Kenneth Kellermann

Holbrook:

[Oral histories] are like conversations, so let’s converse. So, this goes in your pocket. Wait. I forgot one more thing. This is how I know you’re a true scientist; you have the nerd pocket right there. So, how are you?

Kellermann:

Good, thank you! Partly I want to understand how you do this because we’ve been doing some interviews here at NRAO.

Holbrook:

Yeah, some interviews. So, what I did was I just made very, very, very brief notes about things in particular that I want to talk to you about that you haven’t talked about before. So, if you see, it’s just very briefly, right? So, these are your prizes. This is when you were born. This is your education. Then you did something very different here.

Kellermann:

I can’t read it.

Holbrook:

It says, “International presence, career moves. What was your strategy?” So, this is something that’s quite different where you’ve held several leadership roles, and they’ve been in and out of the United States. We’ll get to that. So those are my brief notes about things that I wanted you to particularly focus on that you haven’t talked about before. So, we start at the beginning. This is like a very reflective interview because I’m sort of teaching you as I go. So, I always start with two questions. One is where are you from, and the other is how do you ethnically identify yourself? So, go. Where are you from?

Kellermann:

I was born in New York, in Brooklyn, actually.

Holbrook:

Ah, this is your accent.

Kellermann:

Yeah, you can tell?

Holbrook:

Yes.

Kellermann:

Let’s see. We lived there until I was six years old. I went to the first grade there, and then we moved to Queens, which is also part of New York City. I was there through the sixth grade, and then we moved to Great Neck. I don’t know how familiar you are with the geography of the New York area. The next county out on Long Island is Nassau County, which is just outside of New York City, and I went to middle school and high school in Great Neck.

Holbrook:

Was that considered a step up—

Kellermann:

I guess, away from the city and further into the suburbs. Along the way I acquired two sisters and each one motivated a move to a larger house.

Holbrook:

—as you moved from less fancy neighborhoods to fancier ones?

Kellermann:

Yes, and to one with better schools. I think I only had a B+ average in high school, was not in the top 10% of my high school class, but still somehow I got into MIT because I came from a high school that was known to the MIT admissions staff.

Holbrook:

So, was the concern your education, or was your family on the rise?

Kellermann:

They didn’t discuss those things with me, but I suppose it was a mixture. They go together. I think it was typical postwar middle-class ascension.

Holbrook:

So, how do you ethnically identify yourself?

Kellermann:

In Brooklyn we lived in an apartment house, in an apartment, and then in Queens it was a small single stand-alone house. Then in Great Neck it was a somewhat larger house. Yeah, I had two sisters, so there was a bedroom for each of us. I guess that was part of the…

Holbrook:

Luxury.

Kellermann:

Yes!

Holbrook:

So how do you ethnically identify yourself?

Kellermann:

I am or was a New Yorker, Jewish. Not religious, but I guess a strong ethnic feeling of Jewishness.

Holbrook:

So, in oral histories and stories about scientists, especially with—this is the reflective part—especially with astronomers, astronomers are still very much… it’s a gentlemen’s profession, so people tend to be upper class. They tend to have parents and/or grandparents who are educated. So, the next question I go into is the education of your parents and your grandparents. Who was the most recent immigrant, etc.? So, we go down that road.

Kellermann:

I think what you are saying may be true of the current generation. Maybe even your generation. But not my generation. Certainly not the Jewish scientists of my or earlier generations. My grandparents on both sides emigrated from Europe. On my mother’s side, it was from what’s now part of Ukraine, or at least was up until today. My father’s side, from a German-speaking part of what’s now Hungary. It was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. I don’t know too much about their history since it was the Jewish persecution that motivated their emigration in the early 20^th century, I think, between 1900 and 1910. Around then.

Holbrook:

To New York.

Kellermann:

Yes. But both my parents—ah, no. My mother’s side went to Worcester, Massachusetts. My father’s side came to New York, and both of my parents were born here in the US.

Holbrook:

So, their education. You don’t know what kind of industry they did in Europe before they came over. Farmers, bakers?

Kellermann:

On my mother’s side, my grandfather was a carpenter, and that’s what he did when he came here. He had his own business building houses. I don’t know what my paternal grandfather did in Europe; in the US he had a business selling automobile paints. I never knew him as he died before I was born, and in fact my middle name is derived from his. My mother’s parents had eight children, and on my father’s side there were nine, or I may have that backwards. But it was a large number. All the boys on my father’s side, when they grew up here, went into the same business—selling paints, mostly for automobiles.

Holbrook:

All of them. Wow!

Kellermann:

Well, my grandfather had the business, and I guess the older son inherited the business and the younger sons, including my father, worked for it. Then my father went off on his own in essentially the same business, so he was a businessman. He did go to MIT one year to study either chemistry or chemical engineering—I’m not sure which—but then left and went to Brooklyn Tech in chemistry. But there weren’t any jobs for chemists, especially Jewish chemists, during the ‘30s. So, he eventually went to—

Holbrook:

So, he did finish. He got his degree from Brooklyn Tech.

Kellermann:

Yeah, but then he went to work for his father.

Holbrook:

Right. What about the other uncles? Did they go to college as well? Or can you remember?

Kellermann:

I don’t think so.

Holbrook:

Yeah, but since they were in business, that kind of thing wasn’t that interesting.

Kellermann:

That’s right.

Holbrook:

Did you have any aunties on your father’s side?

Kellermann:

Yes. There were more on my mother’s side. All the women including my mother worked in typical female jobs until they were married and then stopped working. That was typical of the time. My mother worked at Macys department store as a telephone operator.

Holbrook:

How high were they educated?

Kellermann:

I don’t think any of them went to college. I know my mother wanted to, because she had done very well in high school but it wasn’t the thing for girls to do then. She did go to some specialized high school, but college was I guess out of the norm, both socially and financially.

Holbrook:

Yeah. So, she did very well in school, but then didn’t proceed.

Kellermann:

Yes. I think she always resented that she didn’t have the opportunity.

Holbrook:

So, on your mother’s side… So, your father’s side were these business guys. What was the industry on your mom’s side?

Kellermann:

Well, let’s see. My grandfather was in the house-building business, but he lost the business during the Depression. The others… My mother was one of the older ones. I know two of the boys, my uncles, were in the military during the Second World War. One of them actually went to work in my father’s business, and the other one moved to California. He was in the grocery business. One was in the upholstery business. One moved to Florida and died fairly young. I guess I don’t remember. I was a very small child. I don’t remember him. I don’t know what he did.

Holbrook:

So, even the boys were not educated on that side because if they didn’t—

Kellermann:

Not at the college… I don’t think… No, there was no college.

Holbrook:

So, everyone did high school probably.

Kellermann:

Oh yeah. I think so.

Holbrook:

So, when you said that they did military, after… Actually, after World War II was the expansion of the college system due to the GI Bill. I don’t know what happened.

Kellermann:

Yeah. Neither of them took advantage of it as far as I know.

Holbrook:

Okay. So, you have this upwardly mobile—

Kellermann:

Right. That’s the word, yes.

Holbrook:

Upwardly mobile family with trade roots, some education, right, and then there’s you. So, you have sisters. You don’t have any other—

Kellermann:

Two sisters. That’s right.

Holbrook:

No other brothers.

Kellermann:

Right.

Holbrook:

Did all of you guys go to university?

Kellermann:

Yes. By our time, that was the default. My youngest sister is 13 years younger than me, so in a way, I hardly knew her, because when I went off to college she was only five years old. So, I really knew her as a baby and child. But she knew her big brother went to MIT. She was and still is very competitive, and so she had to do better than her brother. So, she still holds it over me that I got—I don’t remember—780 or 790 on the math SATs and she got 800! [Laughs] But she went to MIT also.

Holbrook:

Excellent!

Kellermann:

Intending to do science like her brother, but quickly got turned off. She went through a series of majors of political science and so on and economics. But she got her degree from MIT. It was very interesting. Then she went to graduate school at the University of Chicago and got a degree in social work or something of that order. So, she graduated from MIT and she was in the class of ‘72. I was in the class of ‘59, and out of my class of about a thousand, there were nine women. I don’t think any of them finished. By the time she was in the class of ‘72, there was a significant number of women, but not… They were still a great minority, and she was one of the pushers for—

Holbrook:

Social change at MIT.

Kellermann:

Right, yes, for women getting their own dormitory and so on. So, with that background and her undergraduate degree at MIT and her graduate degree in social work, she ended up going back to MIT working in the admissions office. Well, I can tell you from my experience, as a counselor to freshmen, especially women, that you have to have been through MIT education—it’s very rigorous—to properly counsel and deal with students. Plus, she had the professional background in social work, so unlike most MIT graduates she knew how to deal with people. She was there for a number of years. She ran the… MIT has a program where all prospective students are interviewed by an MIT graduate. There are about a thousand people around the country that do these interviews, and she ran this program. Then she moved into the registrar’s office, and she’s still—

Holbrook:

Is she?

Kellermann:

Now she’s in the treasurer’s office. So, she’s had a variety of jobs there. And she was and still is Class ‘72 President. She also was an excellent ice skater and competed in the amateur circuits, then taught ice skating at MIT. When she first went back to MIT, she would run into people who asked if she was related to “the Ken Kellermann.” Now, I am asked if I am related to “the Bonny Kellermann.”

Holbrook:

Yes. I’m very, very excited that someday I’ll get a chance to interview her for this.

Kellermann:

My other sister went to Cornell. In fact, she’s going back this week for her—I just talked to her last night—50^th reunion. I don’t know how familiar you are with Cornell. Several of their schools are part of the New York State school system, and for New York State residents, it’s free. So, she enrolled in the Home Economics School because it was free. But it doesn’t confine you to what courses you take. So, her degree was actually in… I’m not sure what it is. But she graduated, and she— Oh, she was teaching deaf children, and she worked first in a school in New York City with deaf children. She took a sabbatical in Vermont, and she liked it so much that she came back, did her mandatory one more year, and then moved to Vermont. She started out restoring antiques and then went into real estate, and she just retired this year. She’s still living in Vermont.

Holbrook:

That’s great that they’re still with you. That’s really, really fascinating, and that you guys all went to these fancy schools.

Kellermann:

Well, the school in Great Neck where I went to was a very good high school. I was only a B student. I guess I got A’s in math and science and Cs in English and other languages. I didn’t have an outstanding high school record, but I got into MIT because the high school was known to MIT.

Holbrook:

Was it diverse other than having Christians and Jews? Was it more diverse than that, your high school?

Kellermann:

Curiously yes, because it’s in Great Neck. The UN, when it was first established, was in Lake Success, which is part of the Great Neck school district—this is before they built the UN building in New York. So, there were a lot of students from different countries… children of diplomats. Great Neck was a very pleasant place to live, and so even after they built the headquarters in New York City, a lot of the families still remained in that area. So yeah, there were a number of foreign students, more so than you would normally have, especially at that time.

Holbrook:

So, when you went from your high school—do you remember the name of your high school?

Kellermann:

Oh yeah. It’s Great Neck High School. David Baltimore was a year behind me at Great Neck High School, but I didn’t know him.

Holbrook:

That’s easy. When you went to MIT, were you the only one that year to go or was there a cohort of you that went?

