Finn Aaserud

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ORAL HISTORIES
Interviewed by
William Thomas
Interview date
Location
American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland
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In footnotes or endnotes please cite AIP interviews like this:

Interview of Finn Aaserud by William Thomas on September 21, 2023,
Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics,
College Park, MD USA,
www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/48122

For multiple citations, "AIP" is the preferred abbreviation for the location.

Abstract

In this interview, former Niels Bohr Archive Director Finn Aaserud reflects on his career, including his work as a postdoctoral historian at the American Institute of Physics. Aaserud discusses his education in physics at the University of Oslo and his decision to focus his work on the history of Max Planck’s concept of the quantum. He recalls his decision to pursue a degree in the history of science at Johns Hopkins University, with Russell McCormmach as his advisor, and his research on Niels Bohr’s leadership of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen in the 1930s. He reflects that some scholars, particularly those invested in Bohr’s image as an intellectual, objected to the portrait he presented of Bohr as a skilled fundraiser. Aaserud recalls his move to AIP and his experiences working on the history of the JASON science advisory group. The interview concludes with Aaserud’s memories of receiving the offer to direct the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen, his experiences in that role, his editing of Bohr’s collected works, and the history of the strong relationship between the archive and the Center for History of Physics and Niels Bohr Library & Archives at AIP.

Transcript

Thomas:

This is Will Thomas, who has just stepped in as Spencer R. Weart Director of Research in History, Policy, and Culture at the American Institute of Physics. I'm also formerly an associate historian at the Center for History of Physics and I am sitting with another former associate historian of the Center for History of Physics, back when it was in New York City, Finn Aaserud. And since he is visiting us here today in College Park, Maryland — this is September 21st, 2023 — we thought it would be a good idea to sit down, have a little recorded conversation, reflect on a little history. We haven't done too much preparation, but hopefully it'll be a nice conversation. So, thanks very much for visiting us, Finn.

Aaserud:

You're welcome, thank you for having me.

Thomas:

(laughs) So, I guess a little bit of biographical background: why don't we just start with how you grew up in Norway and how you ended up in the history of science?

Aaserud:

Okay, well I grew up in a small town, Fredrikstad, and went to high school, or gymnasium as we call it there, and then I decided to go to the university. And I had another good friend who was interested in physics, so I thought it would be good to be together with him, because I was a little interested in physics, too. We had a terrible math teacher and a very good physics teacher at the high school, which helped that. So, I started at the University of Oslo, studied physics, finished what now perhaps is equivalent to a PhD, or close to it anyway. But when I started to do my PhD work, I was a little tired of physics, so I had a very nice professor, who allowed me to write something historical.

Thomas:

What was the professor's name?

Aaserud:

Kristoffer Gjøtterud. Should I spell it?

Thomas:

(laughs) It might be a good idea.

Aaserud:

He was quite a character, actually. So, he wanted me to write something about Einstein in the ‘20s, but I went back and back and back in time and the recitation turned out to be about the origin of Max Planck's energy quantum concept. And stupidly enough, I wrote it in Norwegian. So, it's quite interesting, actually, that my topic was the same topic that Tom Kuhn was working on at the same time. And I actually had a correspondence with Kuhn, who was, you know, a little — or he acted a little afraid that we would have some problems with priority and that kind of thing. But that didn't work out [to be a problem]. I had written my dissertation in Norwegian anyway, so... I remember I sent it to John Heilbron, and he claimed to read Norwegian. I think he did, actually, because he had understood (laughs) some of it. And so I finished and then I met in Norway a historian of science from Johns Hopkins University whose name was Robert Friedman, who you may know. And he alerted me to the fact that you could actually study history of science as a field by itself in the United States, and not only at Johns Hopkins but at several places.

Thomas:

Had you already corresponded with Kuhn and Heilbron at this point, so you were aware of what they were doing?

Aaserud:

No. I corresponded with Kuhn later when I learned about his work, that he was working on the same kind of thing.

Thomas:

I see.

Aaserud:

I think that was after I had moved to the United States. I'm fairly sure about that. You know, Norway is a fairly lonely place for a historian of science, and although I was alerted to a lot of the publications, journals, and all that, I didn't really have an environment to work in except for Robert Friedman and a couple of other guys.

Thomas:

Friedman was working on [Vilhelm] Bjerknes?

Aaserud:

He was working on Bjerknes at the time, yes, that's right. So, I also had a Norwegian friend in math, who I had known from high school times who had also been in the U.S. continuing his studies of math, I don't know exactly what the topic was. But he strongly encouraged me to apply to a U.S. university, and so that I did.

