John Wheeler - Session III

Aaserud:

We will devote today’s discussion mostly to the origins of JASON and the first development of JASON, but before we do that, I would like you to talk a little bit about your experience with the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, which I do not think we have covered before.

Wheeler:

I think that probably Dorothy Fosdick would have as good an insight and memory as anybody on deck today, on how that came to be, what was unique about such a committee, Congress running in effect its own show, and why such a thing doesn’t really work. Because, I suppose, that fits with Friedrich Engels’s philosophy, that there’s no such thing as a fact, there’s only a fact for a purpose. And different members of Congress that were on that, on the other side of the wicket, each had his own purpose in calling on members to speak up. So I would have to go back and look at the Minutes of that to find out how much of it was concerned with weapons, and how much of it was concerned with civilian energy. So I’m not very much use on that. I suspect that you’ll find that we had no more than three meetings.

Aaserud:

Oh, really?

Wheeler:

Right.

Aaserud:

Were you involved in the establishment of it then?

Wheeler:

When it was first set up, my memory is that I was one of the members. But I do not recall whether there was an official chairman of the committee. This would take going back through the records to find out.

Aaserud:

And I haven’t looked at those records, so maybe we could drop that for now.

Wheeler:

I suppose the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD has an index. I cannot recall that the hearings were classified, but I have nothing to prove that they were unclassified either.

Aaserud:

So it was not such a powerful committee, in your estimation.

Wheeler:

Right.

Aaserud:

And didn’t last for very long, either. When was this?

Wheeler:

I think in some edition of WHO’S WHO, I may have mentioned a date for it. I would suspect it would be in the 1950’s.

Aaserud:

OK, well, let’s go ahead to JASON, then, which we’re a little more prepared for. And last time, we did speak about your efforts to set up a National Advanced Research Projects Laboratory. And we were talking a little bit about 137. And what I would like to talk about today is the relationship between those developments and the eventual origins of JASON, JASON which was established in late 1959. It seems that 137 was seen as a starting point for the laboratory rather than as a starting point for JASON at the time.

Wheeler:

Right.

Aaserud:

So maybe you could talk about 137 a little bit from that perspective, the purpose of it and to what extent that was explicitly related to the plans for a laboratory.

Wheeler:

Well, the Project JASON was, as you remark, really a dry run, a trial run for the workability of something like a laboratory concept.

Aaserud:

Yes, 137 was, yes.

Wheeler:

However, I think I spoke about how I was asked in the end, as a result of JASON to take charge of a laboratory, commit myself to it, and others here were asked to commit themselves to it.

Aaserud:

Yes, we’ve heard Morgenstern.

Wheeler:

And it would have meant too big a commitment, at least at that time. Incidentally, I have just got the photocopy of the letter I sent to Feynman, asking him not to take part in JASON, but to take part in the thermonuclear effort here at Princeton. It’s a similar kind of recruiting letter. And I have here also his answer to that. They were both dug up for me by James Gleick, the man who’s doing a life of Feynman now.

Aaserud:

Was that about the same time?

Wheeler:

That was about 1951, May of 1951. That was occasioned by the push to make the hydrogen bomb, whereas this JASON came right after Sputnik, 1958. So I had to have also that experience, and I realized that an enterprise of that kind is not something you do with your little finger. It’s a big show, that hydrogen bomb business took a couple of years, full time. And I think I perhaps mentioned to you about how I ultimately had to say no.

Aaserud:

Yes, I have the letter, the final letter, here, from you, that explains that position.

Wheeler:

Yes. And did I mention how I said to my wife, “I wish that somebody would run over me and break a leg so that I would…”

Aaserud:

…would not have to make the decision yourself. Yes. But you did.

Wheeler:

Yes. Then I just let it drop at that point, and then some of the people who had been involved in it were sufficiently keen about the whole enterprise, and they happened to be together at Los Alamos, especially Goldberger and Watson.

Aaserud:

Yes, was that a development that came out of 137, or had they had similar thoughts independently?

Wheeler:

No, I don’t know of them having any such thoughts independently, until 137 had in effect demonstrated a mechanism and made it seem workable and interesting and attractive and doable without taking up an arm and a leg; it would take a number of fingers but not an arm and a leg.

Aaserud:

To what extent did you have regular discussions with that group at the time of your decision not to become the director?

Wheeler:

I don’t recall talking of that further at that time. I must have. And I should have kept everybody informed. I’m not sure to what extent I did. What came down the pike at that moment, what supervened? I’m trying to recall. We are now up to about, what, we’re up to about 1961. When did JASON’s new mechanism start?

Aaserud:

No, it started in late 1959.

Wheeler:

In late 1959.

Aaserud:

Yes, so it was only a year and a half after 137, in fact. I wondered if you wanted to comment on one thing? The laboratory idea didn’t die immediately after you said no. There were some attempts to get somebody else. I’ve seen a comment by Morgenstern on a suggestion to have, I think it was Donald Price, as the director. That was just after you made the decision. So I don’t know if you recall anything about subsequent attempts at saving the laboratory after you said no, and also, what the reactions were of the other people involved, to the developments immediately after you said no.

Wheeler:

Yes. This would take somebody who’s better at remembering conversations and goes around talking more than I. And I would think you would like to talk to both Goldberger and Watson on this. Of course, as you know, Goldberger is right here in town.

Aaserud:

Yes, he is back, like you.

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

Well, do you remember Don Price being a serious candidate for the directorship of such a laboratory, or was that just something that was discussed?

Wheeler:

I would like to know when it was that I was on the board of directors of the AAAS, because Don Price was a member of that same board of directors, and of all the people there, he to my mind was the man with the greatest leadership capability and all around person who had a sense of the political field as well as the science field. So I can well believe that I welcomed that, and may even have talked it over with Morgenstern.

Aaserud:

This was as late as in April of 1959, in fact, that Morgenstern had his reaction to that. I hope I can find it. I have too many things here but let’s see. Yes. Morgenstern was actually fairly negative to the idea of having Price as the director. Do you want me to read his comment?

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

“I have seen the paper by D. K. Price. I cannot imagine that he is either needed or useful for salvaging Project 137. I have a horror of deans in general and deans of schools of administration in particular. This man might make a contribution in the Bureau of the Budget or some such place.”

Wheeler:

Well, I don’t think Oscar could have known Don Price or he would never have said that.

Aaserud:

No, no, but I’m just trying to make you remember this.

Wheeler:

Yes. That’s odd. Yes, I can’t imagine, if he had talked with me, he would have said that. So if I talked with him at all it must have been after that.

Aaserud:

So were there other attempts?

Wheeler:

I honestly don’t remember.

Aaserud:

No. OK.

Wheeler:

By the way, have you talked with Herb York at all?

Aaserud:

Yes, I have.

Wheeler:

Good.

Aaserud:

He was one of the first people I spoke with.

Wheeler:

Good. So from then on, I was just a minor member of JASON.

Aaserud:

Yes. To what extent were you active in its establishment? I mean, you were obviously very active in both setting up and working out 137. What was your role in the transition from the 137 and the laboratory idea to the JASON idea? To what extent did you participate, and to what extent did you play a role in making that transition of an idea?

Wheeler:

I’m sorry, I can’t recall.

Aaserud:

You know, I was thinking of Wigner and Morgenstern, the troika of you or whatever to call you. Were the same three people equally interested in JASON as they had been in the laboratory idea?

Wheeler:

I think that Morgenstern probably felt he didn’t quite fit in this company of physicists, because it did in the end turn out to be largely physicists, and Wigner was also someone who of course was very much a physicist, very respected, yet I think he was somebody who did not like to become involved in organizational matters. So I really can’t recall Wigner coming up with any suggestions on this score.

Aaserud:

But JASON was going to be much less of an organized matter than a laboratory would be. In that respect, wouldn’t he be more interested rather than less interested in the JASON idea as compared to the laboratory idea?

Wheeler:

You would think so. But I honestly can’t remember his taking part in JASON. And I think perhaps there’s another factor that I’m only slowly coming to appreciate. You know, the old statement, how do I know what I think till I hear what I say? And in that respect, here, I can’t help feeling that the younger people who took hold, Goldberger and Watson, wanted to make it a young organization, and I can believe that Wigner felt that it would cast a blight or shadow or put others in the shade if he were to take a big part in it. And that would be his contribution to making such a thing work well, not to contribute to making it work well himself.

Aaserud:

I think he formally did become an advisor, but may not have been a member.

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

Just as you did, and as some other people did. Bethe, Teller were also advisors.

Wheeler:

Right.

Aaserud:

Maybe you could say something about the role of the older generation in JASON to serve as advisors. I think in these early days, they participated at the same level as the younger people.

Wheeler:

That’s right.

Aaserud:

So maybe you could say a little bit about the role of the older generation in establishing and furthering JASON during the first years. I mean, I know that Teller, Bethe, you, probably Charles Townes, although he was a little younger, were advisors, and maybe you could describe a little bit about your role in that, particularly your own, of course.

Wheeler:

I would have to go back to look at the individual projects, because we get into individual projects, and there would be maybe three or four or five of us kicking that around in a room together, and then going off to do calculations, and then coming back together, and then reporting to the larger group, from time to time.

Aaserud:

But as a general rule you would say that it was more individual projects than being involved in the running and administration of the whole thing, for the older people.

Wheeler:

Yes. Oh yes, right. The person who had the chairmanship of JASON was the one who had to do the work, of calling on the sponsoring organization, in the end MITRE, to provide the secretarial help and the financial setup and all that. That was an enormous help, of course, in making the enterprise work. And I think it was absolutely wonderful the way the opportunity to talk physics together provided a powerful incentive to bring people together on a defense project, a quid pro quo, if you want to put it that way. I can’t think of a better way to do it. And I’ve often asked myself, why our European friends are so allergic to any involvement in defense work. And I think that if there was some prestigious group, membership in which would give you a scientific boost by discussions, but also be a real contact with and opportunity to contribute to defense, that might be the way to do it. I believe I talked some with Herman Bundy, who was the…

Aaserud:

I would like to come back to that. I have some material on that, and that’s a continuation of the Jackson effort in a way, of trying to get those ideas across to the Europeans. But I would like to stay a little bit longer with JASON.

Wheeler:

Yes, coming back to home base.

Aaserud:

Yes. Now, you were commenting upon perhaps why Wigner didn’t continue as eagerly in JASON as he perhaps would have in the laboratory idea. To what extent is that a major difference between JASON and the laboratory idea, that JASON was concentrating on a new generation of physicists? Wasn’t that part of the idea of the first attempt too?

Wheeler:

Oh, of the first attempt too. I think that Wigner felt that he would do what he could to get a show going, without himself necessarily taking any big part in it. And it would be very interesting, in that connection, to track down the story of his involvement with civil defense at Oak Ridge, because there, he was accustomed to go on a regular basis and encourage younger people to work on that enterprise. I think there he had a way to do something. It was not however wired into the political framework of the United States, in the same type way that JASON’s work was. JASON went, after all, to the ARPA and Defense Department, whereas the Oak Ridge work went to the Office of Civil Defense, which never had much clout in Washington. I don’t know who you could get to talk about that. I think Alvin Weinberg perhaps could say something.