Kellermann:

No. There was at least one other person who went… I lived in a dormitory. He was part of the fraternity crowd. I still see his name in the MIT alumni magazine. He became active in alumni affairs and everything. But we had no contact while I was there.

Holbrook:

Right. You guys weren’t friends. He’s just someone that you knew. So, the fact that your sister— You noticed that the women were having a hard time at MIT. The fact that your sister focused on this issue at MIT, did you ever help your sister formulate some of the issues that needed to be overcome? Were you astute enough to—

Kellermann:

Not at that time. I don’t think so. She was and is pretty independent and knows what she wants to do.

Holbrook:

Okay. But when she came to you and said, “Ken, what the heck?” and you’re like, “Yeah, that is a problem.”

Kellermann:

Yeah, but see, in those years we had actually relatively little contact because—

Holbrook:

Because she was so much younger.

Kellermann:

Well, no, not that so much. So, let’s see. She would have been… because first I was in California, and then I was in Australia for a couple years and then lived in West Virginia. So, I don’t know if that’s normal or not, but I guess we had… you know, and then going home once or twice a year. We had relatively little contact. So, we’re closer now, partly because of email and ease of travel, I guess. And making a telephone call in those days was a big deal. We also have a big family holiday now each year at the Outer Banks in North Carolina. My daughter and her family, my family, my wife’s family, my sisters.

Holbrook:

Yeah. It’s much easier now. So, then you moved from MIT to my alma mater, to Caltech.

Kellermann:

Oh, I didn’t realize you were there. When was that?

Holbrook:

Oh, hundreds of years after you. I graduated in ‘87. So, I was an undergraduate at Caltech in physics.

Kellermann:

Oh, I see. In physics.

Holbrook:

So, you went from one boy’s school to another boy’s school.

Kellermann:

Yeah. I don’t know to what extent that was conscious or not.

Holbrook:

No. But that’s cool.

Kellermann:

Yes. I went to the only two schools in the country that didn’t have a football team. The thing I’ve always felt deprived of was an athletic program—not for myself, but as a spectator. Those are the only two schools that didn’t have a football team or… So, I’ve enjoyed being here in Virginia. I go to UVA sports events.

Holbrook:

Games and things. Yeah. But you did study physics.

Kellermann:

Yes. I never thought of astronomy. I mean all kids, boys at least, who are interested in science are interested in astronomy, but it never occurred to me that you could have a professional life as an astronomer. At that time, I wasn’t even completely clear about physics and engineering and what the difference was. So, I went to MIT in physics, but in my first year I took the first-year electrical engineering course as well to cover the possibility that I might switch into electrical engineering, which I didn’t. But I was and still am involved in amateur radio. That was partly how I guess I got interested in physics. But I went to Caltech to do physics. Particle physics.

At MIT, I did a senior thesis, and I did it in the synchrotron, high energy physics. That was what I intended to do, or planned to do, at Caltech. But the work at the synchrotron, there was, I don’t know; there were tons of people involved—professors, graduate students, I mean full professors, assistant professors, research postdocs, graduate students, undergraduates. It was a big operation—I mean not so much that the—It was fun as an undergraduate to work there, but I just couldn’t see this kind of hierarchy in being part of a big group. I liked to do my own thing and everything. So, that was in the second half of my senior year MIT. You know, you apply to graduate school in your first half of your senior year, and by March or whatever you’re already accepted. It wasn’t until I had worked February, March, April, May at the synchrotron that I sort of got turned off, but what are you going to do? I was already accepted at Caltech. So, I went without much enthusiasm. By the way, it was either that or going into the Army at that time.

So, I went without much enthusiasm. I had a research assistantship. At that time, all the faculty were well funded. I wasn’t in any particular group or with any particular person. I was given two weeks. Let’s see. Was Leverett Davis still there when you were there in physics?

Holbrook:

Was he in physics?

Kellermann:

Yes.

Holbrook:

No. I don’t know.

Kellermann:

You were in physics, you said.

Holbrook:

I was in physics. I was a lowly undergraduate.

Kellermann:

I know. Leverett Davis was in charge of the graduate program, and he gave me two weeks to go around and talk to faculty.

Holbrook:

And find a new project.

Kellermann:

No. I had this assistantship, and I was getting paid for 18 hours a week to work, and he told me to find something. So, I went over to the synchrotron of course, and it was the same kind of big operation there. People had done their… You know, one PhD thesis was on the acceleration of electrons from 600 to 800 MeV, another person did it from 800 to 1000 MeV, and so on. Then somebody on the interaction of electrons with lead, interactions of electrons with silver, etc. And of course, they all worked together and then you take a little piece that you write for your thesis. Well, that turned me off. So, I talked to other people, cosmic rays, low temperature physics. Of course, I just walked in, and this was actually even before the semester started because I arrived a little bit early. They all asked me some questions about myself, they asked me what math courses I had taken, what math I knew, and what physics courses I had taken, and then they said, “Well, go away and think about it.” What they really meant was, “I never met you before. Let me look at your record,” and what not. I had to report back to Professor Leverett Davis about what I was doing, and he said… I must have mentioned an interest in astronomy, and he said, “Well, why don’t you go over and talk to Professor Bolton, who is starting a radio astronomy project?” It was in Robinson, the next building to the physics building.

So—and I’ll never forget this—I walk over there, walk into the office, and the secretary is sitting there at the desk. Davis was very explicit. He said, “Go talk to Professor Bolton.” I didn’t know professor—doctor. It was all the same to me, and so I asked for Dr. Bolton. The secretary says, “That’s Mr. Bolton over there.” I was completely dumbfounded. I mean how could a Caltech professor not be a PhD? I just didn’t know what to say. He’s standing there and he turns around and said, “What do you want?” All the other people at least had greeted me cordially. I said, “Well, I um, um, um…”

Holbrook:

Right, because you already made the first faux pas.

Kellermann:

Right! He was so aggressive. I said, “Well, I think I might be interested. Umm I have this assistantship.” Then he asked me two questions which changed my life. All the other people wanted to know what courses I had taken, what math courses, and everything, and he asks, “Do you know anything about electronics?” I told him I had an amateur radio license and I could use a soldering iron. That’s all he cared about. He wanted people who could help build equipment and everything. Then the other question was the key one. He said, “How do you feel about heights?” Well, I had just traveled across the country with a high school friend who had been at Harvard while I was at MIT. So, we kept in contact. We spent the whole summer traveling and hiking and what not through the mountains, the Rockies and the Sierras and everything, and I thought that’s what he meant because I knew the observatory was up in the Owens Valley at 4,000 feet. So, I said, “Oh, it doesn’t bother me.” Well, that’s not what he meant. What he meant was how I feel about climbing up on antennas. If I had known what he meant, even if I lied, he probably would have seen my reaction. When I confidently said, “It doesn’t bother me,” he said, “Okay. Take that desk over there.” He didn’t tell me to go away and, “Think about it,” or anything.

Holbrook:

No. But he put you right to work.

Kellermann:

He was such a dominating personality that I didn’t know what to say. So, I thought, “Well, okay. I’ll try this for the first semester and see what happens.”

Holbrook:

You did what he said. You went over and took that desk!

Kellermann:

Right. Actually, he was very supportive of his students. First, he expected us to concentrate on our course work and pass our oral exams. But then during summers or after passing our orals, he expected us to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week. But he never asked anyone to do anything that he didn’t do himself. Nearly all his students went on to be very successful, six or seven observatory directors, and one Nobel Prize.

Holbrook:

So, I’m going to pause you there because another branch of science and technology studies has to do with studying networks, right, and how people get from point A and B. People tend to not discuss who gave you advice, who wrote letters for you—because obviously you had good letter writers to get first into MIT and then into Caltech. From what you said, which may not be true, it was the only graduate school you got into? Or the only one you applied to?

Kellermann:

Yes, because my backup would have been stay at MIT, which was semi-guaranteed.

Holbrook:

So, can you tell me about your professional network that led you first from high school to MIT, MIT to Caltech?

Kellermann:

There was one high school teacher. He was a chemistry teacher who I was fairly close to. So that would have been the 10^th grade. No, it was 11^th grade. Well, actually I took a course in electronics with him in the 10^th grade, and he was the chemistry teacher in the 11^th grade. But I kept close contact with him in 12^th grade when I was applying to MIT. So certainly he knew me the best and I’d like to think wrote a good letter. I don’t even know who the other letters were by. Probably by the guidance department or something.

Holbrook:

But this was the one.

Kellermann:

Yes, that’s the one I remember. So, at MIT, I would have gotten a letter from the young faculty member who I worked for at the synchrotron, and one other professor whose name you may know, Francis Low, who taught quantum mechanics and is quite well known. I remember when I asked him for a letter of recommendation. He gave me a piece of advice which I well remember. But he didn’t know me. I mean it was a big class, and he didn’t particularly know me. But I got good grades, so I figured I’d ask him for a letter. I mentioned to him I thought about even then of going to graduate school in another country. Probably I think it was Australia. He gave me a good piece of advice. He said, “No, don’t do that. Every country has a different system, and you’ll lose a year or two making up courses and getting into their system. Stay in the U.S., get your degree, and then travel,” and indeed, that’s what I’ve done. So, that was a good piece of advice.

Holbrook:

Why were you interested in going to Australia? Because of their radio astronomy?

Kellermann:

I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I just thought Australia was a neat place. And they spoke English. That was important.

Holbrook:

But you weren’t interested in radio astronomy at that point.

Kellermann:

That’s right. That’s right. I really—

Holbrook:

Because you definitely did go.

Kellermann:

Well, I think I was interested because I do have… I bought a book on radio astronomy, I remember, as a freshman, a book that is a semi-popular book on radio astronomy. So yes, that did interest me. But again, I never really thought of it as a profession. But then at Caltech it was certainly John Bolton who certainly taught me more about radio astronomy and how to do science. But he left during my second year to go back to Australia. But then I followed him to Australia for my postdoc, and we remained in contact until he died. I am still in contact with his wife and see her when I am in Australia.

Holbrook:

So, the MIT network that got you to Caltech. So, it was definitely the group that you’re working with, the synchrotron group. I’m sure it’s one person from there probably helped you get to Caltech or recommended. How did Caltech get on your radar? Let’s go back there.

Kellermann:

Oh, like you said, it was an outstanding school in physics. It was smaller. I remember my father—you asked me about my father in the beginning and everything. So, he was in business. All through my career, whenever I’d come home and tell him what I was doing, he’d say, “You get paid for this? Who pays you?” I said, “Well, you do.” [Laughs] But I think he was proud of it. When I was finishing MIT, he thought it would be good to get a business degree in addition to the science degree. That would be a good combination, and you know, he’s probably right if that’s what you wanted to do.

Holbrook:

Make money.

Kellermann:

That’s right. Yeah, exactly. So, I remember when I went to MIT, which was 200 miles from… In those days, 200 miles was a long way. I remember he sort of wanted to know, “Well, why do you have to go all the way there? There are schools here in New York.” But he understood because he had gone there and whatnot. But anyway, I went to graduate school all the way to California. “Why do you have to go all the way to California to graduate school? Why couldn’t you stay at MIT?” And then of course I went off to Australia. But I don’t think there was anybody special at MIT. I was just a—

Holbrook:

You were a good student who maybe worked hard.