That was a fairly brief run-through of that.

Thomas:

When did you finish your PhD, or the equivalent, at Oslo?

Aaserud:

Yeah, it was in '76.

Thomas:

Okay.

Aaserud:

Yeah. And at that time, I was ready to apply for history of science. I mean, I loved being a student. I mean I had taken a long time finishing (laughs) my equivalent to the PhD, and I think that my only option in Norway was to be a high school teacher, and I wasn't too anxious to become that. I liked the student life, so why not continue in the U.S.? And there was a development at the time in Norway to develop history of science. There was a state foundation who actually gave out grants for people who wanted to study the history of science with the expectation that they would return and develop history of science in Norway. There was a great interest in that. And so I finished my work at the University of Oslo at the right time, because I was able to apply for a grant and get it. And then I applied to several universities in the U.S.

Thomas:

Your degree in Oslo was in physics?

Aaserud:

That was in physics, yeah. There was no...

Thomas:

No other subject where you could study that sort of thing.

Aaserud:

That's right, exactly. My formal degree is in physics from the University of Oslo, yeah, that's right. So, I applied to several universities. I got in at more places I think— Berkeley, Université de Montréal, which had a very interesting department at the time. I don't know if you know that?

Thomas:

No, I don't.

Aaserud:

Actually, it's a little close to what you're working with. It was the department of the history and policy of science, I think it was called.

Thomas:

Sorry, where was this?

Aaserud:

University of Montréal.

Thomas:

Oh, Montréal.

Aaserud:

Yeah. And, well, I decided to go to Johns Hopkins University, not because of Robert Friedman necessarily, but because of Russ McCormmach, who we talked about before the recording started. I was very impressed with his work and with his journal, of course, which had started at the time.

Thomas:

Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences.

Aaserud:

That's right, where he wrote introductions introducing the people and the subjects, you know, in the issues. I was quite impressed by that. So, I accepted the offer from there and I remember I came there and of course as a Norwegian who wasn't necessarily so well-versed in the English language — or American language, sorry, and American culture. A colleague of mine, he knocked on the door when I was outside the door of Russ McCormmach, and said, "Well, there's a guy here who'll want to talk to you." And oh, you know, (laughs) I wasn't prepared for that. So, I went in there past all of the bookcases in his office, and then at the end there, I saw him sitting in the corner. There was hardly room for Russ McCormmach, only his books. But we had a very nice conversation and that was before I decided on the dissertation topic or anything. Another great experience I had at Hopkins was the methods course, as they called it, historical method. And that was taught by Donna Haraway.

Thomas:

Oh yes.

Aaserud:

Yes, she was there and taught that course and I was the only one arriving at Johns Hopkins at that time. So, it was the two of us who was discussing method and that was a wonderful experience. Yeah. She's a wonderful person. I don't understand much of what she's doing with regard to writing, I must admit, but as a person and as a teacher and as a fellow discussant, she was just wonderful. So, that was one of my great experiences there.

Thomas:

What sorts of things were covered in the methods course, if you can recall?

Aaserud:

Oh, we discussed Bob Young a lot, you know, Robert Young, the British left-wing historian.

Thomas:

Right.

Aaserud:

And well, I guess that's what I remember most of... yeah, let me stop there with that experience because I don't remember everything. (laughs)

Thomas:

Fair enough.

Aaserud:

Right. So, and Owen Hannaway was there. You know, he died. He was also a great teacher. But I remember he wanted me to write a dissertation on the history of chemistry, of Norwegian chemistry, and when he discovered how little I knew about chemistry, he gave up, but that's another thing. And Bob Kargon was there. So, you know I went to courses for a number of years. Oh, I forgot Coleman, who also died. He was the chairman of the department at the time and I was his teaching assistant.

Thomas:

Coleman?

Aaserud:

Yeah. Bill Coleman, William Coleman.

Thomas:

Oh, okay.

Aaserud:

He moved to, was it Michigan? Well, he moved to another university, and then he died, too. But it was a very interesting department I found at the time.

Thomas:

What were your impressions of the profession as a whole at that time? What did it seem interested in, what sorts of areas did you feel that it would be interesting to look at?

Aaserud:

Well, you know, I came from physics, so it was things related to physics, and I was quite interested in the relationship between internal and external history, which was a great topic at that time.

Thomas:

Paul Forman had already published his thesis.