Aaserud:

I haven’t approached him. I’m trying to concentrate on JASON now, but it would be interesting to broaden it that way.

Wheeler:

Yes. Well, coming back to anything else about JASON and making it work, of course the meeting place was critical on that, because if a person couldn’t bring his family for a three month period or whatever it was — a three week period — he was not very likely to come himself for such an extended period. But that was a problem that was solved. To be sure, the Department of Defense or some persons up the line turned down the idea of meeting in Honolulu. That looked a little too much like gilding the lily.

Aaserud:

Was that a serious proposition early on?

Wheeler:

It was one proposition.

Aaserud:

At the establishment of it?

Wheeler:

No, that was some way down the road.

Aaserud:

Yes, because it took a while till La Jolla became the meeting place.

Wheeler:

Yes, right. It was moved around.

Aaserud:

It was moved around a little bit before that, yes.

Wheeler:

And I think that was a very good scheme, to move around, try places out, shake down to a place where it’s simple. It doesn’t make too much difference, I don’t think, to the participants, really, as long as it’s an agreeable place, and they can get housing. Let’s see, what else can I suggest about that? I certainly recall David Sharp, a very junior person, the youngest, had been a graduate student here, participating, dealing with the problems of mixing hydrodynamics. What does that prove or show about the action of JASON? Well, it did provide a way for getting younger people into defense. He is now still interested in such questions. He’s at Los Alamos now. It would be quite interesting to go back and look at the people who have come into JASON young and how they’ve ended up, and to what extent they have a continuing involvement or touch with JASON. I think that would be as open a measure of achievement as anything you could easily get.

Aaserud:

It could be argued it could be both, I suppose. JASON didn’t renew itself to the extent that it hoped to either, in the course of the years. The membership has been fairly constant, and over the years the average age has increased a year once in a while at least. There’s more of a new set of people now, but the original idea of having the new generation you know renew itself over the years didn’t work out to the extent that had been hoped, I think. So it can be looked at both ways, I suppose. To what extent do you think that you as a teacher furthered that kind of atmosphere, for example, at Princeton? Were there people here that were particularly motivated for that kind of thing?

Wheeler:

Yes, well, perhaps it was a counterreaction to some of the feeling along the River Charles.

Aaserud:

I haven’t looked at the origin of the early members too closely but there obviously were some Princetonians.

Wheeler:

Oh yes. Yes.

Aaserud:

What I’m asking is whether you think that they were instilled with something here that they wouldn’t be otherwise, or whether places were different in that respect?

Wheeler:

Oh well, there’s no question that there’s a different atmosphere in different places. I think Princeton is much more defenseminded, but no university is monolithic, as you know.

Aaserud:

No, of course not.

Wheeler:

But you would find a larger percentage of people here feeling defense issues are important and it’s an honorable thing to get involved in them. You’d find a larger percentage here than you would along the River Charles. And it varies, of course.

Aaserud:

Which is reflected in the early days of membership, I would think.

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

I do not have the list here with me.

Wheeler:

California also felt this way, like Princeton. Cornell, in later times, I think has a strong cast the other way.

Aaserud:

Yes. Were those things that were discussed between universities, were the differences that large?

Wheeler:

I don’t think anybody ever felt this is a university matter. I think everybody felt it was a man to man question. It just happened there were more prodefense people here than in some other places.

Aaserud:

A matter of degrees rather than a matter of policy difference.

Wheeler:

Yes. Well, of course Princeton has never forgotten, and often cites the slogan, that Woodrow Wilson coined for it when he was President, “Princeton in the nation’s service.”

Aaserud:

We did talk about the way you felt having to say no or feeling that you had to say no to the directorship of the laboratory, having served many times earlier. That reminded me of your, what you wrote to Joseph Henry some years later, “You, greatest American scientist of your day, who abandoned a great career at the call of your country, remind us that each one of us is first of all a citizen.”^[1] Do you remember that? Those were your words, right?

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

So I suppose that expresses the calling that you felt.

Wheeler:

Right. Yes, I think so.

Aaserud:

But it was probably not written in connection with that.

Wheeler:

No. But I do think that I gradually over the years have comforted myself with the thought that if one could find out how the universe is put together — it sounds preposterous and don’t think of me as trying to puff up my own efforts in that direction — it will have such an effect on everybody’s outlook. It will be worth more than any amount of defense to the human community. Anyway, it gives me a chance to say why I think the scientific enterprise is valuable.

Aaserud:

So you would say that others were taking over the work after 137. Of course Marvin Stern was strongly involved all the time, both in 137 and in JASON.

Wheeler:

Yes, and I’m so glad you mentioned Marvin Stern because he was a catalyzer all the way along, and he has never got the credit he deserves. I hope he’s still on deck. Do you know?

Aaserud:

Yes, I interviewed him a year and a half ago.

Wheeler:

That’s great. Is he in Washington?

Aaserud:

No, actually in his home just inside Santa Barbara, not far from the Presidential resort there. He has a wonderful farm with horses and dogs and rides around with his portable telephone taking calls from Washington.

Wheeler:

I see. So he would be in the Santa Barbara telephone book, would he?

Aaserud:

The city is Santa Ynez. He’s closer to Solvang, but I could dig up his telephone number for you, I’m sure. I don’t have it with me but I could. I’m in contact with him once in a while.

Wheeler:

Telephone number or address.

Aaserud:

Well, what kind of relationship did you have with him anyway? [break]

Wheeler:

Yes, Marvin Stern. Had I mentioned to you about the enterprise he set up with Morgenstern, Chalmer Sherwin, Henry Kissinger and me, the four of us, to do a study of the doctrine of limited war?

Aaserud:

Yes, you did mention that.

Wheeler:

So we met for a day and a half every month and a half for a year and a half, and we got it up and it was all cast in type but was never published because General Dynamics, the sponsor who paid for our meetings, concluded in the end that it would serve enemies to tar them with the label of “merchant of death.”

Aaserud:

Yes, you did mention that. Do you remember, incidentally, when this was? Was this before or after?

Wheeler:

That’s what I’m trying to recall.

Aaserud:

You tried last time too. I haven’t been able to check it out.

Wheeler:

The only person well, Kissinger has probably forgotten that now. But somewhere around in all my papers, I have that stuff.

Aaserud:

That would be nice to find out actually. Do you think that would be in any of your personal files, or might it be at Philadelphia? I was unable to find it there. I’ve looked through most of your papers. It might be something I missed because there are a lot of papers. I would have thought that I would have caught that.

Wheeler:

I have wanted to get hold of that text, because it was a fun thing.

Aaserud:

If you do, please tell me, and I will tell you if I find anything on it too.

Wheeler:

Yes. If it exists. If I still have it. I have a feeling that there’s an 80 percent chance I still do. It ought to be in one of these boxes.

Aaserud:

Oh, good. Well, not now, I suppose. What I was going to say was that we did talk about, well, the relationship between these three things, and it seems to me that Marvin Stern is an excellent source of continuity here. I mean, he was very strongly involved in both things.

Wheeler:

Of course, there’s the Vietnam War, and that was going on while we were doing this thing. Let’s see, was it going on?

Aaserud:

The US wasn’t really involved in 1959.

Wheeler:

When was Kennedy’s assassination?

Aaserud:

1963.

Wheeler:

1963. Yes, and he was the one who really put us into it, so that we didn't really get into it until 1961. And I think this was not colored by the Vietnam War. And so this was before that. And Quemoy and Matsu, that was very much a part of this scene. The Korean War was part of it, the examples we cited.

Aaserud:

But you do not remember your meetings or dealings with Stern during that time.

Wheeler:

He was present at all these meetings of our group of four.

Aaserud:

For example, Stern I think supplies the link between you, say, and Charles Townes, because Townes took over… [break] What I was saying was that it seems to me that Stern was, well, perhaps not a messenger, but he supplied the continuity from you to Charles Townes say who became the head of IDA — the main research person there.

Wheeler:

I can’t remember though whether he was in at the beginning of JASON. Was he?

Aaserud:

Yes. He actually was in it before Townes became the director there — or the vice president, I guess.

Wheeler:

But he was in on 137?

Aaserud:

Yes, he was.

Wheeler:

Good.

Aaserud:

And he was active in writing to Garrison Norton as early as July, 1957, about establishing a JASON. He had been at Los Alamos and had been talking to the persons there. So he was active very early on.

Wheeler:

Then he might even have stirred the pot at Los Alamos, to produce the image that we had.

Aaserud:

Yes, he did.

Wheeler:

That’s good. Well, I hope that he gets the credit.

Aaserud:

Does that set something moving in your mind about how you related to him at that time, whether he brought the message or continued the message. I mean, how close were you with him in discussing the 137, for example? Or in setting up the 137? You don’t remember that in particular?

Wheeler:

Those 22 names that we came up with, I can remember talking about who would be good there. And I may have mentioned to you about Joshua Lederberg.

Aaserud:

I’m not exactly sure. On 137?

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

Well, you have to remind me. I don’t remember that in particular.

Wheeler:

Well, he had heard about it, and he was kind enough to volunteer to take part, and we felt that his specialty was a bit too far afield to make the interactions that we would really want. That may have been a misjudgment, but we had to go with our best lights. It would have been more sensible to go out and talk with him, and reach a judgment that way, but some things you just don’t have time to do. Because looking at it in retrospect, he’s a person with a lot of leadership. So we may have missed an important bet there.

Aaserud:

I haven’t spoken to him either.

Wheeler:

I do not remember through whom he heard about it. Of course, it was before he went to be president of Rockefeller University, while he was still at Stanford.

Aaserud:

Of course he did become a JASON member eventually.

Wheeler:

Good. Well, where are we going now?

Aaserud:

OK, we’re going into JASON, I think.

Wheeler:

Now we’ve left 137.

Aaserud:

Yes, unless you have something, and I think we have covered most of it.

Wheeler:

We covered that last time, didn’t we?

Aaserud:

Yes, we did. Until we have the titles, I think, there’s not much more we can say about that. Of course, if we got those titles we could probably go on for a lot longer.

Wheeler:

Right.

Aaserud:

Maybe we could have a discussion on that basis about 137 at some point later, if we could get those titles. And I think we have covered the development, as far as you were concerned — the development from the laboratory to 137 to JASON — unless there’s something more you want to add there.

Wheeler:

I can’t remember why I don’t have a bigger sense of recall about JASON. And I expect it’s because I really was never involved very heavily. Of course, being there as an advisor, taking part in some discusisons. And I certainly spent some time at a Berkeley meeting of JASON. I don’t know whether it was one week or two weeks. JASON must have some log of who spent what time where.

Aaserud:

Yes, I have Minutes of the steering committee meetings, for example, and you were quite a frequent participant there during the first couple of years anyway. No, wait a minute. I don’t have that for the very first year. I have that from 1967, 1968 only, and even then you were a pretty frequent participant. I do not have those reports for the first eight to nine years. And that was the question I was going to put to you. Would you by any chance know of a place that such things might be? Did you save the Minutes for example for the steering committee meetings?