Kellermann:

Not a terribly good student. Not a top student… but, yeah, probably worked hard. I had to work very hard.

Holbrook:

It was not easy.

Kellermann:

Because I wasn’t a great student. I was a B+ student, although I got A’s my senior year in most of the advanced physics courses. For freshmen at MIT, everybody took essentially the same thing. There was one elective, I think. But everybody had to take physics, math, and chemistry, and there was a weekly quiz which rotated around the three subjects. The first one was in physics, so it was only after I’d been there two weeks or something. It was an incredibly complicated exam. I could start each one and work through the problem, but I didn’t get any answer—you know, I didn’t complete any of the problems. I remember going back to my room and thinking, “This isn’t for me. This is out of my class,” and I was almost ready to start packing to go home. I think this is called the “impostor syndrome.” I got a 23 on the exam out of 100. But it turned out the class average was 18, so that gave me some comfort.

Holbrook:

So, one of the points that I make, because I’m going to be talking about diversity today, right? This is a very weird thing, and we’ve accepted this as normal. But when you’re coming from a place where you’re used to getting a 90 to 100 means an A, to be able to stomach something like a 23 is an A, this is smoke and mirrors! You never know what your status is.

Kellermann:

Yeah, but I had the advantage. See, I wasn’t a super student in high school and I wasn’t used to getting all As, whereas a lot of the other kids were. So, I was used to even in high school having to work, whereas a lot of the others didn’t. You know, they just cruised through high school.

Holbrook:

So, it was okay. You got used to the sliding scale. But the point that I was making with minorities, especially women, with the various forms of—

Kellermann:

Intimidated, yeah.

Holbrook:

—the way that we like to be liked, that we’re teacher pleasers. The 90 to 100, this is a guarantee. When you have a sliding scale and a 23 is an A, it just plays with your head. If you’re used to another system, I mean they bail. They go to a place that’s more stable, an academic discipline that’s more stable where it’s easier to know an A is an A.

Kellermann:

No, it wasn’t so much the sliding scale. But I think the fact that so many of the others didn’t have to work hard in high school and—

Holbrook:

Did they leave? Did those people? Or they just really struggled?

Kellermann:

Both, both, both.

Holbrook:

Of course, my experience, I saw it as well at Caltech.

Kellermann:

Remind me where you were an undergrad. Oh, you were Undergraduate at Caltech. Right, yeah.

Holbrook:

I mean things like, did you guys have suicides back then?

Kellermann:

Not…

Holbrook:

We had suicides. We had suicides.

Kellermann:

I know. I know.

Holbrook:

And I know MIT is famous for suicides now. But back then, did you guys have suicides?

Kellermann:

Not that I was aware of. But back then, it was probably kept quiet because MIT was a big school, whereas Caltech—

Holbrook:

Yeah, whereas Caltech was little.

Kellermann:

I know, I know.

Holbrook:

So, when people would disappear, sometimes they were really gone, and then sometimes they just went home. They just left. So, we were always trying to figure out who was still alive and who had…

Kellermann:

So, what fraction at Caltech was women when you were there?

Holbrook:

It was one-sixth.

Kellermann:

See, now it’s about half.

Holbrook:

It was 6:1 then. Yes.

Kellermann:

And at MIT also.

Holbrook:

With a very deliberate effort.

Kellermann:

Yeah, I know.

Holbrook:

A very deliberate effort to make it that. But what I find very disturbing is when I go to Caltech, even with half women, the culture is the same. It’s very still much misogynistic. It’s very much boy wonder, right? “Whew! Let’s go break something or blow something up! Isn’t this cool?” It’s still the women either try to fit into that or…

Kellermann:

It must be hard.

Holbrook:

Yeah. It’s complicated. It’s complicated.

Kellermann:

I’m sure, from my experience there, life for a Caltech undergraduate—Well, graduate school is much easier at Caltech than undergraduate.

Holbrook:

That’s what everyone says. Yeah.

Kellermann:

Because you quickly get into the research culture, and less emphasis on classes. But I think it must be very hard for Caltech undergraduates.

Holbrook:

It is.

Kellermann:

Especially women.

Holbrook:

Minority women, too.

Kellermann:

And minority women.

Holbrook:

Double minority women, yes. So, my class, there were three African American women in my class of roughly 100… I’m forgetting the numbers. I know it’s 1,000 undergraduates, so 250 undergraduates in my class.

Kellermann:

Oh, was there that many? Okay.

Holbrook:

There were three African American women, because it’s 1,000 undergraduates.

Kellermann:

It was only 600; it seems to me, when I was there.

Holbrook:

It’s gotten a little bigger. But only two of us graduated with our class, and the other graduated a few years later. So, it was interesting. And you know, when you’re that young, you’re not as aware of the issues. So, you really do internalize everything.

Kellermann:

You think it’s yourself, yeah.

Holbrook:

You think it’s yourself, and in many ways it’s not. But at the same time… Well, I still get insulted, but it’s not from other scientists. Every time that I say I’m a Caltech graduate, other scientists are like, “Welcome!” When I say I’m a Caltech scientist, undergraduate there, to the outside world, they’re like, “Well, I don’t believe in affirmative action.” So, they’re going to insult Caltech rather than give me credit for having the smarts to go through Caltech. They’re going to say Caltech is a—

Kellermann:

That’s interesting.

Holbrook:

Isn’t that so—Argh! Argh! You know, they’d rather insult Caltech’s—you know, diss on the whole institution rather than allow the fact that I could actually graduate from there.

Kellermann:

So, when I was there, there were no women at Caltech, undergraduate.

Holbrook:

Because they came in ‘72. Yes.

Kellermann:

Even in graduate school—

Holbrook:

There were a few.

Kellermann:

And in astronomy… I can’t remember her name. So, there were about— Well, I was still in physics. You know, I went through officially in physics. But there were about five or six first-year astronomy students in astronomy. My office was in Robinson’s.

Holbrook:

In the astronomy hub.

Kellermann:

Yeah, right. I was officially physics, but sociologically I was with the astronomers. Susan Kayser. You may not know the name. She ended up at the NSF.

Holbrook:

She was a grad student?

Kellermann:

Yes. Well, no. She wasn’t initially. She wasn’t accepted because she was a woman and Caltech didn’t take women in particular. I don’t know whether it was official Caltech policy, but certainly it was stated that a Caltech education would be wasted on a woman because even if she did well, went off and got a job, she would then get married and have children and not spend 40 years doing the science. So, that expensive Caltech education would be wasted and would be better for a man. That was certainly the culture.

Holbrook:

Thank you for stating that. Thank you for putting that on record. And people still feel that way in various places. I won’t say at Caltech today, but in various places I have encountered this still.

Kellermann:

So, Susan was allowed to sit in on some classes. I think it was Jesse Greenstein who advocated the policy which I just described. But after a year, he allowed her to become a student, but without any financial support, and financial support at that time was automatic. I don’t know what she did, but she struggled through, and she did get her degree finally. As I said, last I heard she was at the NSF. But then right after that, there were a number of very good women in astronomy: Donna Weistrop, Virginia Trimble, both of whom I later worked with and got to know as friends and colleagues. Especially Donna who married one of my students.

Holbrook:

They all came through while you were there?

Kellermann:

No, just afterward. Just afterward.

Holbrook:

So, do you feel comfortable talking about your personal life?

Kellermann:

It depends. Not particularly. I mean what do you want to…

Holbrook:

I mean because these are all issues that… Did you get married? Did you have children? Are you gay? Are you straight?

Kellermann:

There’s nothing exceptional there, so let’s stick to the professional.

Holbrook:

Okay. All right. So, I just wanted to—because again, it has to do with timing and networks, especially with the issue of did you marry a fellow scientist? Who was your pool?

Kellermann:

No.

Holbrook:

Those are the issues that you don’t want to get into.

Kellermann:

Yes. But I didn’t marry a fellow scientist.

Holbrook:

You didn’t. Okay. Then of course, what happens to your children? Like if you had children, did they become scientists or did they not? But we don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.

Kellermann:

Well, I’ll tell you I had a son who died at an early age, and then my first wife some years later. She was Dutch.

Holbrook:

I’m sorry.

Kellermann:

My daughter went to UVA. Well, we lived in Green Bank for 20 years, so she grew up in West Virginia and then moved over here when she was 12 years old. Went through high school here, UVA, and went to law school. So, she’s an attorney, and she married an attorney. They lived in Washington for a while, but they moved. They’re now living in Charlottesville.

Holbrook:

That must be lovely for you!

Kellermann:

It is. It is. In fact, I have to go this evening. My granddaughter—don’t laugh—is graduating from preschool. [Laughs]

Holbrook:

How could you tell me not to laugh at that? And so there’s a ceremony.

Kellermann:

Yes. [Laughter]

Holbrook:

Okay, so we got that out of the way.

Kellermann:

Right.

Holbrook:

Okay. So, you somehow found somebody who would put up with you.

Kellermann:

Right. My wife taught school in Green Bank and here and then was in school administration, and she’s retired for 15 years or so.

Holbrook:

Yeah. So, I have the two-body issue.

Kellermann:

Yeah. That’s never been an issue for me.

Holbrook:

Nice to have a portable person. My husband requires supercomputers, so it’s hard to find him a life. So, back to… Now this is where it’s really interesting. You graduate from Caltech and you start moving around the world and you move into leadership. Normally in an oral history—I know Woody Sullivan did one with you, right?

Kellermann:

Yeah. But it wasn’t an oral history. He interviewed hundreds of radio astronomers.

Holbrook:

Yes. So, I didn’t read all of the transcript. Did he get into your science, about what you did as a grad student?

Kellermann:

I don’t remember. We have all of Woody’s stuff here. Sometime you’ll have to go down and see all the stuff.

Holbrook:

Yes. I’d like to do that.

Kellermann:

No, Woody didn’t do oral interviews. He was working on a history of radio astronomy, and I don’t remember. This was 30 years ago or 40 years ago that he did this. He did it when he met people at meetings or something, so I don’t even remember. I should go back and read it. But it was related to radio astronomy at Caltech and Australia. It wasn’t at all personal.

Holbrook:

So, let’s hear a little bit about your dissertation work and what you felt were the high points of your intellectual process. You learned this which was useful here and you learned that which was useful there. But also, a lot of people have null result thesis, right? If yours was something that was published and everyone was like, “Oh my god!” or if it was like, “Well…”

Kellermann:

Well, fortunately it was the former. So, Bolton left Caltech for Australia when I was just about to start my dissertation research. We discussed… So, the first two years at Caltech, you’re taking mostly courses. I had this assistantship. I was supposed to work 15 hours a week. But he was very good, and he expected graduate students to get their courses out of the way. If you had time for a little bit of research, that’s fine. But even though he paid us out of his grant, we were expected to concentrate on the courses. But once you were finished with those courses or during the summers, he expected 60, 70, 80 hours a week of work. He put me, very early on, at the end of my first year right after the interferometer was built… It was still under construction when I came. He put me on a project observing radio sources that had been cataloged by Bernie Mills and others in Australia at a very low frequency, and the Caltech interferometer worked at higher frequencies and I had to compare them. Some sources got stronger at higher… Well, they all got weaker at higher frequencies, but some got more weaker than others. So, there was a radio source spectrum. Then I decided that was an interesting topic for a thesis. Other people were doing the size of radio sources, the positions, and I thought the spectra of radio sources was important. I became interested in extragalactic things right from the beginning because I figured that’s where the action was. You know, stars—we sort of understand them. But galaxies, and particularly radio sources, they were fundamental things that we didn’t understand. The radio source spectra, how the flux density varied with frequency, was closely related to the physical processes that were going on. I was a physicist. So, I became interested in that, and I suggested that for a thesis. He agreed and we had some discussions about it, but then he left. So, I was pretty much on my own, which was good. It turned out to be good. Gordon Stanley became the acting director, and Caltech was looking for somebody permanent, but they never got anybody. Gordon’s professional background was even less than Bolton. He was an engineer. He didn’t even have what we would call a bachelor’s degree in engineering. He had more of an associate type—it was a technical degree. So, there wasn’t much guidance there. I more or less worked on my own.