Aaserud:

Yes, right. And he was another guy that I got [to be] friends with, I would say. And I was greatly impressed by his Weimar work. Unlike of course some other people, especially people in Denmark who hated that kind of thing, because physics — that's something hard, it's not something dependent on social forces or anything like that. So, I decided to write a dissertation that might bring me back to Scandinavia, because I had a hope that that would happen, but [a dissertation] that also would have interest in this country and in the history of science community in general. I didn't fully answer your question, perhaps, but alright. So, I decided on Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist who everybody knows basically, at least anybody interested in physics and the history of it.

Thomas:

He's pretty well-known, yes.

Aaserud:

Yeah, yeah. And there was an Australian guy who had written about the history of the Niels Bohr Institute in the 1920s. His name was Peter Robertson. He was Australian, as I said, [and had] written a small book about that. So, I decided to write on the history of the Niels Bohr Institute in the 1930s, or pre-war at any rate. Which involved the change from atomic to nuclear physics at the Niels Bohr Institute, then called the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Copenhagen. So, I decided on that and I discovered — I don't remember how I did that really, but I discovered that there was a lot of material on the Niels Bohr Institute in the 1920s and ‘30s at the Rockefeller Foundation Archives, up at Pocantico Hills up the Hudson River.

Thomas:

Yes.

Aaserud:

And that led me to the thesis eventually that the change to nuclear physics at the Institute was not only a question of internal physics, and that nuclear physics was obviously the most important thing, but also that that was what the Rockefeller Foundation was willing to fund because the Rockefeller Foundation was developing a program of experimental biology. And experimental biology involved experimentation with cyclotrons and other machines for nuclear physics.

Thomas:

Irradiation?

Aaserud:

Yeah. So, my thesis was that Niels Bohr essentially lived a double life, in the sense that he was able to give the impression to his fellow physicists from all kinds of countries, younger people from other countries, that physics was the one and only thing that he was interested in and discussing physics theory with his great admirers was a great thing to do. And he was actually dependent on discussing with people in order to develop his own ideas. I mean, that was just how he was psychologically, you might say. And he did that almost full-time and gave the impression that...

Thomas:

This is in the wake of his great debates with Einstein over the quantum—?

Aaserud:

Yeah, that's right, too. It was part of that. And his discussions with Einstein, when he wrote his articles in relation to that, was written in collaboration with his helpers that he was dependent upon. Also called slaves at some points. But that was something that the helpers or slaves really wanted to [do], even though it was a hindrance to their own career in some sense, right? But just being chosen to work with Bohr, that was the greatest thing. There were a few exceptions, perhaps, because Werner Heisenberg, he was one of those, but he was too independent to really be the one who Niels Bohr could throw his ideas off on.

Thomas:

Right.

Aaserud:

So that was one aspect of his double life. The other aspect of his double life was that he was such a great administrator, and his ability to get funding was just enormous — not just in Denmark, but in the U.S. in particular. And he was also very much aware of the change in experimentation that was needed, from spectroscopy to particle accelerators. So, he was able to do that in part through the Rockefeller Foundation — actually, essentially through the Rockefeller Foundation. And I remember when I was interviewing people who had worked at the Niels Bohr Institute at that time — you know, I'm old enough to have interviewed them while they were still (laughs) rather fresh in their heads. You know, I was accused of being a Marxist, because assuming that Niels Bohr had any material interests was just nonsense to them. That was not something that they could buy at all and it would ruin their entire conception of what Bohr and the Institute was all about. Of course, some understood that, but there were some far on that side that were very critical and very wary about me giving the wrong impression of that kind of thing. There was something that he had instilled very strongly in them. So, that became my dissertation and being at the— of course, I wrote my dissertation to a great extent on the basis of archival material at the Niels Bohr Institute. So, I spent the last part of my studies at Hopkins in Denmark getting acquainted with people there. Some people liked me too. (laughs)

[See Finn Aaserud, Redirecting Science: Niels Bohr, Philanthropy, and the Rise of Nuclear Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).]

Thomas:

The Archive was well up and running at that point, at the Niels Bohr Institute?

Aaserud:

Well, yes and no. I mean, it has never reached any kind of status or size as here, but it was established formally in connection with Niels Bohr's... the 100th anniversary of Niels Bohr's birth, which was in 1985. And I finished my dissertation at Hopkins in 1984. So, when I was a student at the Niels Bohr Institute, it was just at the time when the Niels Bohr Archive was becoming formally an archive. Before that, actually from Niels Bohr's death in 1962, it had existed. At some point, it even got a letterhead, but it was still part of the Niels Bohr Institute.