Wheeler:

No.

Aaserud:

Because I really don’t understand why they’re not available. I’m sure that they were made, but somehow even the JASON Archives at the MITRE Corporation don’t have those very early ones, which of course would be crucial to have.

Wheeler:

That’s interesting. I was the one who took notes at the Chicago Project, Manhattan Project. I acted as secretary for the group, but I’ve never seen those Minutes later. They must be somewhere.

Aaserud:

They might still be classified. I’m surprised, because that’s something that historians have been digging so much into that I would think that they would have been gotten out of there by now. And it’s so long ago, too.

Wheeler:

Robert Millikan was the person who acted as a black hole for all sorts of things associated with that Chicago Project. But I don’t know what happened to the condensed matter that he produced.

Aaserud:

Well, they’re probably at Los Alamos. I mean, they have an Archives there now; I could ask the librarian.

Wheeler:

I see.

Aaserud:

In the MAGIC WITHOUT MAGIC book. Goldberger writes about you, “Over the years, John Wheeler has played an invaluable role as an advisor and participant in JASON affairs, and deserves a great deal of credit for the vitality of that organization over and above his seminal role in its beginnings.”^[2] So it seems that you have taken some part in it.

Wheeler:

You’ve got me, I can’t elaborate.

Aaserud:

Well, that’s just by way of introduction. Do you remember how you became an advisor to JASON, how you were approached? It was Goldberger who approached you probably, rather than the other way around.

Wheeler:

Right, it was. He probably has a better memory on this.

Aaserud:

Not about such specific things, I think, although I did speak to him very early in the process.

Wheeler:

I see. It’s odd not to be able to remember that. He was the head, is that true?

Aaserud:

He was the chairman for the first six or seven years.

Wheeler:

Yes. Well, then, it would have been him. It would have been Goldberger then who approached me.

Aaserud:

How much time approximately did you spend on JASON work or JASON matters during say, the first five or ten years?

Wheeler:

I would say two weeks a year. As a horseback guess. I have my travel accounts for years back, but that would take a lot of doing, to dig those up, but they would give dates.

Aaserud:

Yes, and at least after 1967, 1968, that could be dug out of the JASON archives.

Wheeler:

Right. I might even have them in my notebooks, the dates.

Aaserud:

So it was participating in particular projects, rather than deciding on projects, or having contact with the agencies.

Wheeler:

That’s right. Well, of course, the agencies would come and report. We’d have questions and discussions. We’d talk pros and cons on this and that, was this a good idea, what’s cuckoo about that? How could you get a lead on something or other?

Aaserud:

Was that group meetings between the agencies and the JASON leadership?

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

It couldn’t be all of JASON in those meetings, or was it?

Wheeler:

Well, sometimes it would be everybody, but usually it would be a smaller group dealing with that particular problem. But there was not a barricade within JASON. People could kick things around. It was essential, really, to do that, because that was part of the allure of the enterprise, the excitement of these new possibilities, and always having the chance to decide, aha, something is very important, let’s jump in on that. And a chance to say No to something else. And a chance to suggest some new approach. But that’s the way it is, in consulting work, I find. And our friends with DuPont, it was always a joy to come on some problem that you’d never heard of before. It sounds fascinating and you dig into it.

Aaserud:

So you were fairly free in that respect as to which project you could jump onto, and even maybe suggesting projects of your own?

Wheeler:

Well, it could be. I’m always suggesting things. But I don’t want to try to be specific about anything. It’s not that I am inhibited by classification, it’s just that I don’t remember.

Aaserud:

Well, to be a little more specific, there’s one JASON report that’s listed on your publication list, one report only, and that was a JASON publication by you and David Sharp, whom you mentioned before. It’s called “Preliminary analysis of instability in a magnetic melting front” and it was the result of work at the JASON summer study at Bowdouin College in August, 1961. Do you remember the work involved?

Wheeler:

Oh yes. That’s a fascinating question. We even did a lot of work toward a book on hydrodynamic instability. But life caught up with us, so we never came through with that.

Aaserud:

So that was a case of more or less pure physics being done within the JASON context.

Wheeler:

Yes. The relevance of it was penetration of a front through a metal, so relevant in fact even today to the question of ignition of a DT pellet. I can’t recall just what sort of a gadget we had in mind using this for.

Aaserud:

I haven’t been able to find the report itself.

Wheeler:

Have you asked Sharp at Los Alamos?

Aaserud:

No, I have not. I’ve already asked Texas about it, and I’ve asked the JASON people about it. But I could ask Sharp.

Wheeler:

Yes. Because Sharp you know had papers published referring to that, with the use of the results in it.

Aaserud:

Did that lead to an open publication?

Wheeler:

Yes. He sent me something quite recently, as a matter of fact, about this.

Aaserud:

So that’s been an ongoing interest.

Wheeler:

Yes. Quite.

Aaserud:

Did that feed immediately into the public literature, that JASON report?

Wheeler:

I doubt it, but he could tell you.

Aaserud:

Because it’s interesting, that kind of interaction between JASON work and physics work, and whether the JASON experience adds to the activity in physics proper, whether it detracts from it. I guess both can happen, of course.

Wheeler:

Well, some marvelous things. I gave course called the Acapulco Effect, and other interesting physical effects, at Texas, in which some of the things spun out of JASON items.

Aaserud:

Your own JASON work or other JASON work?

Wheeler:

Just general knowledge, yes. And that would be a fascinating book too, if I could get somebody who would like to write that up. There are too many things that need to be written up.

Aaserud:

Yes, well, fortunately. At least you’re not running out of work. So well, do you remember how that project came into being? In the first place, was David Sharp a regular JASON member? Or were you invited I don’t think I’ve seen him on the regular JASON list.

Wheeler:

I see. You’d have to ask him that.

Aaserud:

I’ll have to ask him this so it can be checked.

Wheeler:

There is my impression that he was, for that summer.

Aaserud:

OK, well, that could be.

Wheeler:

Maybe he was in some category as an assistant that one could have at that time.

Aaserud:

Was that a particular project that you were asked to do?

Wheeler:

I don’t know how it got started. I think it was my suggestion. Or was it? Or was that something I took along to JASON, that I could work on when I wasn’t working on other JASON things? Why would I have taken it along?

Aaserud:

It was published as a JASON report. I don't know if that tells us anything about that.

Wheeler:

It’s a line of work which came into being in Project Matterhorn, in the business of a Taylor instability there — which is such an important item that you have to think about in the design of a nuclear device. And there was already one of the people at Matterhorn that had done something along this line, and he and I kicked it around, Pennington. Pennington who did some careful analysis of a more I can’t Ralph Pennington, I think it is. Ralph Pennington. But that left the work far from finished.

Aaserud:

Yes, OK, so it’s a kind of…

Wheeler:

…coming out from the thermonuclear game.

Aaserud:

Coming out from a different defense context, moving it into the JASON context.

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

There is an interesting historical question, to what extent questions of physics and physics itself have been framed or have come up through that kind of defense relationship. This is perhaps an example of that.

Wheeler:

Perhaps. The prime example, of course, is G. I. Taylor and his four volume collected works. So much of that came out of defense.

Aaserud:

What about JASON in general? Is that a good resource for that kind of interaction?

Wheeler:

Oh, I think so. It’s a two way street.

Aaserud:

Yes, of course it is.

Wheeler:

And it would be lovely to give chapter and verse. I think that can probably be done.

Aaserud:

That’s what I would like to do eventually some time, yes.

Wheeler:

These days, when we’re trying to stimulate technology, to have something like that would be great. I would say this, as a general commentary about it… Yes, now, General Dynamics had an advisory group. Lockheed had an advisory group. I was in on both those groups, and how do those groups compare with JASON? I’d say that the range of subject matter is far larger in JASON. You come much closer to the roots of things. You have much more opportunity to introduce an idea at the bottom, when it will work up, expand, proliferate. You take something at say General Dynamics, well, why not tow an iceberg up from the South Pole regions to help the California water supply as a conceivable project for General Dynamics? Because, after all, it’s involved in General Boat Company, building submarines, so the towing of an iceberg would be a conceivable project. I’d say that that’s a little too close to straight engineering to capture the imagination and stimulate physics people, whereas JASON leads into projects that are closer.

Aaserud:

I think actually part of the motivation behind JASON was some frustration with that kind of consulting efforts, that they wanted to have a broader approach to things, that they wanted to have a little more independence in what they suggested, and a different kind of input. Was that something that you discussed?

Wheeler:

Yes. But then there’s another point about it, too. I would say that clumsy though the Pentagon is, slowmoving though it is — and I think I mentioned to you Herb York’s comparison of the Pentagon and trying to move a 200 foot sphere of sponge rubber — still, it does move. Still, when you get something, it can be done. Ultimately you do get to management. Whereas with a company, somehow it was at least my experience that you weren’t so well wired into management. And that’s one of the things that really hurts about some research laboratories, that they do fail to wire in, couple in to their management and their companies, with this idea that if you just build a temple on the outskirts of your industrial enterprise, people could be there. Somehow this temple would bring down manna from heaven on your industry. It doesn’t work that way.

Aaserud:

Well, that’s kind of the opposite. It would make for more independence, one would think, for the scientists there.

Wheeler:

Independence, yes, but drive, no. Sense of being worthwhile, no. And you really depend on that sense of being needed, to do something worthwhile, I think. And if you don’t really talk to management, there’s no real channel, and if it’s all going to be proprietary information afterwards, why do it?

Aaserud:

So it may have been those things that played a role too in the motivation behind creating JASON. Well, talking about more specific things, I do not have too much specific documentation about your involvement with JASON. I came across something that may not have anything to do with JASON at all. It’s Keith Brueckner who invited you in November, 1966 to participate in an IDA panel for ARPA, to study what he referred to as modern computational and approximation measures in atomic and molecular structure, to evaluate the possibility of application of these techniques to problems of critical importance to ARPA and the Department of Defense. First of all, do you remember that?

Wheeler:

You’re just getting very faint reverberations, but not very live reverberations out of my memory. I can’t recall really what it was about.

Aaserud:

It may not be that you responded positively at all, of course. This is just an invitation but I haven’t seen the response to it. But you couldn’t say whether that’s JASONrelated or not?

Wheeler:

Maybe they hoped to get it JASONrelated, but I don’t recall it being JASONrelated.

Aaserud:

No, and you don’t remember anything coming out of it?

Wheeler:

Well, in the end I think it probably stirred up people, and in the end there have been national computer networks.

Aaserud:

But in terms of you becoming involved in it?

Wheeler:

No, I wasn’t computerminded.

Aaserud:

I don’t know if it would help you to look at the publication list of JASON. I have the full publication list of JASON reports.

Wheeler:

Oh, really?

Aaserud:

And maybe that could ring a bell or two…

Wheeler:

…yes, right…

Aaserud:

…as to what kinds of projects they were, or you could talk about others’ projects or your own projects, so maybe we should turn off the tape recorder for a little and have you look at that.