So, I think there were 10 or 12 people who were finishing in physics that year in 1963. I can’t remember. There were something like 12 students finishing, getting physics degrees that year. Half or two-thirds of them were at the synchrotron doing all the same thing. People like Feynman and Gell-Mann would each take one student each year, and they would do some abstract, very difficult thesis in theoretical physics.

Holbrook:

You were already there. You were there.

Kellermann:

Yeah. Most of the others were in the synchrotron or something routine, so my thesis was the only one that was different. That’s why I got the prize for the best thesis in the Physics Department that year.

Holbrook:

Fantastic!

Kellermann:

You know how these things work. That sort of singles you out, and so when people think about other prizes or promotions and whatnot, that counts for five years or so and then everything builds on that. So, that was important.

Holbrook:

So, what was the profound result?

Kellermann:

Oh! So, Caltech, the Owens Valley radio telescope worked at relatively high frequencies. So, I studied these sources at… Well, the receivers that were available then were at 30 cm and 20 cm, and then toward the end, I had access to a 10 cm receiver. But I built a receiver and a feed for 50 and 75 cm. So, I observed roughly between 10 and 70 cm, 400 to 3000 MHz.

Holbrook:

You had to build it first?

Kellermann:

No. Well, the receiver… Three of the frequencies were part of the Caltech stuff that was existing.

Holbrook:

It was already there.

Kellermann:

Yes, and the other were very simple receivers that I could build or adapt from something that somebody else had built.

Holbrook:

How much time are we talking to do that?

Kellermann:

Months.

Holbrook:

Okay. So, it’s not like a year.

Kellermann:

No, no, no.

Holbrook:

It wasn’t like a huge redesign.

Kellermann:

No, no, no. It was all very simple equipment then. Again, I made more use of my amateur radio experience than my professional training. But my third year, me and Barry Clark, who started graduate school at the same time as me and came to NRAO right after he graduated, we lived at the observatory. We were the only people there. I mean, other people would come up and come and go, but for six months, between two of us, we ran the telescope, the interferometer 24/7. When it was my thesis observations, I think our agreement was I observed for 14 hours and Barry observed for 10. When it was his thesis observations, he observed for 14 hours and I for 10. So, all we did was observe and eat and sleep, and that went on for six months. But when things broke down, we had to go out and fix it, and it was simple enough that you could do that. So that was a very good experience.

But during, I guess, my second year, I became aware of similar work being done in Britain, on the spectra of extragalactic radio sources, at Cambridge and at Jodrell Bank, also by graduate students. But Cambridge and Jodrell Bank each worked at different frequencies from NRAO. At the 1961 IAU which was in Berkeley, that was the first IAU I attended. I’ve been to every one since.

Holbrook:

Wow. I’m still trying to become a member.

Kellermann:

There’s nothing to become a member.

Holbrook:

I’ve been to an IAU, and I want to go to the one in Hawaii.

Kellermann:

It’s almost routine now. You’re a U.S. citizen.

Holbrook:

I am. I have to get it in by December. It’s pretty late in order for me to go to the Hawaii meeting.

Kellermann:

No, no, no. Anybody can go to the meeting. You just pay your registration fee. To be a member, you have to be nominated by either the U.S. National Committee or the South African National Committee, and I don’t know whether—

Holbrook:

Yes. South Africa isn’t going to work.

Kellermann:

Really?

Holbrook:

Yes.

Kellermann:

Why?

Holbrook:

Because I pissed off the person in charge of the committee! [Laughter]

Kellermann:

Well, if you behave yourself for the rest of the day, I’m the—

Holbrook:

No, no. Ed Guinan is going to help maybe. You don’t have to worry.

Kellermann:

Okay, because I’m the vice chair of the U.S. National Committee now, so—

Holbrook:

Okay. I’m glad that worked into this conversation!

Kellermann:

It is preferred for people like you to do it from their home country, but it can be done the other way, too.

Holbrook:

Well, I am American.

Kellermann:

Yeah, I know. But still it’s preferred—

Holbrook:

And then I am an officer still of the AAS.

Kellermann:

Right. Yeah, it should be put forward.

Holbrook:

Anyway, 1961 IAU. Very first one, Berkeley, California.

Kellermann:

Gordon Stanley, who became my official advisor at Caltech, met with—I mean there were people there from Cambridge and Jodrell Bank. There was Graham-Smith from Cambridge, and through Gordon he invited me to come to Cambridge for three months to work with their graduate student, who was essentially doing the same thesis but observing at different frequencies. By combining their observations with my observations, you could cover a much wider range of frequencies. It turns out that Jodrell Bank was doing a similar thing at intermediate frequencies.

Holbrook:

So, you could get a more complete spectrum.

Kellermann:

Yes.

Holbrook:

I want to interject a question. So, there was much more feeling of collaboration back then—

Kellermann:

Yes.

Holbrook:

—instead of the “You must die. You’re in competition with me.”

Kellermann:

Well, I don’t know how much you know about radio astronomy at Cambridge and Martin Ryle, who was ultra-competitive. You mentioned in your email to me that I was mentioned in Geoff Burbidge’s—well, it was only parenthetical. Do you remember the context of what it was? It was a later visit to Cambridge that Ryle… You’ll have to go back and read it. But they were ultra-secretive there. Basically, he was paranoid. He was a brilliant guy, but he was paranoid that they had all the ideas and the Americans had all the money, and if we found out what they doing, we would—which was more or less true because we built the VLA essentially based on his ideas of aperture synthesis.

But as a graduate student, I was very well treated. I had a key to the building. It was the old Cavendish Lab where Newton… Well, Cavendish and then all these famous people taught and everything. It was a decrepit old wooden building, but it had atmosphere that you couldn’t describe. But I had the run of the building. Only years later did I learn from colleagues that they were told—people who were then graduate students—what things they could tell me and what things they couldn’t tell me.

Holbrook:

Aha. They were censoring.

Kellermann:

But as far as a particular area where we were collaborating, it was completely open. I had access to all their data and everything. It turned out to be a very good collaboration. I spent three months there. So, that was my first overseas trip. Because Caltech had a Navy contract… It was sponsored by Office of Naval Research, which is where the money was coming from. So, I was able to go on a military flight and everything. But that was a good experience, my first trip out of the country.

Holbrook:

That’s quite interesting because you moved out of high energy physics because of this whole collaborative—

Kellermann:

Yeah, but this was more… Yeah, that’s true. But it was a difference of collaborating from the bottom. By the way, radio astronomy now has become just like high energy physics was back then.

Holbrook:

Oh, yes. As has observation, yes.

Kellermann:

So has astronomy. Yeah, astronomy.

Holbrook:

Yes, exactly. Later on I was going to ask you about what you thought about that move.

Kellermann:

I mean it’s okay if you’re at the top and you can direct things.

Holbrook:

Yes. But to be a cog in a wheel…

Kellermann:

Right, yeah. But this was more one-on-one. So, actually there were three of us.

Holbrook:

So, this is another thing, your preferred collaboration size. So about three.

Kellermann:

Well, two or three. For a long time, I worked very closely with Ivan Pauliny-Toth. We wrote lots of papers together. We published our…and it was even before my thesis was done, we published a paper which became a classic in the field for 20 or 30 years.

Holbrook:

And thus the reputation was made as a graduate student.

Kellermann:

Right. Yeah, yeah.

Holbrook:

So, what was the name? I didn’t write it down. Bolton. Was he Australian?

Kellermann:

He was British. He was one of those people—it was common at the time—who was rushed through as an undergrad. You know, it was during the war. So, he was rushed through undergraduate at Cambridge in two years or three years, two-and-a-half years or something, and then went into military service. Was a radar officer on a ship. From the radar work, they noticed that you get interference from the direct signal from the airplane and the reflector signal from the ocean and it was—

Holbrook:

Bouncing.

Kellermann:

Yes. It was an interference effect, and then the people applied that after the war for radio astronomy, so-called sea interferometer. That’s where he got his background. As he described it, the military training, during a war, you learn to get things done and to be on your own. You didn’t have six months to study something; you had to get it done. That was his way he behaved afterward. He was a doer. But at the end of the war, his ship was in Australia, and he signed off and stayed there. Got this job at Radiophysics, CSIRO. It was a very low level and worked his way up. Then of course he came to Caltech, an arrangement through the Caltech president and Taffy Bowen, who was in charge of the lab in Australia, who were old wartime radar buddies. But he came as a senior research fellow and was quickly promoted to full professor. He didn’t teach. He was the only—as you know, every Caltech professor, however important, Feynman, Gell-Mann, Linus Pauling—they all taught, even taught undergraduates.

Holbrook:

I know. They were miserable teachers.

Kellermann:

I took quantum mechanics from Gell-Mann and I thought he was OK. Feynman was a fantastic teacher with his great insight.

Holbrook:

It’s like, “Thanks, but I don’t think you really did me any favors.”

Kellermann:

Yeah. But Bolton didn’t teach. Somehow he got away with it. But I can honestly say I learned more from him than anybody else. I mean he taught one-on-one.

Holbrook:

It was…

Kellermann:

Yeah, right. Exactly.

Holbrook:

[inaudible] model. Since you come from a trade background, it all kind of fits in with… You never think about how your family way of doing things impacts the way you do things for the rest of your life, so there you go. So yes. Now you’ve made a shining star with a published paper that’s a classic. You were set up to, within five years, get the Warner Prize, right? But your first move was to follow Bolton to Australia. And that was an easy move. You just said, “I’m coming,” right?

Kellermann:

Actually, it was a repeat of the same scene when I started as a graduate student. I wrote to him. We were corresponding regularly on the work that I was doing and everything, and in one of the letters I said, “What’s the possibility of coming there after I finish?” He wrote back, “I expect you to come on such-and-such a date.”

Holbrook:

Wow! Just like that.

Kellermann:

Right. But later he added, “By the way, we really can only hire people who respond to a…” They had an opening.

Holbrook:

It was an open call.

Kellermann:

An advertisement, and he said, “We’ll put an add in Nature. It will be out next month, and you have to respond to it.” It was all a put-up job.

Holbrook:

It still is. [laughs]

Kellermann:

Well, not as much as it was then.

Holbrook:

We would like to think that it isn’t.

Kellermann:

Yeah, yeah.

Holbrook:

Well, that’s quite honorable because in your generation, your advisor just calls up his buddy and says, “Well, they’re my student.”

