all, you need to have very, very good people in your administrative positions. The person who is in charge of high energy physics, the person who is in charge of solid state, and the person who is in charge of cosmology, or theory, and so on, have to be able to understand the importance of a certain field, and how it evolves, and to what extent the certain work that people are proposing to do has a good likelihood of contributing to the future, or not. I think, on the whole, people in high energy physics, I think, try to do good work, and manage to satisfy the requirements. But it's tough. It's very, very hard. Even the SSC versus ISABELLE type question, do we really know how to resolve that question? Is there really an obvious answer to that, or is it too murky? It's hard. It's very hard, and it's very hard to anticipate which field of research will lead to something really, really productive. Luis Alvarez had an answer to that. He was really down on all of these committees. He never berated me, but he probably should have. Anyway, his answer was to what you do: you appoint what you consider the ten most inventive and thorough, or clever, or whatever people, and you let them do whatever they want to do. I haven't said it very well, but the point is that rather than- if I'm really one of those smart guys, rather than for me to submit a proposal to another bunch of fifty dummies like me, to judge and that, and then maybe have it rejected, you would do better by just letting this person go ahead and do it and give him the money. That was his philosophy. I think there is some truth to that, or some justification, to saying that you have that kind of a philosophy. I mean, we've tried to do that at some level on these committees. When somebody submits a proposal to really take into account what the track record of the person is, and whether he's got some really good ideas, and whatever. 

Zierler:

Stan, looking back at your Berkeley years, you were at the center of so much fundamental research at a time when new things were discovered it seems like almost every day in experimental particle physics. 

Wojcicki:

That's right. That’s absolutely true. 

Zierler:

I wonder if you can reflect on some of the mysteries or question marks in the field that were really solved, and which remain a question mark, even today. 

Wojcicki:

Okay, good point. Let’s look at one of the questions, which I think, maybe in retrospect now doesn't seem to be so fundamental, but I think it still is. I remember, frequently, what Mel would like to do, we would sit in his office, for a while we shared it. He would say, "Let us write down what are the most exciting questions that we don't have the answers to, and then try to think about how to approach those questions, and how to do that." I think one of them, which was in some sense solved, I think, was the lepton question. We always were asking, for at least a decade, why are there two leptons? Shouldn't there be three, or shouldn't there be more, or whatever? So, I think that was one thing. I think there are some others, and clearly the one on the other side of it is the dark matter. What is dark matter? We really have no idea whatsoever. It's almost embarrassing that there is such an incredible effort to solve that, and we have nothing to show for it. And related, at least experimentally, is the issue having to do with the double beta decay. Is my neutrino a Majorana or Dirac particle? There are a lot of issues having to do with cosmology that I don't feel qualified to comment on. You can always ask, what happened after and before the Big Bang?

Zierler:

Stan, it does raise the question, of course, one of the major narratives in the field over the past thirty or forty years is that so many people with a particle physics background have gone into astrophysics and cosmology. I'm curious if you've thought about how your research and the things that you've been involved with, even though you're not in this field yourself, have advanced those pursuits in astrophysics and cosmology. 

Wojcicki:

Well, one way, maybe it's even the most important, is the people. The people who have been trained in similar ways of looking at it, not afraid of big-scale experiments that you face in particle physics, are able to tackle some of those questions, the answers for which require a similar approach to the one used in high energy physics. 

Zierler:

What's a good example of that? What illustrates that point?

Wojcicki:

Well, for example, look at the Super-Kamiokande. It's both the technique of using Cherenkov phenomenon with a minimal amount of light and the sheer numbers of the detectors. Also, all the other related technologies, the purification of water, for example. The triggering system, the control, the reconstruction. So, I think it's probably fair to say that something like use of liquid water, that something like Super-K, is an example of an experiment that grew on top of high energy physics. On the other hand, you look at double beta decays, some of the searches for dark matter that have very little to do with high energy physics. They are low background type experiments. So, I don't know, some of the- something I'm not familiar with, but some of the arrays that people are building or have built, either in the ocean, or on the desert, for the Cherenkov light to look at;, again, you could say, they draw on high energy physics. High energy physicists are not afraid of doing great things. As a matter of fact, they enjoy doing that, saying "Mine is bigger than yours," type of thing. 

Zierler:

Stan, for my last question, looking to the future, because your career spans this incredible moment of discovery in the 1960s, and all of your advisory work, long-term, where do you see the future of experimental particle physics? In other words, we're more or less at the same place we were the day the SSC was canceled. LHC has not seen anything beyond the Higgs. Where does the field go from here, and what are the kinds of collaborations, including in Japan, in Korea, in China, elsewhere in Europe- what are the collaborations where you might be most optimistic that there's still both the political will and the scientific viability that perhaps there's a new age of particle physics for the future, where there's additional things to be discovered at a fundamental level?

Wojcicki:

That's a good question. First of all, I'm not sure that I would agree with the statement that we're at exactly the same place as Higgs. It depends how much weight you attach to Higgs. Certainly, the whole field of neutrino physics is completely different today. We know much more about the whole structure of the neutrino world, if you like. Now, how much more progress is there going to be? I don't know. I would like to be able to say that neutrino physics offers a very rich area to probe and that will really revolutionize things. But I'm not sure that's really the case. The CP violation in neutrino physics is not a radical new thing. It's just another phase factor that is non-zero, and it's not great, and it's not small, and whatever. So, I find it a little discouraging. I would hope that dark matter would be something which could provide such a puzzle and such a solution- I'm not even stretching to dark energy but sticking with dark matter, that is one area that needs potentially some progress in the field that is really, really qualitative. We need to be really learning something new, but it's not obvious that's going to happen. Cosmology is on sort of a different plane. There are just a lot of things we don't know. I don't know. It's a tough field. Tough way to make a living, and it gets more difficult all the time. 

Zierler:

Yeah, because what you're saying now, this is not what you would have said fifty or sixty years ago, and it's probably not what senior people in the field would have said fifty or sixty years ago. 

Wojcicki:

Yeah, I think that's true. I wish I were smart enough to be able to think of something that would really have a very good chance of revolutionizing the field, and at the same time, being able to do that in my lifetime. The second one is getting shorter, and more and more limited all the time. 

Zierler:

Well, Stan, you're in very good company, because when it comes to dark matter, everybody's asking the same question, and the answers seem to be as out there as possible. 

Wojcicki:

Yeah. 

Zierler:

Well, Stan, I want to thank you for spending this time with me. It's been such a pleasure learning about your career and your amazing life and accomplishments. I'm so glad we connected from our mutual friend Wit Busza. It's been a real pleasure spending this time with you. So, thank you so much. 

Wojcicki:

Okay. I enjoyed it.