Thomas:

Right.

Aaserud:

And the publication of Niels Bohr's Collected Works started just after he died in '62, and it was the physicist Léon Rosenfeld who was the instigator and inspirator for that. And then my predecessor at the archive took over the publication of the Niels Bohr Collected Works, which of course was the main activity at the archive at the time.

Thomas:

Did they have an archivist in charge, or director of the archive, or was it just a collection of papers that existed?

Aaserud:

It was basically the latter, and I remember my predecessor was very, very careful about not getting too many people on his back to look at the papers, because he wanted to finish the Niels Bohr Collected Works. Which instead of being a 10-year project, as of 1962, was finished in two thousand and... I don't remember. I was lucky enough to be the one who was able to finish that as the general editor of that.

Thomas:

A bit of a tangent. Did you make any use of the Archive for the History of Quantum Physics that Kuhn and Heilbron had put together?

Aaserud:

Oh yeah, a lot. Yeah. They had a full version of that, of the microfilms, at the Niels Bohr Archive. So, I used it there. Yeah, I made a lot of use of that. That's right. But, you know, we have perhaps gotten a little too far now... Okay, I was at the Niels Bohr Archive, and I went back to Hopkins, finished my degree in 1984. And then there was an opening at the American Institute of Physics, the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics, which you may have heard of. (both laugh) And Spencer had taught at Johns Hopkins one or two semesters before I finished there. So, I knew him and I knew the institution and that was something I really wanted to do. And at that time, I had a Norwegian girlfriend and she encouraged me to apply to that position on the assumption that I would never get it anyway, so that she wouldn't have to go with me. But she promised that if I got the position — which she never thought —then she would come with me. And she had to bite the bullet, you know, because I got the position. (both laugh) So that was that. That was four very interesting years with Joan and Spencer and all that.

Thomas:

So, tell us a little bit about AIP and the Center for History of Physics in those days. I have a very broad understanding of it, but not a detailed one. So, the position itself, the associate historian position, that had been held already by I think David DeVorkin… and Allan Needell?

Aaserud:

Probably, yeah.

Thomas:

I think so, yes, but not too many people [had held it]. It was fairly new.

Aaserud:

No, not too many people. And of course there was Spencer who was writing a lot for himself. Of course, for the public, but not… it wasn't part of the atmosphere there. But of course I discussed that with him to a degree. There was Joan, of course, who was the great extrovert who was really making a big effort. I think in a somewhat amateurish way, because I don't think she had a formal education for it.

Thomas:

Joan Warnow, the director of the Niels Bohr Library & Archives.

Aaserud:

That's right. She was really something. And I got a little into her work of finding collections of major physicists and having them deposited properly. And, of course, there was a great emphasis on cataloguing and that was what she did. I mean, the idea was not to collect papers for the AIP, but to teach universities basically that they needed to be kept and cataloged and made available to researchers.

Thomas:

This is something I've only learned about quite recently. I think they called them documentation studies?

Aaserud:

Yes.

Thomas:

And so she'd already done one with the Department of Energy’s national laboratories back in the 1970s.

Aaserud:

That's right.

Thomas:

Then I think that the idea was that the associate historians would contribute oral histories that were complementary to the collections?

Aaserud:

Yes, that's right.

Thomas:

David DeVorkin had done some in astronomy. So, you were pulled into that.

Aaserud:

I was pulled into that, but in a rather independent way. I was asked to suggest a project that involved both collections of material and oral history interviews. So, I — stupidly I would say — followed Allan Needell's advice. Do you know Allan?

Thomas:

Yes, I know Allan.

Aaserud:

(laughs) JASON is great, I mean very interesting, and of course it is very interesting and intriguing. So, I jumped on that, but as a Norwegian without any security clearance, or anything like that, you know. It was rather impossible.

Thomas:

And this was still in the 1980s, when the JASON group was— they didn't have much of a public profile at all.

Aaserud:

They didn't. That was only earlier, during the Vietnam War, of course, that they reached the public. But I found that a very, very fascinating topic, you know, that the most theoretically inclined physicists at the top-notch American universities could also go to the Pentagon with practical advice regarding war matters, especially. I had a lot of fascinating interviews with them and they're deposited here. I think about 50 interviews I had all in all. And some of them are quite interesting, if I have to say [so] myself. Some of them are me asking ten-sentence questions and they say yes or no (laughs)

Thomas:

Always a frustrating experience.