Kellermann:

That’s right.

Holbrook:

There was never an open ad or anything.

Kellermann:

Well, it was a government… It was legal. It was legally required. Essentially it did happen this way. It was a one-on-one—

Holbrook:

But this was a formality.

Kellermann:

But it had to go through the system. In the meantime, I had applied for and received an NSF fellowship.

Holbrook:

Did they have postdocs back then?

Kellermann:

Yes. It was stopped.

Holbrook:

Back in the dark ages?

Kellermann:

No. It was common then. It stopped for a long time, which I thought was very bad because—

Holbrook:

[inaudible] a generation was lost at some point.

Kellermann:

Well, not that so much. I mean there were still plenty of post-doctoral positions that you were essentially a—what’s the word? Not a slave, but—

Holbrook:

Yes, a slave to whatever the advisor was doing. You couldn’t be independent.

Kellermann:

Yes. Whereas the NSF postdoctoral fellowship—

Holbrook:

Yes. I had one, and I could do what I wanted.

Kellermann:

Yes. I think that’s really good. I’m glad they’re doing it again. So, I worked out a deal. My first year was on the NSF fellowship. But even after I’d been offered the job and everything, then I got the fellowship. So, my first year was on the NSF fellowship, and then the second year was as a CSIRO employee.

Holbrook:

Now this is a move that I’ve often recommended young astronomers who have options to try to do. If they get to, to try to take them both and say, “I’ll do this one for one year. I’ll do this one for two years. I’ll do this one…” and try to take them both if they’re both prestigious and very good. People are like, “What?”

Kellermann:

Yeah. It sort of turned out. I mean I didn’t intend it that way because when I accepted the job in Australia, I hadn’t yet received the NSF fellowship. In fact—

Holbrook:

So, you’re probably one of the first scientists I know who has pulled this trick.

Kellermann:

No. Actually, wait a minute. I think I have to correct myself. I’m not even sure of the sequences. But no, I did not get an NSF fellowship when I first applied. But then I reapplied after I got the prize for the best thesis in the Physics Department at Caltech. I think that got me the fellowship. So that’s how it worked.

Holbrook:

Right. But either way, the first year you were in Australia, you had an NSF.

Kellermann:

Right. But it didn’t make any difference.

Holbrook:

The work was the same.

Kellermann:

Yes. It was completely transparent. The whole time I was treated as a staff member. I had a fair bit of freedom. I essentially continued what I was doing, the spectra work using the new Parkes telescope.

Holbrook:

But you weren’t doing exactly—Did you change objects?

Kellermann:

Yeah. Well, it was the Southern Hemisphere and it was based—It wasn’t just so much that, but Bolton had used the Parkes telescope to survey the whole southern sky. From that survey, I could pick out sources of particular interest and study those.

Holbrook:

What were the physical processes that you were looking for signatures of?

Kellermann:

It was still to understand the synchrotron radiation, the generation of relativistic particles, how the energy spectrum of the relativistic particles changed with time due to synchrotron radiation and inverse Compton scattering and expansion losses and so on. So, the first six months or so I lived in Sydney, but Bolton was living at Parkes. So again, I felt a little bit cheated. So, I’d be up there to observe and whatnot. But then I moved to Parkes. The people who were the telescope mechanics and engineers who did that during the daytime, and at nighttime, they would act as telescope operators. The rule, for safety reasons, you have to have two people always at the telescope, so the scientists would always have a telescope operator. The telescope operator actually ran the telescope. It wasn’t run by computer or anything then. You’d actually sit there and run the telescope. Because I was living there and Marc Price, who was another American graduate student… Remember, I was a postdoc, but he was a graduate student at the same time. Ron Ekers was a graduate student at the same time. He was living there. So, John allowed us to—

Holbrook:

Wait a second? E-k…?

Kellermann:

Ron Ekers, who was president of the IAU.

Holbrook:

He was a grad student when you were there.

Kellermann:

Grad student. Then came to Caltech, and then he went and became director of the VLA, then went back to become director in Australia. He was the IAU president for three years, two terms back or so.

Holbrook:

I think he came up in another interview that I did with Jacqueline van Gorkom.

Kellermann:

Yes, they’re good friends. So, I was taught how to operate the telescope and was one of the few scientists that was authorized to operate the telescope myself.

Holbrook:

Again, this is your need to do things with your hands.

Kellermann:

Right, right, right.

Holbrook:

That we’re relating to the working role, etc. So, you became one of them.

Kellermann:

Yes. Well, I lived there.

Holbrook:

You lived there. But even living there, astronomers usually keep their distance.

Kellermann:

No, no. I was one of the few astronomers. The only other astronomer who was living there was Marc Price, who was a fellow American graduate student—none of the scientific staff. They all lived in Sydney, except Bolton. But his rule was that this was an observatory. You observe at night, and the daytime was reserved for maintenance and repairs and upgrading. Well, most of the time there was no maintenance or repair.

Holbrook:

So, you took your time.

Kellermann:

And the telescope was sitting idle. This is a 210-foot radio telescope sitting there idle.

Holbrook:

And you knew how to use it.

Kellermann:

But I wasn’t allowed to. We weren’t allowed to use the telescope in the daytime.

Holbrook:

How did you break the rule?

Kellermann:

You weren’t allowed to use the telescope in the daytime.

Holbrook:

You broke the rule. I know you did.

Kellermann:

No! I just bent it. One did not break John Bolton’s rules. But his rule didn’t apply to observe those things which couldn’t be observed at night.

Holbrook:

Aha! This is how you broke the rule.

Kellermann:

So, what can you observe in the daytime that you can’t observe at night? Well, the Sun. But the Sun is much too complicated. But first of all, there was a whole solar division completely separate from Parkes to study the sun, but it’s extremely complicated and I couldn’t deal with that. What else can you do in daytime? Mercury. So, I told Bolton I was going to observe Mercury, and he knew exactly what I was up to. He knew I was just looking for an excuse to use the telescope in the daytime. But he accepted it and I think privately appreciated it as he would have done something similar in his youth. In fact, I learned later that he had done something similar in the late ‘50s by observing Cygnus A when he had been assigned to observe the Sun. And he got chastised for it.

Holbrook:

He adapted.

Kellermann:

That’s right, because he knew he would have done something like that. Well, at that time—you’re too young to remember, but at that time Mercury was known not to rotate and always keep the same face toward the sun.

Holbrook:

Yes, okay. Yeah, it was a rock.

Kellermann:

It was in all the textbooks. The side facing the sun was thought to be very hot, and the side facing opposite was very cold, near zero. There was some work done earlier at the University of Michigan when they observed Mercury when it was sort of half and half.

Holbrook:

So, quarter-face.

Kellermann:

Uh. Half-face. Half lit, half dark. Like a half moon. The temperature was higher. The net temperature. They couldn’t resolve it. All they got was a single measurement. It was higher than they expected, and knowing that the dark side was very cold, they deduced what the noontime temperature would be on Mercury, which was higher than expected. So that was my scientific motivation for making the observations.

Holbrook:

“I’m going to go figure this out.”

Kellermann:

No. I was going to observe Mercury when the hot side was facing the Earth so I could measure directly the noontime temperature. However, when the day light side is facing the Earth is when Mercury is far away, superior conjunction.

Holbrook:

Yeah. You got away from the Sun.

Kellermann:

No. Superior conjunction—it’s on the opposite side from the Earth. So, the Sun is shining—yeah, right.

Holbrook:

From [inaudible]. Yes, yes, yes.

Kellermann:

Now I knew that I was going to have trouble with interference from the Sun because it’s so much stronger than Mercury. When I got everything organized to make the observations, it was when Mercury was very close to inferior conjunction, so only the back (cold) side was visible. So, I could learn how to deal with the sidelobes from the sun, I decided to start observing and then I would follow it around and see how the apparent temperature changed. I expected that I wouldn’t see anything at first, and then as Mercury came around in its orbit, the daytime side would be exposed, it would get brighter and brighter. Well, I started the observation just when it was pure back side, and lo and behold, there’s a signal. My thought first was sidelobes of the Sun. But I kept observing, and as it moved around there was a strong signal. Of course, as it moved away from the Earth, the flux density got less. I mean the angular size got less but the corresponding brightness temperature remained the same. I followed it all the way around, and it was 300°, more or less room temperature both on the day side and the night side. It was an amazing result! It was clearly the greatest scientific discovery of my life.

Holbrook:

Except…

Kellermann:

But I blew it because it was well-known that —

Holbrook:

That there was a difference in temperature.

Kellermann:

And that Mercury did not rotate. I ran across a paper and in fact corresponded with George Field from Harvard, who had postulated that there was an atmosphere on Mercury, and the atmosphere could carry the heat around as it does on the Earth. So I wrote the paper and I published it in Nature showing that the dark side was very hot, but I had the wrong interpretation. It was just a few months later that—

Holbrook:

You said atmosphere.

Kellermann:

No. I said it was atmosphere, and a few months later, Arecibo radar observations showed that it rotated.

Holbrook:

Yeah, okay. But you got a Nature paper anyway.

Kellermann:

Yeah, that’s right.

Holbrook:

But it’s wrong!

Kellermann:

Well, no. The observations that nighttime side was hot were right.

Holbrook:

Yes. The interpretation was wrong.

Kellermann:

And the moral there is of course that the non-rotation was based on some very flimsy evidence by this French guy, Giovanni Schiaparelli published in the 1880s…

Holbrook:

Exactly. When he saw the different side, he thought it was a mistake, and so then he just waited until it matched again.

Kellermann:

Exactly.

Holbrook:

That’s a famous history of science, that example.

Kellermann:

Yes. Of course it was published in French, so the moral there was you should know foreign languages to read the original paper to see how flimsy the evidence was because then after that, it was explained in all the textbooks in English that Mercury doesn’t rotate with respect to the Sun.. But you know, everybody built on the previous one. Nobody ever went back and looked at the original work. But I never did learn foreign languages.

Holbrook:

Oh well. I do speak French. Wow! So that’s exciting! So, you actually did observe Mercury!

Kellermann:

Yes.

Holbrook:

I thought it was just a ruse. I thought you were surely looking at some extragalactic object.

Kellermann:

No, no. So, then I got interested in other planets and observed Venus which was very hot because of the greenhouse effect. Also, there had been a report from Jodrell Bank that Mars was very bright due to the same effect as we see on Jupiter, the radiation belts. This caused quite a stir because NASA was about to launch some vehicle to Mars, and if it really had radiation belts, it was going to be in trouble. So, I observed Mars and showed that Mars is perfectly normal and the Jodrell Bank stuff was wrong.

Holbrook:

They must have loved you.

Kellermann:

It’s all right.

Holbrook:

Was it wrong because of systematic errors?

Kellermann:

Confusion. Mars is very weak at radio wavelengths. What they were really seeing was a weak extragalactic source in the beam.

Holbrook:

Wow! Yeah.

Kellermann:

So, what I did was to observe Mars, and then a few days later when Mars had moved away, I observed the same position and then subtracted them.

Holbrook:

And then you found it.

Kellermann:

Yeah and subtracted.

Holbrook:

And they hadn’t done that.

Kellermann:

No, no. It was very careless. I shouldn’t say that it was… I mean, there’s a tendency to blame a whole observatory because of one person. It was one person.

