Education in chemistry and physics at Washington State University in early 1930s; graduate studies and work on cyclotron under E. O. Lawrence at University of California, Berkeley from 1935-1939; investigations into products of neutron irradiation of uranium; identification of transuranic element 93 with Edwin McMillan; scientific activities at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at Carnegie Institution of Washington; work on enrichment of uranium for nuclear submarine project at the Naval Research Laboratory; describes information channels between scientists and government officials during World War II and his perspective on the use of the atomic bomb; continued work at Carnegie by investigating biosynthesis of E. coli using radioactive tracers; as director of Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory conducted organic geochemical investigations of amino acid decay in Mercenaria mercenaria; co-editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research; reflections of his editorship of Science.

Part of the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics collection, which includes tapes and transcripts of oral history interviews conducted with ca. 100 atomic and quantum physicists. Subjects discussed their family backgrounds, how they became interested in physics, their educations, people who influenced them, their careers including social influences on the conditions of research, and the state of atomic, nuclear, and quantum physics during the period in which they worked. Discussions of scientific matters relate to work that was done between approximately 1900 and 1930, with an emphasis on the discovery and interpretations of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. Also prominently mentioned are: O. M. Corbino, Eugene Feenberg, Enrico Fermi, Antonio Garbasso, G. Gentile, Tullio Levi-Cevita, Lo Surdo, Macaluso, Ettore Majorana, Quirino Majorana, Wolfgang Pauli, Enrico Persico, Giuliu Racah, Franco Rasetti, V. Volterra; and Universitat Gottingen.

Family background; early interest in physics; chance meeting with Enrico Fermi in youth and early friendship with Emilio Segrè; enrolling in physics at University of Rome; recollections of Orso M. Corbino; 1931 Rome Conference on Nuclear Physics; 1934 visit to Cambridge with Segrè; transition from spectroscopy to nuclear physics work at Rome; reaction to discovery of neutron; Ettore Majorana's work; slow neutron experiments; Fermi's approach toward theory and experiment; failure to discover fission; break-up of Rome group; 1936 trip to America; construction of two accelerators at Rome; 1939 trip to America; decision to discontinue fission experiments at Rome; usefulness of Hans A. Bethe's review articles; style of Rome group; physics elsewhere in Italy during 1930s; contacts with physicists outside Rome during 1930s; Italian physics during the war; postwar concern with elementary particles; recollections of Fermi in postwar period; work considered personally satisfying. Also prominently mentioned are: Herbert Anderson, Gilberto Bernardini, Torkild Bjerge, Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, Niels Henrik David Bohr, James Chadwick, Conversi, Otto Robert Frisch, George Gamow, Ettore Majorana, Pancini, Oreste Piccioni, George Placzek, Franco D. Rasetti, Westcott; Accademia Nazionale (Italy), Cavendish Laboratory, Columbia University, Conference on Nuclear Physics (1931 : Rome, Italy), Istituto superiore di sanità, and University of California at Berkeley, CA.

Anderson talks almost exclusively about his work during the thirties with particles of high energy involved in nuclear reactions. He covers in detail his discovery of the positive electron, his pair production work with gamma rays, his expedition to Pike’s Peak with Neddermeyer and their discovery of the mesotron. He mentions that it was in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize in 1936 that he first mentioned the possibility of negative and positive particles of intermediate mass. After noting the absence of any cosmic ray work during the war years, he mentions the postwar development of cosmic ray work into high energy physics.