Wheeler:

Sure. [pause] These are comments about the first 26 pages of the historical list of JASON documents, running from 1960 on into 1974. It’s interesting to me how the missile business has taken a large part of the whole enterprise, and it’s important because that is after all the way to deliver weapons, and I certainly remember John von Neumann very early in the beginning saying, “You can’t talk about a bomb without talking about the delivery.” And to him, that was something exceedingly important to be in.

Aaserud:

What time was that, approximately?

Wheeler:

Well, it was the time when, when was the Eisenhower Administration? That was after Truman, wasn’t it, 1950?

Aaserud:

Yes, that was before Kennedy, through the late fifties.

Wheeler:

Yes. And he felt that Eisenhower had really stopped and we had to start all over again on developing missiles. And he commented that missile building is sheetmetal work primarily. But he said it was essential. Here, it would be a fascinating game to take all of this and correlate it over time, the themes, with the content of arms control concerns, and negotiations. Point 1. Point 2, how it affected our thinking on MIRV, because in the end, the changing of single warhead missiles to multiple warhead missiles represented a total alteration in the picture of deterrence.

Aaserud:

Yes. What other input would you point to that may have been as important as JASON’s in that respect at the same time? Do you think JASON was unique in providing this kind of advice, or was it one of many?

Wheeler:

One of many, because the defense contractors had an interest in pushing and developing new technologies. People in the services did. When I look over all this right now, I am struck by how we don’t see, at least in what’s here, the tie with political considerations, and understanding of the political scene, as the balance of power and so on, in the sense that you see it, for example, in that recent book THE WISE MEN which is by Acheson, Lovett, McCloy, Bull and Harriman, Kennan, who had a lot to do with deciding what we did on the larger scale. Somehow we have not yet at this level, with this tool, achieved what this country ought to have that is, a linkage between the most forward looking in science, in the sense of what the frontiers are — a feel for what’s doable and not doable in the world of science — and a corresponding feel for what’s urgent, what’s doable and not doable in the field of international affairs.

Aaserud:

Does that have something to do with the way JASON perceived itself or how it was perceived — that it was giving technical as opposed to policy advice, for example?

Wheeler:

I think so.

Aaserud:

So it was not just a reflection of the time not being right, but also a reflection of what JASON was.

Wheeler:

It got into a mode of action with a group of people who would be of course crazy to set themselves up as political wizards. But if this group could have interacted, if a group of four or five of the JASONs could have interacted with a group like the Wise Men of that book, I think that that would have had a big plus. So as we talk about this here and now, it suggests to me very strongly something like a superJASON.

Aaserud:

Was there ever a discussion of that, at that time, that you know or were involved in?

Wheeler:

I can well believe that it was kicked around at cocktail parties, although never long enough, deep enough, hard enough to lead to any forward movement. But I do think it would be possible to get some forward movement on that.

Aaserud:

Because it seems even today that there are discussions about, you know, to what extent the advice should be technical only, to what extent it should have policy content.

Wheeler:

I think JASON is fine, and it’s a wonderful way to get technical innovation, and nothing I say is any criticism at all. On the contrary, it’s meant to take the lesson of JASON and think of applying it in a larger context, on bigger issues. So that’s one reaction.

Aaserud:

Right, which of course was probably done indirectly, in that JASON was a stepping stone for many people for going into more policyoriented positions.

Wheeler:

Yes, take somebody like our friend Panofsky.

Aaserud:

Yes. Do you think Drell is more of a case in point than Panofsky, who had prior experience of these things? Drell is a pure case of starting in JASON and going on to bigger or more important things.

Wheeler:

Yes. Maybe I’m mistaken on this, but I feel Sidney Drell is on the political scene an outsider, who is not especially welcome on the inside.

Aaserud:

Yes, that could well be.

Wheeler:

Well, it would be fascinating to correlate the stages in this work with the stages in the development of the missile game. I’m not up on that enough to do it, but it could be done. You could see how much JASON led and how much it followed.

Aaserud:

Exactly. But what were the mechanisms of contact between a group like JASON and the Wise Men? Were the mechanisms there at all at the time?

Wheeler:

On the political level?

Aaserud:

Just for inputting the ideas.

Wheeler:

I was just thinking of the defense people, the Air Force people, the Los Alamos people and the Livermore people. Because it’s so open, a group like this, working with Los Alamos or Livermore, in a way that Air Force wouldn’t have… Well, I shouldn’t say that. But then, how much did the Stealth come out of this, and to what extent was the larger Defense community the lead and JASON the follower, or JASON the lead and the larger Defense community the follower? That would be, I would think, absolutely number one.

Aaserud:

I would have to find that to make sense of this at all, I would think.

Wheeler:

Unless that’s done, you don’t know the first thing about what this adds up to. Night vision of course, we did develop a scheme for night vision, and I’d again be interested to know whether that was leading or following.

Aaserud:

1964, you’re referring particularly to a report by Caldwell.

Wheeler:

Yes, 1964. Right.

Aaserud:

“Night Vision for Counterinsurgents.”^[3]

Wheeler:

For counterinsurgents.

Aaserud:

What’s your criterion for picking out these reports? Is it because you remember them or because you think they were particularly crucial?

Wheeler:

The criterion is things that show innovation, or could show innovation, because to my mind, that’s the real point. I don’t see so much point in as you remember Einstein’s words finding the thinnest place in a board and drilling 50 holes through it.

Aaserud:

So this is innovation in physics as well as innovation in policy or techniques. Any kind of innovation.

Wheeler:

Yes. And this business of “Water Waves from Large Nuclear Explosions.”

Aaserud:

Zachariasen, P137.^[4]

Wheeler:

Yes. That’s a field that, to my mind, could be followed up very much more, because what a tidal wave does to a city is totally different from what a direct hit of a bomb does, and as you know, 80 percent of the population of the world is a hundred miles from the shore. Now, if we’re going to get over there for lunch — let’s just finish. Electromagnetic pulse as a something that would disable all sorts of circuits in the neighborhood.^[5] And here is Ed Frieman; in the Matterhorn days he was a rather quiet, shy person, and here he is writing reports with key people. I thought I saw a report he did with Dyson. But at any rate, working with a group like this, I have the feeling, was for him a tremendous education.

Aaserud:

Frieman and Kroll, is that what you think, the last one there?^[6]

Wheeler:

Yes, right. And here’s one with Dyson.

Aaserud:

With Dyson, yes, you’re right.^[7]

Wheeler:

And to what extent the stimulus of working with people of that calibre built him up to the leader he is today on the national scene.

Aaserud:

Yes, I spoke to him too a while ago.

Wheeler:

Oh, I think that’s as far as we get. That’s very impressive. [break]

Aaserud:

OK, we continue after a wonderful lunch. You want to say a little more about the publications?

Wheeler:

Yes, linkage between high level thinking and science comes in, in one way, into the science advisor to NATO. Will Ellis had that position at one time, and William Nierenberg had it later.

Aaserud:

Yes, it was Ramsey…

Wheeler:

…Norman Ramsey…

Aaserud:

…and Seitz and Nierenberg, I believe.

Wheeler:

Did Seitz have it also?

Aaserud:

Yes, I think so. Yes, I’m fairly sure.

Wheeler:

I don’t know how it is, about the French. There was Chevennement(?) more recently, wasn’t there, and Bondi I referred to. I don’t know how it is in Germany.

Aaserud:

No, I haven’t followed that up. I don’t know the later ones. I think the first three were American.

Wheeler:

In Japan, there is a group of elders, Jenro, and there’s one among them that’s a scientist and highly regarded. Well, but, certainly it’s a dialogue that’s in its infancy, by whatever measure you take it.

Aaserud:

If we take up that list of publications there, there’s a lot of general and specific questions that can be asked, of course. And you brought up the question of the correlation between those technical issues and the more general policy issues of the time, whether it came up with JASON or whether they came up from…

Wheeler:

Where the initiative came.

Aaserud:

Yes. And that is one general historical question that is difficult to approach, because it’s very hard to get at the relationships between JASON, say, and those larger developments. More specifically, it’s also difficult to find out what happened to JASON reports in the sense of actually acting on them, and how they specifically were used for such broader problems. First of all, what do you think the impact was, generally speaking? And second, how can one get at such a question historically? What would be the sources to look at? If any at all? Either through interviews or documentation?

Wheeler:

I was thinking – it’s just passed out of my mind. Well, anyway, it’ll probably come back to me. At any rate, coming to the point of checking on it, I would think that one person is worth forty books, if you can find him. Naturally, you have to go to a book or a paper to confirm it, or to get onto the lead of it. And on that, I would think of successive people who have been head of the Advanced Research Project Agency, including York, including John Foster. I don’t know who have been the more recent people.

Aaserud:

No. I have spoken to Stephen Lukasik. And Eberhardt Rechtin. That’s the start of that. Yes, exactly. I would have to talk to people who are outside JASON but have had dealings with JASON from that side, yes.

Wheeler:

Yes, people who had, so to speak, control both ways. But now I remember the point I was going to bring up. At least on the Project 137 level, JASON was regarded primarily as innovative, and there I suppose the biggest innovation was that business of Christofilos of the communication with submarines, and that’s still only partway down the road. It takes a lot of political difficulty. But if we can get hold of a list of the other 22 things, we can size them up and see what’s happened to them.

Aaserud:

Yes. The 137 things were largely innovation, you say. Of course, another part of JASON’s work has been evaluation. That’s been a large part of their work too.

Wheeler:

Yes. Right.

Aaserud:

And that probably deserves some comment as well. I guess percentagewise that may have been a large part of it.

Wheeler:

That’s a very good point. And there are certain colleagues, certain of our colleagues in the world of physics who contribute more by their referee reports than by their own physics writings.

Aaserud:

Yes, stopping crazy projects. A few JASONs think that has been their most important function in life. Is that something that you would comment on?

Wheeler:

Now, I have the impression that there was talk about, maybe more than talk, towards setting up a second JASON.

Aaserud:

Well, there has been talk about setting up a solid state physics JASON.

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

That was done too, actually.

Wheeler:

And how long has that been going? Five years?

Aaserud:

I don’t know if it’s still going. It was set up earlier than that. I think it was set up in the sixties, actually. But I honestly don’t know the fate of it. And I also don’t think there was too much of a relationship between the two JASONs.

Wheeler:

Right. Right.

Aaserud:

It was called Mason, incidentally.

Wheeler:

I would think that this would be a witness to how much people depend on communication to move ahead in a rapidly developing area. In fact, right now superconductivity has the right flavor so people would like to get together. But otherwise, it seems to me that a lot of the work in solid state physics lacks the jazz or pizazz or sex appeal of frontiers in fundamental physics. I may be speaking as a rank outsider to that field, but it’s just my sense of it.

Aaserud:

If possible, I would like you to be a little bit more specific, just on that point. As we know, the JASONs are a pretty welldefined group in terms of the physics they do. I mean, they come from the same physics community and they knew each other from the physics community. What was it in their field at that time that was so sexy or whatever you’re saying that made that a better group for that kind of advising, than say the solid state physics group or some other physics group? If you could elaborate a little on that, I would be happy.