Holbrook:

Right. So, it had to be the observation technique.

Kellermann:

Yeah. He was just sloppy.

Holbrook:

So, they got excited.

Kellermann:

Yeah. Well, he published it, and I presented my result at the IAU in Hamburg, and it made the New York Times. But then I also make the first detection of radio emissions from Uranus, and when I came to NRAO, I continued to observe the planets, and together with Ivan Pauliny-Toth made the first radio observations of Neptune. The radio observations showed that both Uranus and Neptune, as well as Jupiter and Saturn were hotter than could be explained by solar heating, and I suggested that this was due to internal heating. I went to several conferences on the planets and presented my radio work, and I got to know Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, and those people.

Holbrook:

When you were doing this… I’m trying to assess whether your heart was in it or not.

Kellermann:

Yes, yes, yes! It was in the mid-’60s.

Holbrook:

Were you absorbed into it?

Kellermann:

Yes, yes, although it was not my intention, I got interested, I guess because it was easy to make new discoveries.

Holbrook:

And you were all intellectually, it was your… You were engaged with it.

Kellermann:

Yes.

Holbrook:

It wasn’t just like, “I really want to be over here doing this.” No, you were engaged with it intellectually.

Kellermann:

Things were so different then. Every new radio telescope, you just had to point it to the right place to make great discoveries. The theoretical background was relatively simple. A body is so far from the sun, so you know what the solar flux is and you know what temperature it should be to be in equilibrium.

Holbrook:

It’s the interplanetary stuff. Yes.

Kellermann:

Yes. The observations, except in the case of Mars, all deviated for one reason or another, whether it was an atmosphere or whether, in the case of Jupiter, it was radiation belts, and Saturn, it was internal heating. So, they were simple discoveries which you didn’t really need to understand complex theory. I mean nowadays it’s very complicated, and the same with the extragalactic work.

Holbrook:

That was low-hanging fruit back then.

Kellermann:

Yeah, exactly. I’ll give you that. That’s exactly right, yeah. So I was lucky. I came to Caltech just as the interferometer… I mean, I helped build it. When I say helped build it, it wasn’t so much the technical part, but digging ditches and stringing cable through…

Holbrook:

That was being up on the antenna and soldering. [Laughs]

Kellermann:

There’s something I left out. I told you how dominating Bolton was when he asked me about heights. I started at Caltech in September. During that Thanksgiving vacation, he took me up there to Owens Valley because we had four days off. I remember halfway we stopped to eat, and he told me to drive. We got to the next town and he said, “I’ll drive.” I was very nervous. I figured I’d driven too fast or done something terrible. Well, I was driving too slow and he was characteristically impatient, so he took over. We get to the observatory. The next morning, he tells me that there’s a broken cable connector up at the focus of the antenna and I should go up and get it and fix it. Well, I was scared stiff, but I was more scared of him. So, I climbed up there and got the cable.

Holbrook:

No harness.

Kellermann:

Oh, of course not. Not in those days.

Holbrook:

Were you physically fit?

Kellermann:

I was young and thin and yeah, there was no health issues. But now there’s a protective ring around that ladder so you don’t fall and everything, but there were no safety things then. So, I climb up there trembling. I get this cable, I bring it down, and again, from my amateur radio background, I knew how to put connectors on a cable. Indeed, the connector was damaged and had to be replaced. So, I cut it off and put on a new one and put it back. It was years before I realized how did he know that there was a bad connector unless he had been up there and checked it himself? But if he was up there, why didn’t he just bring it down?

Holbrook:

Fear of heights.

Kellermann:

No. Not Bolton.

Holbrook:

He didn’t fear heights.

Kellermann:

Oh no, no.

Holbrook:

So why didn’t he bring it down? Why did he bring it up?

Kellermann:

This was my test, my entrance exam.

Holbrook:

To pass.

Kellermann:

He just sent me up there just to see how I would deal with it.

Holbrook:

If you would really do it. Ooooooh. And you passed.

Kellermann:

Yeah!

Holbrook:

You were trembling, but you passed!

Kellermann:

Four years later when I went to Parkes, on the first day he was going to show me around the telescope. There were two feed legs holding up the focal cabin. One of them had an elevator you could ride up. The other one had a ladder and no protection. He was going to take me up to the focus. He said, “Oh, the elevator is creaky. It doesn’t always work right. We’ll just walk up.” I was again scared stiff, but of course I had to do it.

Holbrook:

Right. It was another test.

Kellermann:

It was part of the—[laughter]

Holbrook:

Again. Another test. Did you see him do this to other people?

Kellermann:

No.

Holbrook:

Because you were never around when he inducted them.

Kellermann:

I guess.

Holbrook:

Okay. And so up you went, and that was great. So finally you got to work with Bolton.

Kellermann:

Right.

Holbrook:

You chased him halfway around the world!

Kellermann:

We never wrote a paper together.

Holbrook:

But he gave you the tacit knowledge.

Kellermann:

But the very first paper I wrote… In fact, it was while he was still at Caltech. He had told me what observation… Well, I was up in the Owens Valley with him. He was running the telescope there, and he let me sit there and watch the first night. The second night, he let me run the telescope a little bit while he was sitting there. The third night, he let me run the telescope and he went off to do something else. On the way back to Pasadena, he said, “Well, you did all the observing”—which wasn’t true—“so you might as well reduce the data. Here’s how you do it,” and so on. Then a few months later, I came to him with the data and he said, “Well, you reduced all the data. Why don’t you write it up?” So, I wrote it up. Then he sits down with me and he goes through it and crosses out this and writes in something. Everything was done with a typewriter then. I did it with a typewriter and he’d do it by hand, making corrections. He, maybe, changed 20% or something. So, I had to go back and retype it. I sit down with him again, and he goes through it and changes about 20%. Well, we went through this four or five times.

Holbrook:

Which means he wrote the paper [inaudible].

Kellermann:

Exactly! But instead of—

Holbrook:

But it was all about a nice [inaudible].

Kellermann:

Exactly. Instead of doing it right across the board, he made me feel like it was my paper. Then of course he said, “Well, you did all the work. You don’t need to have my name on it.

Holbrook:

So then essentially he helped you rewrite the dang paper, and you got your name on it. That’s nice! He was a good mentor, eh?

Kellermann:

He not only didn’t put his name on it, he led me to believe that I had written it. It was a good lesson, and I have tried to do the same to younger colleagues. So, one of the main things I did when I was in Australia was to observe the spectrum of PKS 1934-63 which was very special source that he had discovered, actually. So, he had some personal affinity to it. It was a source that had a spectrum that peaked up at 20 cm and was weak at low frequencies and weak at high frequencies. It was unique at the time. So, I studied it in great detail, but the—

Holbrook:

What did it turn out to be?

Kellermann:

Oh, it’s a compact radio galaxy. Everything was at the nucleus instead of in extended lobes. So, I worked on it in great detail. I did a lot of both theoretical work and observational work, and I wrote it up. But then he was more ruthless because by then I had come back to Sydney, and he was still at Parkes. He sent it back to me with a lot of comments and said, “If I can’t understand this, it can’t be published.” He was no longer babying me. He was cutting to the… [Laughs]

Holbrook:

But you were big. You were big at that time.

Kellermann:

Well no, no.

Holbrook:

You were still [inaudible].

Kellermann:

Oh yeah. Well, to him—well, throughout his life, he—

Holbrook:

He was very direct.

Kellermann:

Yes.

Holbrook:

So, you took it badly?

Kellermann:

No, I didn’t take it badly. I made the changes that he requested.

Holbrook:

There’s another issue, the ability to take criticism. You have to do it to be an astronomer. We have to take critique. You have to, and not take it personally.

Kellermann:

I think I do when it’s from a peer. I think I’ve always… Well, even when I go back to Caltech now, Martin Schmidt I guess is the only one that’s still there from when I was a graduate student. But I still consider these people a different level. I won’t say worship, but maybe that’s the right word.

Holbrook:

Just rarified. They’re in the stratosphere.

Kellermann:

Yes. Have you been back there recently? In the new building?

Holbrook:

Yeah. The one that looks like an earthquake coming apart? Yes.

Kellermann:

So, at least that’s a different atmosphere now. But as long as it’s going back to Robinson when these same people were your teachers…

Holbrook:

Yeah. You kind of feel like you’re always a grad student.

Kellermann:

Exactly. These people are in the same office and everything. Yes. That’s the way I felt. Now with the other building, it’s a little bit like a different world, but…

Holbrook:

In terms of their criticism, though, did you value the Caltech criticism higher than others? Or you were scared of it?

Kellermann:

I wasn’t thinking of Caltech criticism as such, but as I said, if I got criticism from a professor or John Bolton, I felt I was doing something wrong and the criticism was… Because I sort of worshiped them, the criticism had to be right. Now I think I’m more defensive if I get criticism from a colleague. I tend to—

Holbrook:

“Get you back!”

Kellermann:

Yeah, exactly.

Holbrook:

But when you find out you’re wrong, are you graceful about it?

Kellermann:

Oh yeah, I think so. I don’t have any enemies, I think, so I guess I—

Holbrook:

So, you will actually go back to the person and say, “You were right.”

Kellermann:

Oh yeah, yeah.

Holbrook:

“I apologize for being a—”

Kellermann:

Well, I’m not even sure I have to apologize.

Holbrook:

But you just say, “You were right.” “You were right” is apology enough.

Kellermann:

But I think my first reaction is always to try to defend my position. I mean some of these things never get resolved, of course, because they’re—

Holbrook:

They’re in the theoretical phase.

Kellermann:

They’re ambiguous. Right.

Holbrook:

There are six explanations.

Kellermann:

And of course, as you probably well know, in history it’s less cut and dried. It’s always a matter of interpretation.

Holbrook:

Yes, and that could change with more data, right?

Kellermann:

Yeah. But it’s still… at least partly a personal view. There’s no—

Holbrook:

We’re at 11:30, and I did want to get into your strategies for leadership. I want to get into your first moves into that. [Break] Of course we were ancient. I remember being 18 and going to Caltech.

Kellermann:

Where did you live before?

Holbrook:

From L.A., from Los Angeles. So, it was the college across town. To my mother—

Kellermann:

At least you had family to go to.

Holbrook:

Yeah, but I didn’t. I mean I lived on campus. But the interview is not about me. We’re going to talk about you. We could talk about me another time. So, you went into leadership, which a lot of people who are good scientists are often pushed into leadership, but they have no leadership training.

Kellermann:

Well, I’m not sure what you mean by leadership. I avoided, either consciously or unconsciously, administrative leadership with any organization I worked for.

Holbrook:

You avoided it.

Kellermann:

Well, I say I’m not sure whether that’s conscious or unconscious, but I haven’t done much.

Holbrook:

Okay. You were president of IAU. You ran something—

Kellermann:

No, no, no.

Holbrook:

I thought I—

Kellermann:

No.

Holbrook:

Okay. Tell me, tell me, tell me. I’m misinformed. Tell me, tell me, tell me.

Kellermann:

I was chair of the U.S. National Committee for the IAU. That was 20, 30 years ago. I’m vice chair now. I’ll become chair again if I live that long. So yeah, I’ve held a number of positions in professional societies, chair of the National Academy Astronomy Section and other NAS committees and things like that. I was also Chair of the SKA Science and Engineering Committee that had responsibility for oversight of the Square Kilometre Array Project. I spent the better part of ten years working on the SKA in various capacities, including chairing various sub-committees and Working Groups. It was a great disappointment to me, after all this work, that the US dropped out of the project.