Aaserud:

Yes, so that was very nice, and I was able to get funding for that from the Sloan Foundation, from the National Science Foundation. So, that was very nice, I had pretty free hands, you know, I had money to travel around and especially to La Jolla, where the JASON meetings were held. And, yeah, I went with Bill Nierenberg to the opera, I remember, and had a lot of good, rather personal connections, too, with those people. So, it was very good, very expanding.

Thomas:

Did much come with a documentation aspect to that? I have to imagine a lot of that was—

Aaserud:

Yes, of course, it is the papers of the physicists themselves who were involved. So, I studied a lot of that, and of course, made the AIP aware of that, and a lot of those papers were at their institutions. Sometimes at their homes even. (laughs) It reminds me of Trump, but that's another matter. (both laugh)

Thomas:

Yes, in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.

Aaserud:

(laughs) That's right, that's right. That was never an issue there. Okay, and at that time JASON was administered by the MITRE Corporation in Washington, and they have an archives, where you have all the secret material in one place and all the— you know, what might be open to a Norwegian like me in another place. So, I was able to look at the latter, I went through that very, very carefully, and that is actually now at the AIP. It's part of the things I deposited here.

Thomas:

Just recently, yes.

Aaserud:

Yeah, that's recently. Exactly. Because I was only able to write an article on the origin of JASON. Because, when I was finishing at the AIP — I actually got an extra year there because of all the money I was able to get — I got a phone call from my now-predecessor at the Niels Bohr Archive, telling me that he wanted to change his job. He had got a job in the Danish Foreign Ministry, where he would administer physics education, which was one thing he was interested in, in African countries. Those were his two main interests, actually. So, he couldn't say no to that. And I thought to myself, "Why the hell are you calling me in the U.S. to tell me this?" And I asked him that and he thought I had understood that I might be interested in taking over his position at the archive. And I said, "Oh, I'll think about it, yeah." And then I went out and Spencer and Joan asked me what was all this about, and I said, "Well, I was offered this position at the Niels Bohr Archive." "Oh yeah? That's wonderful!" And I said I would think about it for a week. "What!?" (both laugh) "Are you an idiot? You will never get a chance like that in your lifetime again!" But I kept cold and I called a week later and said yes please, and it was not taken. And that's how I spent the rest of my life basically. In Copenhagen.

[ed. Aaserud’s article on JASON is Finn Aaserud, “Sputnik and the ‘Princeton Three’: The National Security Laboratoy That Was Not to Be,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences (1995) 25(2): 185–239. https://doi.org/10.2307/27757744]

Thomas:

Well, what would you like to tell us about that period and about the evolution of the institution or about work that you did there?

Aaserud:

Yes, as I said before, I came there in '89, and I hadn't finished my article on the origins of JASON yet, so I had to finish that. I did finish that. And went back here to do some more research on that. But gradually, I was just overburdened with the Niels Bohr Collected Works and the Niels Bohr Archive in general. And of course, as director of the Niels Bohr Archive, I was the general editor of the Niels Bohr Collected Works. And that took a lot of my time.

Thomas:

Was that in motion when you arrived?

Aaserud:

Oh yeah, it started in, as I said before, it started in '62 or '63.

Thomas:

Oh okay.

Aaserud:

And it was still going on. It was planned originally as a 10-year project, but it was still going on. And I had an ambition. I had been intellectually— well, I had been here at the AIP and I thought that the idea of collecting collections and making them available at other places and playing a role in cataloging them and all that was a great thing, so I made quite an effort to contact libraries and universities and things to accomplish that. [It] took a lot of time but it didn't lead to much, I have to say. So that was another thing. Then I also thought it was wrong to make the publication of the Collected Works that much of a priority. I mean, I thought that we had collections that needed to be used by people who wanted to use them. So, I also changed that policy and had a lot of, well, interesting visitors. That was quite fun, but that takes time, too.

Thomas:

I mean, there's always been a lot of interest around the history of quantum mechanics, the philosophy of quantum mechanics.

Aaserud:

Yes, both. So, that was the other thing. So, JASON just disappeared more or less because of that. But also I found it— I don't know if you find that, but I find it that it's so easy to be drowned by the physicists, because the Niels Bohr Institute, which houses us, we are an independent institution, but we are housed by the Institute. You know, they don't have a great interest in history. And I felt that if I had too much connection with them, then I might drown. So, I kept a great connection with the history of science community, especially in the U.S., rather than making connections to the physicists of the Institute. That might have been wrong, but I think to some extent, it was necessary, and that was my personal interest, too, of course. I think Christian might be a little better at that.