Wheeler:

Well, I might do it by going to something that seems at first sight to have no relevance, the mountain climbing group at Harvard. It consists of 80 percent physics, 20 percent premed students, so my son tells me, who is a member of it people that have a sense of adventure. And there are different degrees of adventure. You know and I know people who just go out walking, and that is for them adventure. That, to me, is solid state physics. And yet, mountain climbers are often regarded as a solitary breed. With theoretical physics, sometimes that’s the case, as with our friend Dirac. But certainly today, it’s a community enterprise. You know, my motto: nobody can be anybody without somebody around. I think that our friends in this field feel that especially, elementary particle physics, where an advance by one person can affect everything that one has tried to do himself.

Aaserud:

So what you’re saying is that it’s not the content of the field, it’s not the theoretical physics as such that translates easily into matters of advising. It’s rather that theoretical physics by being a more exciting field attracts a group of people that would be useful for advising as well.

Wheeler:

The real test is not whether he’s a competent physicist. Dirac is a competent physicist, but he wouldn’t have been much use in JASON. It’s somebody who has an adventurous mind. So that would be the test. And I don’t know how you test that, except by knowing the person.

Aaserud:

Well, was that an explicit consideration at that time, that theoretical physicists would be a better kind of people than most other scientists, say, for that kind of work?

Wheeler:

Well, I think it would be very interesting to go over the people in that first Project 137, and look for each person, criteria used in selecting him. Take Chalmers Sherwin. You don’t think of him as working in the field of elementary particle physics because he doesn’t, but he was an electronics expert, electrical engineer, and very innovative. He introduced the wire you tow behind an airplane to give it an effective resolving power. Here is a sidelooking telescope, far improvement over anything the plane could carry itself, absolutely vital in seeing into the Soviet Union from Turkey. And yet he contributed a great idea on experiments on the Mössbauer effect. Let’s see, and then there’s Nick Christofilos — we all know his story.

Aaserud:

How was the selection made, on 137?

Wheeler:

It was made by looking over the people we knew, and somehow sensing these properties.

Aaserud:

So part of it is that you knew theoretical physicists better than you knew most other people.

Wheeler:

Yes. I can’t recall, did we have Fitch on it?

Aaserud:

137? I don’t remember.

Wheeler:

Because we surely had some experimental people, and there are some people with a real sense of adventure. You’ve read these accounts these days about somebody like Carlo Rubia, who’s a great pusher, adventurer, but the people further down the line have to be of a different breed of cat.

Aaserud:

Yes, just to survive in the environment.

Wheeler:

Then there was Perlman. We got him in as a chemist with an innovative mind. Berkeley.

Aaserud:

All right, it would also be interesting to know to what extent 137 feeds into JASON personnelwise.

Wheeler:

Yes, well, there’s some that dropped by the wayside there, in the sense that, I don’t know that Perlman was in JASON.

Aaserud:

I don’t think so.

Wheeler:

It didn’t have much of a chemical flavor.

Aaserud:

No. But Gomer was a chemist, wasn’t he, Bob Gomer?

Wheeler:

Was he?

Aaserud:

I think so. And of course you had the electrical engineer in JASON also in Peterson.

Wheeler:

Chalmers Sherwood.

Aaserud:

And Peterson.

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

I don’t think Chalmers Sherwood was in JASON.

Wheeler:

Peterson, right. Yes. I don’t recall ever having anybody who was a computer person.

Aaserud:

There is now. But that’s recent. That’s more recent. That’s from the seventies. Alvin Despain is a computer person.

Wheeler:

I see. Where’s he from?

Aaserud:

From Berkeley, University of California. But that’s the younger generation of JASONs. Well, there has been at times discussion of expanding JASON, you know, into other fields, be it biology or chemistry or even social science. Were you ever involved in those discussions?

Wheeler:

It seems to me I’ve heard such discussions, but I can’t recall ever anything that caught fire, in a discussion like that. They were all tentative, and in the end dropped. And I can see that it just wouldn’t resonate right. It’s interesting to see to what extent similar considerations come into the British college system at Oxford and Cambridge. Instead of getting bigger and bigger at a given college, some other college comes down the pike as expansion is needed. Is that conscious or subconscious or traditional? Consequence of recognizing that you don't resonate if you have too large a body.

Aaserud:

That’s the other side of it, of course. In addition to being more adventurous, perhaps, they also communicate more easily, the JASONs. Many have pointed out to me that it’s so much easier to be in a group where you speak the same language, than being in a larger group where you really have to start much further down with the basics before you get anywhere.

Wheeler:

Yes, right. So that one of the strengths of JASON is also one of its weaknesses, strength that it’s cohesive, weakness that it doesn’t cohere to other fields.

Aaserud:

Exactly. Which may also have to do with the technicality or the technical aspects of their work, perhaps. I mean, they don’t try to broaden out beyond those technical questions.

Wheeler:

There are a lot of people, there’s a feeling of curiosity. It’s fantastic to me how different the power of curiosity is in different people. I would say that a very large proportion of JASONs are curious people. If something strange and new comes down the pike, even if it’s very far removed from their own field, they want to know and hear about it.

Aaserud:

I will have to get more specific numbers and data on this, but my impression at this stage at any rate is that if you look at the JASON people, I think for most of them JASON is the only extrascientific experience like that, and that it’s a minority that go on to positions say in the President’s Science Advisory Committee or other advising. I’ve also had JASONs themselves distinguishing between what they call a white collar and a blue collar JASON, a blue collar JASON being a JASON who does the technical work and thinks that’s interesting and goes back to academia. That’s the mode of interaction with that external world, whereas the white collar JASON has a much broader scope of things and may go on to other advising capacities. Is that your experience also?

Wheeler:

Yes. There are some people, like Samson, who feel that all the strength is drained out of them if their feet get off the ground of their field. And others welcome JASON as a point of entry to a larger world that they would never get into otherwise.

Aaserud:

Is that perhaps one of the unique features of JASON? There’s hardly any other advising body where you can choose between those two approaches.

Wheeler:

Right. Right. And it’s hard in any other way to get close to really important problems of national defense, without at the same time having to give up your regular career. That’s absolutely unique.

Aaserud:

Is that another weakness, do you think?

Wheeler:

I think that’s a strength, because it means that we’re like the farmerfighters of times past. When a place is invaded, the farmers drop their ploughshares and pick up their guns. Here there are people that form a nucleus all over the country for concentration in case of emergency. I’ve often thought what I would do, maybe I mentioned these to you, if another emergency came down the pike. One of the things I would go after is putting a signboard on the moon that would be like a New York — a Times Square — signboard, so you could display the news, in Chinese characters, Cyrillic characters, so that nobody anywhere in the world could be denied the chance to get the story. It would have some of the effect that the BBC had in World War II in maintaining people’s morale. That’s a big enterprise. A second thing would be, what are the sources of energy that could be carried close to the front, so you wouldn’t have all these terrible problems of bringing in the oil, the gasoline. You would instead have small nuclear devices, you’d explode underground, and suddenly charge up a battery, a whole collection of batteries. It would be like at night, getting fed by a whole herd of tanks and trucks and jeeps and everything else. Suddenly, to get this first charge…

Aaserud:

Is that a JASON proposition?

Wheeler:

No, that’s…

Aaserud:

…purely Wheeler?

Wheeler:

Nobody’s really ever got going on either of them. Not the signboard on the moon, either.

Aaserud:

What about epochs of JASON. I don’t know if you feel you have been close enough to make such an assessment, but I am asking whether there are different periods of JASON.

Wheeler:

No, I wouldn’t be the right person to answer that.

Aaserud:

No, that could be connected in a way to projects or chairmen, but let’s just defer that.

Wheeler:

Sam Treiman here might be somebody to ask on that. He’s been chairman of our department until last year. He was there at lunch today. We could have caught him then.

Aaserud:

Oh, I didn’t see him. I did interview him a couple of years ago. What about being a JASON member and maintaining your public role in science advising. That may or may not be a problem.

Wheeler:

Yes, there are some people who speak up a lot outside. Take Edward Teller. Outside. And it is a bit awkward then to be in JASON. Well, it’s just one more source of vitamin content, I suppose. Operating both ways. The main problem, I guess, is security. Not to spill the beans on what’s going on inside. What about the other way? Well, I can imagine alienating some sources of support for some of the JASON work by speaking up too strongly on one or another side. I obviously don’t know to what extent JASON has independent funding now. Is it all ARPA?

Aaserud:

No, I don’t think so. They have other sources as well.

Wheeler:

Oh yes, Department of Transportation for example. Yes, that’s right.

Aaserud:

It’s all government, still government, I suppose. But they’re not all military any more. That’s reflected in their sources of support.

Wheeler:

Did you see that wonderful thing — about three weeks ago, we passed a point in world history. If you look all over the long history of great wars in Europe, the longest period there ever was without a great war in Europe in all recorded history was from the end of the FrancoPrussian War to the beginning of World War I, 43 years. Now we have just passed that. So that perhaps accounts for the lack of pressure on people to take defense as seriously as they did.

Aaserud:

You’re not giving JASON credit for it, but it’s the other way around?

Wheeler:

I feel the political controls the attitude, more than the attitude controlling the political. Yes.

Aaserud:

Well, it’s terrible if we need a war once in a while. How unique do you consider JASON to have been in history? We know that there hasn’t been anything like it in any other country, but as an advising body in the United States, has it been unique and is it still unique?

Wheeler:

Well, it’s an old thing, isn’t it, to advise the government?

Aaserud:

Yes, of course.

Wheeler:

Lincoln setting up the National Academy in the Civil War to get advice. So what’s the new feature of it here? I would say, this colleagueship, this collegiality. The collegiality of the enterprise. It is almost a college, in a sense of people coming in as new recruits, a college in the sense that people have graduated. It’s a college in the sense that people have to produce something if they’re going to remain creditable members. It’s a college in the sense that it renders a public service. It’s a college in the sense that in return for rendering a public service, it gets public support. But most of all, it’s a college in the sense of collegiality. That holds people together in this interaction in a way that I don’t think of any Civil War advisory group being, I don’t think of any National Research Council group being in World War I.

Aaserud:

So you think it is unique in that sense, as an advising body.

Wheeler:

Yes. In continuing existence. It has a certain element of democracy to it. Most advisory committees are appointed from outside. This is a selfregenerating group.

Aaserud:

To what extent has it been allowed to be that? To what extent is that really true? Or to what extent are there directions, said or unsaid, under which they have to act? I mean, for example, in choosing members or choosing projects.

Wheeler:

Yes. Well, if somebody comes up and is suggested, then what you might call a steering committee, a group of three or four or five, kicks it around and reaches a conclusion whether this would work well or not. And if it were persona non grata with the Department of Defense, then I could see that there might be a problem, although I’ve never known of a case like that. But I could see that if it were, it would create a problem.

Aaserud:

Well, there’s a certain amount of selfcensorship there. I mean, they wouldn’t try to make such a person a member, for their own good.

Wheeler:

Right. Because it’s natural to want to have a group that looks so good that it can get those extra dollars, to do that much more.