Holbrook:

And you don’t consider that to be leadership because it’s not management. You’re equating leadership with management.

Kellermann:

I wasn’t necessarily equating it, but I was contrasting the two, yes.

Holbrook:

So then let’s talk about your positions that were not management but perhaps are leadership positions. And what were you doing in Germany?

Kellermann:

Well, I was a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. But that was sort of an accident. When I came to NRAO—I came to NRAO in June of 1965. By the way, I’m going to digress for a minute.

Holbrook:

Please. And I need to take more pictures of you. Those were all blurry. Go ahead. That’s a nice one.

Kellermann:

About people going off to other countries when they were young. At that time, I was concerned about finding… not so much finding a job because there were plenty of jobs then. That was never an issue. The only job I ever applied for, in fact, was I think the one in Australia, which was a formality. I’ve never had to apply for a job, compete for a job. You just decided where you wanted to go then.

Holbrook:

And you called them up.

Kellermann:

You called them up or something. But I knew being off in Australia—I knew I was going to come back to the U.S.; I wasn’t planning to stay in Australia—I would have to find a position here, and it would be difficult to do from far-off Australia. So, before I went, I thought I might want to come to NRAO. So, I came down here and talked to Dave Heeschen, who was the director. He essentially promised me a job. He said, “Just let me know when you’re ready to come.” But when I came in ‘65, everything was in Green Bank then. There was no Charlottesville. But a lot of the families were unhappy living there. So, by the time I came, it had already been agreed that they were going to move to Charlottesville, and the building was under construction.

Holbrook:

Is it this building?

Kellermann:

This building. But the building wasn’t going to be ready until December, and families wanted to move over in September for the start of the school year. So, all the other staff—not all—most of the other staff essentially commuted. They lived here in Charlottesville. They drove to Green Bank on Monday, stayed the week, and then drove back on Friday, all the Americans. The only people left in Green Bank were essentially postdocs and junior staff who had come from other countries—people from Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Iraq, Sweden. I was about the only American left in Green Bank. I was single. Everything I owned fit in one or two suitcases. I didn’t feel the pressure to come to Charlottesville. I wanted to be where the telescopes were, and I didn’t feel the pressure to come. I knew if I ever had to come, I could pack up and come in a day or so. So that’s, I think, how I really got my first—aside from that trip to Cambridge—really an association with a lot of international people.

Peter Mezger was doing galactic work and I was doing extragalactic work. I guess we were the two sort of dominant personalities there, and we fought over telescope time because there were no proposals or applications for telescope time then. Everything was sort of informal, and we were told to work it out between us. Galactic time and extragalactic were separate, but there was enough overlap that we could fight over, and so we had some vicious fights. I think people… Peter was almost ten years older than me. He had actually been pulled into the German army during the very last days of the war in the youth corps or something.

Holbrook:

Right, right. So, you had [inaudible].

Kellermann:

Everybody knew my Jewish background and his German background, so they sort of exaggerated our arguments. But in fact personally we got along very well. I think people, scientists have conflicts over scientific issues. We worked in entirely different fields, even though it was both radio astronomy, so we never had any intellectual fights or anything. He went back to Germany to become director of the Effelsberg radio telescope.

Holbrook:

Right. It was just over telescope time.

Kellermann:

Right, petty stuff. So, we got along fine personally. I was up for a sabbatical. I had made several visits to Bonn as a guest for a month or so. Ivan Pauliny-Toth, who I had worked with very closely in Green Bank; he went to Bonn to work there on the staff, and we continue to work together. Germany has this Humboldt Fellowship, and we were discussing my coming on one of these. I was up for a sabbatical but first I was about to go for a one-month visit. I was talking to Mezger on the telephone and he said, “Well, there are three directors here.” That’s the way they run the Max Planck Institutes. He couldn’t get along with Hachenberg, who was the original founding director there. They had real fights. But he had managed to get Hachenberg to retire, and he said to me, “Instead of coming on this Humboldt, why don’t you come as a director?” I said, “I’ll be there next month and we can talk about it.” I got there a month later. It was a fait accompli. Everybody knew I was going to come as a director.

Holbrook:

It’s a Bolton, another Bolton situation.

Kellermann:

Everybody knew I was going to come as a director. It had been through their bureaucracy and everything.

Holbrook:

It had been approved.

Kellermann:

Yeah, right, but nobody asked me.

Holbrook:

Yeah. The Humboldt is usually three years and a certain—

Kellermann:

Well, it’s one. Well, no. You’re thinking of the junior Humboldt. The junior Humboldt is three years. This is the senior one, which is one year. It’s sort of a fellowship, but you maintain a relationship for life essentially.

Holbrook:

So, you came as a director.

Kellermann:

Well, no. I said—

Holbrook:

You got railroaded in, Shanghaied. [laughs]

Kellermann:

Well, we agreed I would think about it. Then I was back there again a few months later because I was on a committee to… It was this French-German millimeter initiative. They called an international committee to help decide on where to put their millimeter telescopes. By that time, I had decided I really didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in Germany. I didn’t want to raise my children there. I really just wanted to go for that one-year sabbatical, and I explained this to the Max Planck president. I said, “No. I’d just rather come on a Humboldt Fellowship.” He said, “Well, why don’t you come as director just for two years?” It was not normal because those are lifetime appointments and everything. I thought, well, I was only planning on one year; maybe two years would be all right. A director there has minimal management responsibilities. You’re supposed to be a scientific director. It was the old school where the director plans all the research and you have all these people to do the work. That sounded like it might be interesting. So, I came back here to see if I could get a two year leave of absence. Dave Heeschen was director at NRAO and explained that our leave policy allows for only one-year leave.

Holbrook:

And you broke that rule.

Kellermann:

Well no, no. I didn’t break any rules. Again, we agreed to bend the rule. The people in Germany said, “You really have to come for two years. One year is not enough to get the program established and everything.” So, I asked Dave if I could have a two-year leave of absence and he said, “Well, it’s up to the AUI board.” He could only give me a one-year leave of absence, but if after a year, I wanted to stay a second year, he said that he would go to the Board and request an extension, which they would surely approve. Then he looked at me straight in the eye and said, “Now you realize that if we do this, you have a real obligation. If we extend it for another year, you have a real obligation to come back,” and I said, “Yes, I understand.” Then he looked at me in the eye again with a little smile and said, “And you also realize we have no way of enforcing that.” [laughs] But we had an understanding, which was more binding than any written document. And I did. I stayed the two years. The MPI administration knew I was coming for two years, but all of my colleagues thought or were hoping that I would stay. Then I kept making the point that no, it was only for two years.

Holbrook:

Were you able to achieve anything there?

Kellermann:

Well, scientifically, yes because it was essentially the same work I was doing here and with many of the same collaborators. I knew the people, the telescope, and everything. But to be honest, I felt uncomfortable managing people—

Holbrook:

You had been an academic.

Kellermann:

—having to give or not give raises and such—

Holbrook:

Sick leaves.

Kellermann:

No, not sick leaves, that’s pretty automatic. If you need it, you need it. But having to terminate people after three years because there were no positions available and they weren’t doing that great, I didn’t like that. Or tenure considerations.

Holbrook:

Yeah. So that was your brush with that type of management.

Kellermann:

I tried it. Right, I tried it.

Holbrook:

You may not know that I was actually a post-doc in Germany as well, Max Plank Institute for the History of Science.

Kellermann:

I did know that. But I had forgotten. I looked you up, too.

Holbrook:

Okay. You know what you’re getting into. My husband and I almost got positions in Heidelberg. I would have been at Ruprecht-Karl University; he would have been at the institute on the hill, right? The astronomy institute up on the hill with Hans-Walter Rix.

Kellermann:

Yeah, and Heidelberg is a beautiful place, too.

Holbrook:

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. And I love living abroad, so we were pretty sad when that didn’t come through. But yes. Go ahead. So that was two years that you were in leadership, and you really learned this is not for you. You liked the science. I’m sure you loved having the resources of the Max Planck Gesellschaft.

Kellermann:

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, which is fantastic. After I came back to NRAO I was heavily involved in the VLBA, in the design, and selling it to the decadal review and the NSF. That was an interesting experience, which I enjoyed. I was also involved, to a lesser extent, in the VLA design, and earlier in NRAO’s quest to build a large fully steerable radio telescope. But after the VLBA was well under construction, I guess they had to find a new job for me here. I mean, right now people have so-called functional roles and it’s very formal and everything. But back then… I mean I did a lot of things in support of the facilities in Green Bank, especially the 140 Foot Telescope, but it was always by my own choice. I was never assigned anything. Very early on, Barry Clark and I developed very long base line interferometry [VLBI], which has become a big industry, but nobody told us to do it or anything.

Holbrook:

You just did it.

Kellermann:

Yes. In fact—again, to digress for a moment—how easy things were then. Do you know Marshall Cohen at Caltech?

Holbrook:

Yes. He was one of my professors.

Kellermann:

Right. So, I had met him even back when I was a graduate student at Caltech. He had offered me a job at Cornell. I spent some time with him at Arecibo before I went to Australia. In fact, we made some of the first observations at Arecibo together. Right after I came to NRAO we were at an AAS meeting in Michigan. We were just having a beer—well, a pitcher of beer. As we drank more and more beer, we were talking about interferometry, and we both realized you could do… The technology had advanced to the point where you could record data separately at the two places and bring it together and form an interferometer. That’s as far as we got. Neither of us had any real idea how to really do it technically. So, I came back and talked with Barry Clark who was a real expert, and we agreed we ought to try to do this. I went into Heeschen’s office in Green Bank, who was the director at the time, and told him what we had been talking about. He said, “How much is this going to cost?” Hadn’t thought about that yet, so I came up with a number. $100,000. That was a lot of money then to buy these big fancy tape recorders and atomic clocks. He’s sitting at his desk. There were no computers or anything then, no business people to consult… He knew the budget and everything himself. He didn’t have a business manager. He opens the drawer and pulls out this big black book, his budget. He looks at it. I said $100,000. He looks at it and he shakes his head and says, “No, we can’t do that.” This would have been September or October. He says, “No, we can’t handle that. Will $50,000 be enough until the end of the year?”

Holbrook:

[laughs] You’re like, “YES!” Oh my gosh.

Kellermann:

And that was it! Oh, and then a day or two later he said, “Well, maybe you ought to write me a little proposal just to have it documented,” which turned out to be very important because that’s the only documentation of the whole idea and everything. Then a week later he said, “What are you doing?” and said, “Why haven’t you spent any money.” So, he really pushed it. It was so easy to start projects then and everything.

Holbrook:

It essentially was his discretionary funds.

Kellermann:

No committees or anything. But anyway, along about 1990, Paul Vanden Bout, the then NRAO director decided we needed a chief scientist. That was the only other management position I… Oh! Actually, before I went to Germany—I had forgotten about this—Bill Howard. We always had an assistant director in charge of the sites. Bill Howard, who was the Assistant Director in Green Bank, suddenly resigned and went to the NSF, and so they needed somebody to run Green Bank, and I was living there. So, I became Acting Assistant Director for Green Bank six months before I went to Germany.