Thomas:

Christian Joas.

Aaserud:

Christian Joas, yes. For good or bad, I don't know, but that was a difficult thing. And I mean, you might be in somewhat a similar position.

Thomas:

I think so.

Aaserud:

Yeah, because you know physicists generally have strong opinions about things and have strong opinions about themselves, positive opinions about themselves, so yeah, that was... I mean, I made a lot of contacts and had a lot of people visiting, so it's been nice, but the administration and the Collected Works took most out of me, I must say.

Thomas:

Yes. Now, is the archive pretty much exclusively dedicated to Bohr's papers, or is it the archive of the Institute itself? I have to confess, I don't know.

Aaserud:

No, why should you? The Niels Bohr Archive has a board of directors, and it's difficult to find complete agreement on that issue. Of course, Niels Bohr comes first. When I came there and wanted to change that, for it to be kind of a cataloging place for all kinds of physics collections, it was that attitude that didn't make that happen. Now, in actual practice we do have collections of some of Niels Bohr's closest colleagues. I have also started an effort to select and obtain papers of more recent research at the Institute. And I feel that Christian is continuing that. I mean, Christian is more of a contemporary historian than I am. So, yes, we have other collections and we have other interests. We have other people using those collections that we have in addition to Niels Bohr's. But I would like to see more of that.

Thomas:

And we've always maintained pretty close connections between AIP — we have the Niels Bohr Library & Archive here. (laughs)

Aaserud:

Yes, yes.

Thomas:

Which of course has no affiliation with—

Aaserud:

Which leads to some misunderstandings.

Thomas:

Some misunderstandings, but at the same time, I mean, you had been here at AIP, at least in the New York version of AIP.

Aaserud:

I was there.

Thomas:

Yes, and so there's been pretty continual contact between us.

Aaserud:

Oh yes, yes, there has. Both on the personal and the professional level.

Thomas:

Right. Can you tell us a little bit about what some of those contacts have been about?

Aaserud:

Well, you know, to start with the (laughs) materialist— you know, we have gotten a few grants from you. And of course, there has been a lot of contact with regard to just discussions about what to do. I mean, I've been gaining a lot of advice with regard to collecting material and things like that. And we've been keeping in touch with regard to my own professional work, publications and things like that. It's never been formalized in any way, it's been a very personal and very pleasant collaboration.

Thomas:

Yeah, it's something that I definitely hope to keep going. And of course, I know Christian a little bit.

Aaserud:

Yeah, right, right. You have a lot of contact with him already?

Thomas:

Just a little bit, since I've taken on the position, but I've met him years ago actually, so we certainly know of each other. So, that'll be a good start.

Aaserud:

Yeah, I think the circumstances are very lucky in that it seems easy to continue that kind of collaboration.

Thomas:

And of course, we've just had this conference in Copenhagen that AIP sponsored, the Early Career Conference. And so that was a nice opportunity as well.

Aaserud:

Yeah, that's right.

Thomas:

It seems to me that where once the history of physics may have been top-heavy in the United States, now there's probably more of it in Europe, or even spread around the globe.

Aaserud:

That may be, because if you look at the History of Science Society conferences in particular, there's very little history of physics. There's more external than internal, to use the old distinction, there. And biology has basically taken over. Maybe that's less so in Europe. That's possible, I haven't really thought about that.

Thomas:

The [Early Career] Conference happened just days after I took on the position, so I was unable to attend.

Aaserud:

Oh you weren't there?

Thomas:

I was not there, I'm afraid.

Aaserud:

I was not either.

Thomas:

Yeah, (both laugh) but I looked at the program, and certainly I think most of the people were from Europe, but there were also scholars from China, Japan, the Brazil group of course. And the word is that the Brazil people will be having the next one. So, that was something that my predecessor, Greg Good, really paid a lot of attention to, was making sure that this global community of scholars and the history of science was connected to each other and felt like a community, and I hope that we can continue that.

Aaserud:

Yes, yes.

Thomas:

All right, well, I think that this has been a very good conversation.

Aaserud:

Well thank you very much.

Thomas:

And I think it will be useful. Is there anything else that you'd like to bring up? Otherwise, we can wrap it up and maybe think about ordering lunch.

Aaserud:

Well, I hope that we can continue contact.

Thomas:

I'm sure we will.

Aaserud:

Yeah.

Thomas:

All right, terrific, thanks very much, Finn.

Aaserud:

Thank you.