Aaserud:

Because I don’t know of any example of JASONs being accused of leakages or breaks of classification or things like that. I mean, it’s worked very smoothly.

Wheeler:

I’ve never heard of any.

Aaserud:

So that argues for that mechanism of selfpropagation working quite smoothly.

Wheeler:

Yes. You could ask if Peierls were a member, and he recommended Fuchs, then what would be the story? Because in a way, that’s what happened at Los Alamos.

Aaserud:

Yes. But nobody suspected Fuchs at Los Alamos, as far as I know.

Wheeler:

Right. Stupid, the security people asked everybody else. They should have asked Fuchs himself, are you a spy?

Aaserud:

He might have said yes.

Wheeler:

Yes, exactly.

Aaserud:

I asked you before two questions. You answered one of them, as to the sources for how to get at the impact question, but what is your own opinion of what the impact of JASON has been in terms of having an impact on national security policy, or also in terms of physics, but that’s a more difficult question, so let’s do the first one first.

Wheeler:

It’s a very tough question. You can’t just point to something like the bomb, which is a thing that everybody can see and understand. You and I know that if you keep improving a weapon system by 5 percent, 10 percent every year, then over a period of 20 years it becomes really a different weapon system, in power or workability. And yet, different though it is, you find it hard to point to any revolutionary point along the way, and say, uh huh, if it weren’t for this, this would never have happened, because you see all the other stages along the way. So I find a similar difficulty here. It would be good to see if there’s some one or two or three absolutely key things. I think, of course, of that thing of Nick Christofilos of communicating with the submarines is absolutely key, and it may well be that some of these things about the weapons that we’ve been asking questions about, as we see the list of publications, that some of them will turn out to be absolutely decisive.

Aaserud:

Yes, it has to be seen in that greater context.

Wheeler:

Yes. But I’m not in a shape where I can point to one of them and speak of it.

Aaserud:

No. Good. So, the other way, what impact has it had on physics, if any? Or it might not be sensible to pick out JASON as one; that’s probably part of a larger historical development.

Wheeler:

I don’t know whether you ever listened to the taped record taken not too long after the war, among a group of people, physicists, at the American Institute of Physics, reviewing the development of experimental physics, and somebody speaking of the spirit of enterprise that Lawrence had introduced, doing big things in a big way, producing a contagion that spread all over, to what other people did — that was absolutely vital in World War II. That spirit of contagion, as far as physics is concerned, theoretical physics, I think I’ve seen accompanying JASON meetings. People say, “Oh, boys, look at this weapons problem, it’s difficult, we can do it this way, and this calculation and that.” It’s great; the feeling of power I believe spills over, spills back into theoretical physics itself, says, well, that problem looks tough but we can do it. [switch tapes] So it’s that contagion, that cando spilling over. Feynman, I don’t know that he ever even thought of participating in JASON, but he certainly communicated that cando spirit of theoretical physics, in a contagious way, by his brilliant way of speaking. But it was communicated in other ways and to a very big group by this JASON enterprise. So that would be a number one impact, I would think, on physics in this country. A number two would be individual consultations on worrying points, in the sense of Oppenheimer’s definition of here is where we explain to each other what we don’t understand. People meeting at JASON for drinks before dinner. And to check on that, one would want to ask of some of the key actors, “Did you ever get a great idea by discussing it at JASON meetings? If so, what?” Then one could go back and look at the papers that came out, then look at the citation and discussions with so and so, where I presume they are ten times more likely to mention the person than the place.

Aaserud:

Just as an aside, how safe would that be?

Wheeler:

How much can you trust to memory?

Aaserud:

Not only that, but how common is it to mention such influences in a paper? I mean, is that something that’s done regularly?

Wheeler:

Oh yes. To mention the payoff on discussions.

Aaserud:

I would think that some people do it more than others. But it’s a good idea, of course, yes. Well, if you look back at it…

Wheeler:

We could easily find four or five papers, I won’t look at them now, by people other than myself who cite discussions.

Aaserud:

And also more directly of course I could look at how many published papers came out of JASON reports.

Wheeler:

Yes. But that kind of physics is not what I’m thinking of so much. Well, it could be. For example, the Xray laser. That might be a good thing to check into, because that’s been an absolutely phenomenal development in physics, a tool of physics. To what extent did that come from JASON thinking and working?

Aaserud:

You’re thinking of the spirit of JASON more than the work of JASON in that respect.

Wheeler:

Yes. So I wouldn’t think that the published reports that came out of this work would rank 25 percent of what came out of cocktail hour discussions about things in quite different realms of physics. And after all, that — so far as I’ve ever been able to observe and sense and measure — is what pulls people together, because they felt they’d get real help in their work, real stimulus, in what would make their reputation, what their heart and soul was in.

Aaserud:

Well, I think that one motivation for joining JASON was not as much helping the national security perhaps as joining this group.

Wheeler:

A select club.

Aaserud:

Yes.

Wheeler:

I was reading in the newspaper last night about the membership in the Century Club.

Aaserud:

It’s a very interesting group in that way, because it straddles two communities like that very interestingly. I mean, its spirit is the physics spirit, its work is the national security work. It’s an interesting phenomenon just for that, I think.

Wheeler:

Yes, absolutely.

Aaserud:

But I should interview you. I’m saying too much.

Wheeler:

No, you’re saying just what I was saying.

Aaserud:

All right, well, if you look back and compare your expectations with JASON or with a similar institution back in 1958, 1959, and compare that with what JASON has actually been and accomplished, what would you say?

Wheeler:

I think it’s very impressive. It’s a real boost. It’s marvelous that it’s kept going for so long, so well. Very few organizations do that. And has no permanent building.

Aaserud:

Actually one of the computer scientists I mentioned to you who is a member of JASON, he referred to JASON as the memory if the government or of the Defense Department. It’s the most continuous body of expertise that has ever been in the Defense Department. That may be a little overstating it, but it’s an interesting point of view anyway.

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

Maybe we should get to the attempts of making a European JASON, more specifically, a British JASON, and discuss more generally why it hasn’t happened, why it doesn’t happen in the European countries, and Britain in particular. I have some documents on that, but maybe you could start saying a little bit about the origins of that effort, to the extent that you remember it, and what set you going on that.

Wheeler:

Well, Bondi was an old friend, Herman Bondi, science advisor to the British government. Therefore it was natural to speak to him about this whole thing. But I can’t recall anything really happening on this score. He was interested, but I can’t remember his ever absolutely catching on fire, or igniting other people.

Aaserud:

In what capacity did you meet? Just at physics meetings?

Wheeler:

No. I’d known him, oh my, from time immemorial. Probably before World War II. Because of mutual interest in relativity. Perhaps that is the key word right there. 1952 was when I started to teach relativity, and so that was certainly a special occasion to get acquainted with the people in the field, and perhaps it was not until then that I knew him. Maybe I’m just kidding myself that I knew him before that.

Aaserud:

But you definitely knew him during that earlier period with that Jackson affair. Was he involved in that too, the developments that led to the NATO science advisor?

Wheeler:

I recall our talking with the French, but I cannot recall our talking with anybody British but members of Parliament. No scientist that I can recall. And yet I may well be overlooking somebody.

Aaserud:

This was the first time you discussed a specific proposal with Bondi. That was in relation to JASON.

Wheeler:

So far as I can recall. It could be that he might have been a member of the governing board, a representative on the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. I’d have to go back and look at that, because that would have furnished an occasion. It was 1951, when I went to an international meeting of that governing board. I was the vicepresident of the union.

Aaserud:

That could be.

Wheeler:

So that could be. And that would have been about as early an occasion as any.

Aaserud:

Were there other contacts that tried to accomplish the same kind of thing that you and Bondi discussed? Or were your discussions fairly unique, do you think?

Wheeler:

Yes, I cannot recall anybody else being involved. I was a fellow at Claire College in Cambridge, and I had been invited there by Richard Eden, who had set up a lot of the administrative arrangements that made that possible. The fellows of Claire College. It was a unique arrangement. And Richard Eden was gungho on the deepest things in theoretical physics at that time. When I saw him in later years, and when I say later years I’m talking maybe about 1970, he had practically given up that. What was he working on? Energy. And I had the feeling that that was something that he could get money for, but in a way, the way he was doing it was something like a JASON operation, getting other people in England involved in it. It was of course something that didn’t have the puttingoff character that defense work does for some people. It was the Holy Grail for a while, at the time of the oil shortage, to work on energy. What’s more, he had a whole group associated with him at Claire, at Academy’s Lab. So that might be a possible application of something like JASON, in a different realm of work, energy instead of defense. I’ve never looked into the organization of that.

Aaserud:

Well, that could be an interesting comparison.

Wheeler:

Yes. And I can even imagine that such a group could be the right way to get something started that was ultimately to become a defense group, in an environment at a time when so many people are opposed to touching it with their finger.

Aaserud:

Well, in the case of Bondi, maybe a letter would help a little bit. You seem to have acted fairly quickly, together with David Sharp, by the way.

Wheeler:

I see.

Aaserud:

It was you and David Sharp who wrote a letter to Goldberger and Ruina who were respectively chairman of JASON and research scientist of IDA, I believe, at the time.

Wheeler:

Which year is this?

Aaserud:

This was written the 14th of July, 1965. “An informal discussion last week in London with Herman Bondi, chairman of the British Advisory Group on Missile Defense, who was in Washington June 2125 for joint meetings between American groups, makes us think that the British at least may be receptive to such a plan.” That is, a British JASON, of course. “He asked to be informed a little bit more about JASON and its way of operation on our return to the States.”^[8] Etc.

Wheeler:

You’ll have to send him a copy of your book when it’s finished.

Aaserud:

Well, I should probably talk to him before. I don’t know if you’re interested in looking at the letter? Actually, the next piece of document that I can pull out here is a letter written more than a year later,^[9] from MacDonald to Bondi — Gordon MacDonald, who kind of took over this within JASON, where he doesn’t seem to suggest a British JASON any more, but he suggests some kind of collaboration between JASON and British physicists, so it’s become less…

Wheeler:

…formalized.

Aaserud:

Even then it doesn’t seem to have worked out successfully. There was some British participation in the summer study of 1968. I think Bullard, if that tells you anything; was one of them.

Wheeler:

Yes, that would be natural, because that would fit Gordon MacDonald’s field of interest.

Aaserud:

Right, Gordon has taken over then and it has become his thing then, it seems. Although you did give a briefing at the JASON steering committee meeting in November of 1966 about the prospects of this. Of course, I don’t have other information than that fact. So you definitely followed it up, and that letter is written only ten days later than that. So there’s a large space of time between those two letters, in July 1965 and then another one October of 1966. I was wondering whether you might recall a little bit.

Wheeler:

I don’t recall a thing. You’d better ask Bondi what he remembers. I wonder if he might not be considering writing an autobiography.

Aaserud:

Oh, really? He might have been thinking about these things, yes.

Wheeler:

Because he’s the right age to do it. He’s a master of Churchill.

Aaserud:

Would he be a good person to speak to on this?

Wheeler:

Oh, yes.