Holbrook:

You didn’t like it.

Kellermann:

Yeah. Again, you’re the… It was the personnel issues. And it was a small community. Your colleagues were your friends, and spouses were friends. I remember specifically… I had two deputies essentially. One did the technical, took care of the site and everything, and the other was in charge of business affairs. They were at the same level, and those were the only two people that reported directly to me. Everybody else reported to one of them. The way the budget and salaries were handled, I was given a lump sum for these two people for the next year. I could divide it up as I thought appropriate. These people had both been…One was a business guy, a master of business administration or something. The other guy was a local who had come up through the ranks. He knew everyone, and he ran the site. These people had an equal salary. I remember this so clearly. I gave the guy who ran the site a slightly bigger increase than the other one.

Holbrook:

Oh, good grief.

Kellermann:

You can always replace a business guy.

Holbrook:

I know. Someone who knows things top to bottom is invaluable.

Kellermann:

Right! Exactly. The guy who ran the business office came to me and said he was disappointed, that he thought they should be kept equal. We maintained a friendly relationship afterward, but that really bothered me. I just didn’t want to make a career of having to deal with those things.

Holbrook:

Yeah. Yeah. You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. That’s one of my favorite sayings.

Kellermann:

Later, I held some other administrative positions at NRAO. I was the Chief Scientist for about eight years. That involved mostly policy, but I was in charge of the scientific staff including promotions, tenure, and hiring. I guess by this time I was older than the people I had to deal with as far as promotions and everything, so it wasn’t as much of an issue. So, I guess I dealt with that okay. But after that, I became head of the New Initiatives Office. I enjoyed that, as it involved planning for new projects. I coordinated people planning new facilities such as a solar radio telescope, a low-frequency array, but no one reported to me as far as salary or promotions were concerned.

Holbrook:

Very interesting. Wow. So, then you were elected to all these society… Can you just go through the list? What were your favorite offices that you held?

Kellermann:

Again, it’s that people make recommendations. There’s no doubt in my mind that Dave Heeschen, who was the director who was one of the first radio astronomers to be a member of the National Academy… And radio astronomers were a very close group. The three radio astronomers were Heeschen, Frank Drake, who had been on the NRAO staff and had left and was director at Arecibo, and Bernie Burke, a professor at MIT. Apparently, they wanted to see another radio astronomer in. I didn’t know this at the time. If I had, it would have been ego deflating. But the Academy also was very interested in diversity in all respects: age, geographic location, ethnicity. I was young and living in West Virginia.

Holbrook:

Looks good. Looks like you’re a hokie-fenokie.

Kellermann:

There had been only one other member of the National Academy in history from West Virginia, and there were no others at the time. There was also a big push that year to get younger people. With the support—again, I didn’t fully appreciate all this until much later, fortunately. So, it was Dave Heeschen and these others I think that got me elected. Then Heeschen became a member of the American Philosophical Society, and again, there’s no question in my mind that he—

Holbrook:

Nominated you.

Kellermann:

Yes, because I later served in membership committees for both of these organizations, and I understand how the system works and everything. So, it’s got to be the right people supporting you. I think that’s important.

Holbrook:

That’s great. Did you ever hold an AAS office?

Kellermann:

No. I ran for vice president twice, I think, and was defeated. But we were talking about networks and connections. I don’t know if you’ve got in your thing there that there’s a National Academy prize…

Holbrook:

And you got it.

Kellermann:

Yes. Wait a minute. It’s on the tip of my tongue. The Benjamin Arthur Gould Prize. I was very young. It was before I became an NAS member. The committee was Willie Fowler, Herb Friedman, and Bart Bok, all of whom I knew well, or knew me well. Fowler, I had two classes with him at Caltech, and he of course knew about the prize I had gotten, for my graduate thesis. Herb Friedman was a trustee of AUI who ran NRAO. Bart Bok was a Dutchman, and my first wife was Dutch. He was almost like an academic father to me. A colleague here, when he heard I’d gotten this prize, says, “Kellermann! How could you miss? Because of the Dutch connection, the Jewish connection”—Herb Friedman was Jewish— “the Dutch connection, the Jewish connection, and the Caltech connection.” I know it’s true. It really is. You’d like to think the people who get these things—

Holbrook:

Deserve it.

Kellermann:

They all deserve it, but there are many others. It’s these little personal things—the connections with people that can make a difference in the end

Holbrook:

Yes. As long as you’re honest about it. A lot of people, when you sit down and do an oral history, they don’t want to give credit to all the other factors. I think it has to do with the way we think about science. We want it to be one easy story, but it’s a complicated story.

Kellermann:

Yeah, and that’s especially true in radio astronomy. In fact, I was just working last night preparing a talk I give a talk to summer students each year about history of radio astronomy, and all the big discoveries have been more or less accidental: radio galaxies, quasars, pulsars, the cosmic microwave background, cosmic masers, gravitational lensing, the rotation of Mercury, the greenhouse effect on Venus, Jupiter’s radiation belts, the first exoplanets… radio astronomy itself after Jansky’s discovery.

Holbrook:

All accidents.

Kellermann:

I was fortunate to be able to get in when the accidents were just waiting to happen. I didn’t have anything to do with these discoveries, except perhaps in contributing to the development of VLBI and high-resolution radio imaging. When I started in radio astronomy, it was the mantra that because of the long wavelengths involved, the resolution of radio telescopes can never compete with that of optical telescopes. Well now the resolution of the VLBA is one or two orders of magnitude better than even HST.

My most highly cited paper on the derivation of the inverse Compton limit to the bright temperature of synchrotron radio sources was an accident. We knew from VLBI observations that the maximum observed brightness temperature was 10¹² K. After months of puzzling over it, I came up with the derivation of the inverse Compton limit of 10¹² K, which although correct, wasn’t the reason that we were not observing greater values. It was because the resolution of our interferometers was limited by the size of the Earth. But I didn’t realize that until later.

But, I think, the big accident, waiting to happen, of course will be a successful detection of an extraterrestrial civilization, a field started by Frank Drake way back in 1960 with his Project Ozma in Green Bank. I predict that when it happens, it won’t be from some dedicated sophisticated, and probably expensive search program, but, like so many of the other discoveries in radio astronomy will be seen or heard loud and clear while studying something else. Maybe even by an amateur.

Holbrook:

Yeah. So, I was close to Frank Drake when I was a grad student, yeah, because he was at Santa Cruz. I TAed for him. I was quite fond of him.

Kellermann:

I also got interested way back in SETI, and I was involved in a number of the NASA SETI activities. That’s how I guess I got to know Frank. I was also working on planetary radio astronomy for a while, we had met at several planetary conferences.

Holbrook:

Just connections. All these connections. It’s a network, and how these… It’s not as if the meritocracy doesn’t work, but you need a network and the ability. You can’t just work by itself.

Kellermann:

That’s right. That’s right. But I think radio astronomers, at least in the past in my generation, sort of felt a special affinity because we never really were accepted by the astronomy community in somewhat paranoia defense. At least we thought we were not accepted.

Holbrook:

But I’m very much interested in American class, right? The radio astronomers that I encountered, they all sort of behave like they’re working class. They’re all friendly and approachable like the working class.

Kellermann:

Well, people aren’t radio astronomers or optical or infrared or x-ray astronomers anymore. They’re astronomers and they work in all these areas. So, I think there is a lack of people with technical expertise in these areas. Now, I don’t know how this is going to affect the next generation of instruments. But certainly my generation… I’ve only taken three formal courses in astronomy, none of them as an undergraduate. My first year in Caltech, I took a general astronomy course. I was very fortunate that first year. Fred Hoyle taught a course in theoretical cosmology and Allan Sandage observational cosmology. That’s all the astronomy I’ve ever studied. Hoyle’s so-called theoretical cosmology course was really a course in tensor calculus. Certainly people like Bolton, or Martin Ryle, or Lovell, all those people, they came up through the technical side, and I sort of did, too, because of my interest in electronics. Frank Drake, Heeschen, Cam Wade. Well, those people studied astronomy under Bok at Harvard. Their degrees are in astronomy. But again, it was the more technical work that made them radio astronomers. Drake was in the military where he did radio electronics.

Holbrook:

They got their hands dirty.

Kellermann:

That’s right. It was hands-on. Yeah, exactly. So, radio astronomers of my generation certainly… Almost all the training was in physics or radio physics, and I think felt some sort of affinity to that crowd and never really belonging as an astronomer.

Holbrook:

But what were you coming up against? Elitism? That snobbery?

Kellermann:

No, no, no. Sort of an inverse elitism.

Holbrook:

What was the source of the not belonging to astronomers?

Kellermann:

Because we belonged so much to each other, I think. I don’t think there was anything flagrant from the broader astronomical community… I mean, that was actually before my day. By the time I… I mean, I got in during the really heyday when radio galaxies were discovered, then quasars, and huge energies were involved. That’s when a lot of physicists like Fowler and Burbidge and other physicists became interested in radio astronomy. People were moving into the area, the first Texas symposia on gravitational collapse and everything. I think the paranoia was self-generated. I guess I never thought of myself as a “real” astronomer, at least I think, until I received the Bruce Medal.

Holbrook:

So, you think maybe the generation above you had a good reason to be paranoid.

Kellermann:

Yes.

Holbrook:

But your generation, it was just sort of left over from them.

Kellermann:

Yes. The first generation didn’t even have the advanced academic training because of the war. So, I guess there’s some inferiority complex there.

Holbrook:

So, I guess we’ll leave it at that. The only thing we didn’t go over is your advice to the next generation of astronomers. Did you want to just—we can walk and talk—so, do you have any advice for the next generation of people who want to consider going into radio astronomy and working for a national facility and yada, yada, yada?

Kellermann:

It’s harder now. I think astronomy has become so big, and there aren’t the job opportunities. It certainly was more or less guaranteed in my time.

Holbrook:

And the collaborations. We’ve already spoken about how you don’t like these big collaborations.

Kellermann:

Well, I’m still involved in collaborations, because that’s the way the field has evolved. But I’m not struggling to make a career now. Also, I found it satisfying to be in a big group, as long as I was running it. But now my former students and postdocs are in charge, and that is satisfying in a different way.

Holbrook:

And that’s it for your advice?

Kellermann:

The choice between working at a national center and a university is a difficult one. I didn’t come to NRAO expecting to spend the rest of my career here, but it happened. I don’t regret it. I have had opportunities for senior appointments at top universities, but did not pursue any of them, but I sometimes wonder if I should at least have given them more thought. I have appreciated the opportunities to work closely with the engineers at NRAO and to contribute in some small way to the facilities here. I’ve been privileged in being able to pretty much define my activities, although it is more difficult to do that now for the younger staff. NRAO has even more or less phased out tenure and tenure-track appointments. Scientific staff members report to a series of managers, many of whom are way down the food chain. When I came to NRAO, all of the scientific staff reported directly to the NRAO Director. So, academia offers more opportunity for independence than NRAO or the other national observatories, or NASA. But academic careers now are fraught with uncertainty, multiple postdocs and relocations, and fewer permanent positions than there are candidates.

Holbrook:

Okay. Thanks so much.

[End of recording]