Aaserud:

Are there others in Britain?

Wheeler:

Well, R. V. Jones had been active in defense advising in Britain in the war. And subsequent to the war, he was advisor in some classified areas. I don’t know quite what. But he’s a really interesting person. He’s written some about some of his memories.

Aaserud:

Perhaps on the basis of this, without remembering the specifics about the continued contact with Bondi, say, maybe you could reflect a little bit on the fate or the lack of fate of the plans. I mean, why didn’t it come to anything in Britain?

Wheeler:

Well, it’s much harder to get something going on one side. It’s even harder to get a collaboration going. Now, my hunch is that he just had too many problems of the moment, problems of making his influence felt at all, to worry about dragging in a whole bunch of other people. That’s a poor man’s attempt to assess it.

Aaserud:

Did it reach the political arena?

Wheeler:

Not that I know of.

Aaserud:

So as far as you were concerned, it was only personal discussions with Bondi, basically.

Wheeler:

It could have led to something, but it didn’t.

Aaserud:

The one time that JASON reached the public limelight was with the Vietnam involvement.

Wheeler:

Oh, really? What was the public exposure there?

Aaserud:

Well, you know, they were severely criticized in newspapers for that involvement. There was no other time when that happened. The PENTAGON PAPERS, I guess, that’s what it came from.

Wheeler:

Really?

Aaserud:

And that had an effect on JASON, I suppose, but I don’t know to what extent you were involved then.

Wheeler:

I certainly don’t remember that.

Aaserud:

I came across a copy of a report by Hal Lewis, who was then the chairman of JASON, of a meeting at Eglin Air Force Base. JASON had a meeting there…

Wheeler:

Yes, I remember it.

Aaserud:

…to discuss these things. And so I was thinking, just because you got that documentation, perhaps that meant that you had some involvement in it.

Wheeler:

I can remember discussing Vietnam. I can remember Charlie Lauritsen having strong views about Vietnam. And being out there, he’d go out to Vietnam and back, more than once. Oh, I don’t know, half a dozen times, I would say. And I would think that if you could go to Caltech, because don’t they have pretty good archives?

Aaserud:

Yes, very good.

Wheeler:

And see what you could find in the papers of Charlie Lauritsen.

Aaserud:

That’s a good suggestion. That I haven’t thought of.

Wheeler:

Because I can recall a discussion of sensors that you place in the jungle, on what looked like a plant, alongside the path, and it would report the movement of troops along that trail. That was one of the many things that we got into.

Aaserud:

Well, you know people like Drell and GellMann got severely harassed at European universities, and there were problems at Columbia, for example, and I guess at Princeton too, at that time.

Wheeler:

And then in Trieste, I guess I told you.

Aaserud:

Yes.

Wheeler:

I don’t know how to get hold of one of those posters they put up, on the lamp post, against Wigner and me.

Aaserud:

That I haven’t seen.

Wheeler:

That would be fun to have as a souvenir. I was stupid not to collect one at the time.

Aaserud:

So that of course led to some carefulness on the part of JASON, and I think that’s still there, you know, keeping a low profile and being careful about giving out information and all that.

Wheeler:

How did it get out in the first place? Oh, the PENTAGON PAPERS.

Aaserud:

The PENTAGON PAPERS, yes. Yes, JASON was mentioned a number of times.

Wheeler:

I’d be very interested, remind me, what the PENTAGON PAPERS were all about anyway.

Aaserud:

Well, it’s the general history of American Vietnam War involvement. That’s what it was. It was classified but people got hold of it under the Nixon Administration.

Wheeler:

And what did it say about JASON? Do you have quotes from that?

Aaserud:

No, I don’t. I don’t. I actually haven’t read the report itself. I should do that. I only have second hand information.

Wheeler:

I would be extremely interested in what was said about it.

Aaserud:

You know, the PENTAGON PAPERS itself wasn’t critical of JASON. It just had, I would assume, a matter of fact presentation of what they were seen as doing from that point of view, and then of course it was picked up by others.

Wheeler:

I would be interested, because that would give us sight from quite a different viewpoint of what JASON is and does and meant.

Aaserud:

Yes, absolutely. But of course, it wasn’t the most typical JASON project. They did that in contact with the Charles River people, the Cambridge crowd, and they were junior partners, to a great extent at least, in the beginning of that. I mean, there were people like, well, who were the main participants? There were Killian and some of the more prominent science advisors in Boston. But we shouldn’t keep on this if you don’t have any specific recollections of aspects of it.

Wheeler:

Yes. I don’t.

Aaserud:

All right. That’s basically it, on JASON, I think, unless you have something more.

Wheeler:

No, I don’t think I have anything more.

Aaserud:

Then I notice that you’ve been a trustee of the Batelle Memorial Institute. And the interesting part of that with relation to JASON, of course, is that that was the reason you gave for resigning JASON back in 1973, when JASON was changing sponsors or changing parent organizations.

Wheeler:

Conflict of interest.

Aaserud:

Yes. And it looked for a while as if Batelle was going to take over. In the end it was SRI that took over. But you still stood by your resignation, I think. Is that correct?

Wheeler:

I suppose there was no occasion to reverse it at that time.

Aaserud:

No. You had written the letter to Flax. If you’re interested, I have that letter here. So that indicates that you had a fairly strong involvement with Batelle, and I’m a little curious about what that consisted of.

Wheeler:

Batelle has been the largest not for profit research organization in the world, and I’ve always felt very honored to be a member of the board of trustees. I’m now only an associate trustee. That’s when you get to be superannuated. And I will cease to be even that in December of next year.

Aaserud:

But it’s been for a substantial time anyway. You started about the establishment of JASON, I think, maybe a little later?

Wheeler:

I can’t remember. Let’s see, it will be 36 years next year, that’s 1989, that’ll be 1953. Was it 1953? Well, who knows.

Aaserud:

What were the circumstances for your being asked?

Wheeler:

Well, Batelle has six trustees, and three are from the Columbus area and three outside people that represent the world of science and technology. The director of Batelle had just left, and that created a vacancy among the trustees, so there were only two in the world of science. One was Roger Adams, the dean of American chemists, and the other was Zay Jeffries who had been vice president of General Electric Company.

Aaserud:

Yes, he was the chairman of the board.

Wheeler:

Yes. And Zay Jeffries I had met in Chicago days on the Manhattan Project, and so that’s how come he knew me.

Aaserud:

What was his background?

Wheeler:

He was an advisor on some of the metallurgical projects.

Aaserud:

So he had an education in chemistry?

Wheeler:

Chemistry, metallurgy. It’s odd you should ask that. I’ve just put on the shelf this morning the LIFE OF ZAY JEFFRIES. It’s sitting up there. I could look that up.

Aaserud:

OK, you can do that while we’re turning the tape. So how important do you consider your work in the Batelle Memorial Institute as a trustee there? How much time have you spent on that?

Wheeler:

Well, it’s really part of the time of reading documents that are associated with the Batelle operation, part of the time is reading more widely than I would otherwise to have a background for being a sensible advisor. After all, it takes money. It’s more than a half a billion dollars a year now, the operation of Batelle, and so we don’t become the largest research organization not for profit in the world without watching money. I confess that I had read enough about the history of my own university Johns Hopkins to recall that Hopkins made a great mistake of leaving most of its money in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad stock, and that went kerplunk and that really was a terrible thing. It took years for the university to work itself out from that handicap. So Batelle had, thanks to the wisdom of Zay Jeffries, not sold the Xerox process that it had developed to the Hailard Corporation, which later called itself the Xerox Process Company, but had it on a royalty basis of stock in the company, got stock instead of cash, and that had grown to an enormous amount. A couple of hundred million dollars. And so I had the Hopkins history in mind, and I’m afraid I beat my fist on the table and said we had to diversify. And we did.

Aaserud:

Was that the kind of advice you provided?

Wheeler:

Well, we got into financial things, and then the question about should we enter into the business of the Pacific Northwest, should we take on that huge laboratory enterprise? And since I had been there, that was a natural thing for me to comment on, and I had a favorable impression of that being a good thing to do, and that’s been a very successful part of the Batelle Enterprise over the years.

Aaserud:

It’s in Seattle?

Wheeler:

At Hanford. Ritzland. But then the overseas laboratories, Frankfurt and Geneva, they present unusual problems. I guess I’ve had more experience overseas than most of the people in Batelle normally, so I can bring in some perspective there. Although it’s pretty difficult to act at fourth hand.

Aaserud:

How is the research divided up?

Wheeler:

Well, it’s pretty much a question of individual entrepreneurship, on the part of good individual groups. Now there’s much more going on in the way of focusing on specific areas, where it’s not only Batelle has capability, but where the prospects for growth look good. One of the things that Batelle has done is to recognize that the Xerox experience was very unusual, to find a small company which had the leadership which could take a process and become a big company. It had Joe Wilson and Sol Linowitz. But lots of times, we have come up with a new process. It’s like a baby, you can’t just leave it on somebody’s doorstep, you’ve got to…

Aaserud:

…nurture it?

Wheeler:

Got to help it along. And if you try to give it to a big company, it falls in a crack. They’ve got too many other things going on. If you try to give it to a small company, they don’t have the capital or the sales or management talent. So you’ve got to find some way to do it in between. Batelle is learning about new processes, developing new companies to take up new processes. Some work and some don’t. And you’ve heard the most important quality of a research director? The most important quality of a research director is the ability to recognize a dead horse and bury it.

Aaserud:

Who is research director at the time? Is it somebody you had close relationship with?

Wheeler:

The head of the whole show at that time — the research director — was Bertram D. Thomas. He’s retired, and we had Sherwood Faucet and he has just retired, as of last December. Well, excuse me, Faucet retired two years ago. We had Arnold Paul for a two year interim director. And now we have Douglas Olason who was director of Pacific Northwest Laboratory of Batelle, as a considerably younger man, very dynamic. One of his first steps was to go around and interview company presidents. In the past, Batelle’s approach would be that somebody — an expert in metallurgy, for example — in Batelle would go and talk to somebody in metallurgy in General Electric or General Motors or what not, “We’ve got this process, it’s interesting.” Or General Motors or whoever would come to Batelle and say, “We’ve got a metallurgical problem,” — talk one metallurgist to another. The new approach is to approach the top from the top. So we’ll see how that works.

Aaserud:

You yourself maintain contact. Yes, you said you were still taking part.

Wheeler:

I go there next week.

Aaserud:

All right. Did you have any contact with the research on the floor, so to speak?

Wheeler:

I’d go around, have visits, yes.

Aaserud:

Is it common for the trustees to do that?

Wheeler:

Oh, it’s a great thing to go around and see things going on. One of the most marvelous things is this process of melt extraction. You take a saucer, and put it on a shaft and spin it, and dip that into a pot of molten aluminum or steel or what not. And what you’ll see coming out is a red streak. It shoots out in the air and falls on the shop floor, and pretty soon it becomes like a great coil of barbed wire, except no barbs on it. Absolutely quiet. And immediate forming, out of this stuff. Then you say, well, I don’t want wire, I want for example pieces this long. OK, you get your file out and you file around the rim of that saucer, a slot every inch, and now you do it again. It comes out in these little pieces. You just put a big barrel there and collect it. And then if you want sheets of metal — and they’re so terribly important because of stoves, refrigerators, all kinds of things have these sheet metal sides and tops and backs — OK, then instead of a saucer, you have a steel drum, watercooled, that’s rotating, that dips down into the melt. Swtt, you have this whole sheet of metal comes off. Unbelievable.

Aaserud:

What’s the physics of that?

Wheeler:

Melt extraction, it’s called.

Aaserud:

Well, what I’ve read about your relation to your experience there is the setting up of the theoretical physics conference. Was that in Hartford?

Wheeler:

Hanford. No, that was in Seattle.

Aaserud:

That was in Seattle. That’s what I was mixing up. OK. But that’s a separate institution?

Wheeler:

That’s part of the Northwest Complex.

Aaserud:

Yes, but it’s a smaller part of it.

Wheeler:

Yes. Bert Thomas had the vision of a pure research center, and it would be great if you had unlimited money, but we don’t have unlimited money. That’s a very interesting story. (?) Judge Metcalf and Franklin County and so on.

Aaserud:

So was that your initiative, to start those conferences?

Wheeler:

The idea of having a conference there – there’s Fred Milford, the real promoter is Bert Thomas, the president of Batelle at that time, who was promoting fundamental research. Fred Milford of all his people was the one most researchminded, pure research minded, mathematics physics minded. Fred Milford and Bert Thomas talked to me about setting up something there, so we pulled together this group. And we got Cecile Morette in it for a very good reason — Cecile Morette DeWitt — because she is the slip of a girl who, after World War II, realized that French physics was not hot, and that it ought to be built up. You’d never crack the French academic system, therefore you had to operate in the summers outside of the French system, so she set up the Les Houches Summer School, and so we got her to help set this up.

Aaserud:

And the topic was theoretical physics and mathematics. That’s been going on since, hasn’t it?

Wheeler:

No, there were simply two meetings. Maybe there were three but I don’t remember three.

Aaserud:

Oh, it didn’t go on?

Wheeler:

No. Judge Metcalf got into the act.

Aaserud:

Aha. What’s the story about that?

Wheeler:

Well, he read some little notice provision in the will, and deduced from that that Batelle ought to have been giving great slugs of money every year for charity.

Aaserud:

So that was what you referred to. I see.

Wheeler:

And Batelle had to make some compromises, to win its way out of that problem. It got up to the higher judge and the state’s attorney general, and what Batelle did to work its way out of it, it built a Ohio Complex and gave money for keeping it going, which is a great thing for Columbus. It’s cost about 40 million dollars, but it came out of the Batelle endowment, so that cut the possibilities of Batelle doing pure research. It has to do research like other not for profit organizations on a catch as catch can basis.

Aaserud:

Were you a part of suggesting Batelle as another possible place for JASON to be housed?

Wheeler:

Probably. But I can’t recall all the ins and outs of that. I imagine the boys had to submit a proposal, and say how much overhead there would be and all such things.

Aaserud:

I think there were at least three candidates at that time. MITRE was a candidate then also I think, and Batelle and SRI. There may have been more. I don’t know.

Wheeler:

What was the other one besides SRI and Batelle?

Aaserud:

MITRE.

Wheeler:

MITRE.

Aaserud:

Yes, I think so. Well, I came across some interesting documentation. In the course of being at Batelle, you brought up the question of Dicke’s role as the first inventor of the mirror laser. I don’t know if you remember that.

Wheeler:

No. What was the issue?

Aaserud:

The issue, the immediate issue, I think, was the talk that Charles Townes was going to give on the origin of the laser, I believe, and there were some questions about priority. It was interesting that Batelle came up there, and I was just going to ask you how that…

Wheeler:

I wonder what Batelle had to do with it.

Aaserud:

Exactly. That’s my question too, of course. It’s in a letter from Wheeler to what’s his name, Gray, John Gray, of Batelle.

Wheeler:

You’ve got me, I can’t…

Aaserud:

December of 1965.^[10]

Wheeler:

Except…

Aaserud:

You put on another hat and talked about Dicke.

Wheeler:

What’s Batelle got to do with…

Aaserud:

It may not be Batelle, but the person. Yes, right, exactly. It just made me curious.

Wheeler:

There must have been some other incident that brought it to my attention, even though I don’t mention it here.

Aaserud:

That’s always the problem with letters. There are so many things assumed. Another piece of information I found is that you suggested Don Price again as an associate trustee in March, 1968. For Batelle. But the associate trusteeship didn’t come to anything anyway.

Wheeler:

Suggest to who?

Aaserud:

Donald Price, Don Price that we mentioned before.

Wheeler:

Yes.

Aaserud:

But the associate trustee didn’t come to anything.

Wheeler:

I think that probably was when we instead elected William McChesney Martin, who had been head of the Federal Reserve Board, to give some financial background. And he did come on as an associate trustee.

Aaserud:

So you did get at least one associate trustee, so it didn’t run completely out in the sand. Then the last piece of information is the vision of establishing a Batelle branch in Brazil. That’s something that Robert Fuller was playing with.

Wheeler:

Yes. Were we lucky enough to get into that?

Aaserud:

You didn’t seem too enthusiastic at the time.

Wheeler:

Right. Right. Bob Fuller was enthusiastic, but look at Brazil.

Aaserud:

Yes. Absolutely. But was that the kind of thing?

Wheeler:

Yes, I had to pass on it. And exercise judgment.

Aaserud:

What was Fuller’s position?

Wheeler:

Well, he thought it was a developing country and had enormous potential and all sorts of raw materials. Sure, but if you don’t have political stability, all those other things don’t help.

Aaserud:

So that didn’t come to anything. What was his position within Batelle?

Wheeler:

No, he was not a member of Batelle. He was just brought in as a consultant on this operation. He might have been teaching at the University of Washington at that time, or he might have already become president of Oberlin College at that time.

Aaserud:

But Batelle still only has branches in western Europe.

Wheeler:

Yes. It has offices in all sorts of places.

Aaserud:

But laboratories?

Wheeler:

Yes. A list of offices…

Aaserud:

OK, good. Thanks. So, well, how would you evaluate your work at Batelle, generally speaking?

Wheeler:

I found it extremely interesting. Very broadening. This financial side of life, to get a feel for that. I would never have got it in any other way. JASON, you don’t get it in that.

Aaserud:

So that’s very different from anything else you’ve been involved with.

Wheeler:

Yes. Roger Adams, the great chemist, he was a wizard at finance. He was also a bank officer in Urbana or Champaign, Illinois. I went to see him when he was dying of cancer, and he was still keeping up his interest in everything. But I’ll never forget his advice, “Dump the dogs.” About investment. Don’t expect an investment that’s bad to come to life. Dump the dogs.

Aaserud:

Of course, there are so many experiences we could talk about. I mean, it would be nice to relate this to your physics too some time, but I’ve been concentrating on your extraphysical activities, as you have noticed. And another activity of course was your chairmanship in the Joint Committee on the History of Theoretical Physics in the 20th Century.

Wheeler:

Boy, that was a ticklish thing. Picking a chairman, I mean, picking the person who would do the real work. We came awfully close to a decision that might have had some real problems.

Aaserud:

Without getting into detail…?

Wheeler:

Yes, I don’t dare mention. I can’t. But the individual in question, we were just about ready to pick him. I was at a cocktail party in Berkeley, and he ended up lying on the floor under the table.

Aaserud:

And he’s been there since, probably.

Wheeler:

He’s had quite a career since then, but it wouldn’t do.

Aaserud:

Well, could you say a little bit to the tape about the background for establishing the committee?

Wheeler:

I think a lot of people had the feeling that something ought to be done about capturing memories before it was too late. And I believe that it was talking with Charlie Cattell that I found that we had developed a mirror system so that the heat that each of us was radiating warmed up the other one still more, so we got hotter and hotter on the idea, and we got steamed up on getting other people in it.

Aaserud:

Who were the first people discussing it? How many?

Wheeler:

The advisory committee? Well, I could find it if I can look up, but let me only say this, that Fred Seitz we had to sell on the idea. He was concerned lest it be a committee to write a history, and he didn’t think there ought to be any official history. That wasn’t our idea, it was to collect the source material, but making the name appropriate, we could emphasize and reemphasize that point of his. Another point was getting the backing. I could get it for the American Philosophical Society because I was a member of the library committee there, and then, from the American Physical Society, of course, I had connections there. I can’t recall if that was before or after I’d been president of the society, but at any rate, it was a wonderful thing to have it.

Aaserud:

The American Philosophical Society?

Wheeler:

The Physical Society.

Aaserud:

The Physical Society, yes. Let’s see. I thought I had it here. Yes. You were president of the American Physical Society in 1966. So it was before. Yes, it was before. The committee is from 1960 to 1972. Is that right?

Wheeler:

1960 is when the…

Aaserud:

…the committee started. The American Physical Society was in 1966.

Wheeler:

I see. OK. It doesn’t sound right.

Aaserud:

No?

Wheeler:

I thought I was president in 1957.

Aaserud:

Well, I could be wrong.

Wheeler:

Let’s not worry about it.

Aaserud:

OK.

Wheeler:

Because I’ve got to be legging it across the campus in nine minutes.

Aaserud:

OK. We can stop here.

Wheeler:

Well, maybe we can wind it up.

Aaserud:

Yes.

Wheeler:

Yes, at any rate, you've got this sponsorship there, and we had to prepare this proposal for the National Science Foundation, and I can recall that the thing we finally got. Van Vleck was a member of the committee, and Bill Houston was a member of the committee, if I remember correctly. Great people. But anyway, Van Bleck was the one who pushed the man we finally got, that was Thomas Kuhn. And he put in the phone call that persuaded Kuhn to let his name be put in as the man that would do the honest work. And we surely must have not made the proposal final until we got him nailed down, and got his feeling that we were asking for the right money for the right time for the right things. Then, of course, I can recall going to meet Bohr, who had just flown in from Copenhagen, and Mrs. Bohr. He was terribly tired. Mrs. Bohr wanted to get him off to rest. But could I just ask if he would approve it? Well, he wouldn’t just say this, like that. It had to stretch out to — I don’t know whether it was a one hour or two hour discussion. I felt very badly to take his time. But anyway, he gave his backing to it, and he gave it in a real way, with that space in his Carlsberg — several rooms, made over from the stables of the brewery, where Kuhn and his staff could work. That didn’t happen by accident.

Aaserud:

I didn’t know that, that Bohr was involved so directly in setting up that. OK.

Wheeler:

And of course, Tom Kuhn didn’t see any sense of urgency about interviewing Bohr. So that he held the fourth interview the night before he died.

Aaserud:

Yes, I know. I know. I guess we didn’t say anything about the importance of that project. It speaks for itself. It’s still basic.

Wheeler:

I don’t know any profession which holds its heroes in higher esteem than physics. Even medicine.

Aaserud:

Yes, that’s true. Well, why that is, that will require another interview, so thank you very much.