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Includes information on his pre-Harvard education and postdoctoral experience; pre-World War II work at Harvard with students and in building of the cyclotron; wartime work on radar in U.S. and Britain; move to the Manhattan Project and responsibility for Trinity Test site; return to Harvard and start of new cyclotron building.
Graduate research on nuclear magnetic resonance at Harvard with Edward M. Purcell and Robert V. Pound, 1946-1947. Leiden postdoctoral fellowship, 1947-1948. Microwave and nuclear experiments as a Harvard Junior Fellow, 1949-1951. Early years in the Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Physics. The 3-level maser. Nonlinear optics in the 1960s. Also prominently mentioned are: John A. Armstrong, Nikolai Gennadievich Basov, George Benedek, Francis Bitter, Felix Bloch, Gregory Breit, Vannevar Bush, Al Clogston, James Bryant Conant, William Culver, Gene Cummins, Damon, Robert Henry Dicke, Peter Alden Franken, Elsa Meints Garmire, Alexander J. Glass, Glauber, Gordon, Gorter, Grivet, William Webster Hansen, Herscher, Clarence Lester Hogan, Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes, Robert Karplus, Rudolf Kompfner, André Lallemand, Jim Meyer, Peter Pershan, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Arthur Leonard Schawlow, Julian R. Schwinger, Malcolm Woodrow Pershing Strandberg, Charles Hard Townes, John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, Shih Wang, Welton, Irvin Wieder, Wolf, Zeldovitch; American Physical Society, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), International Business Machines Corporation, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Lincoln Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Radiation Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Netherlands Ministerie van Oderwijs en Wetenschappen, and Optical Society of America.
Interview discuss John S. Hall's early interest in astronomy; comments about family background and early childhood, schooling in Connecticut and college training at University of Amherst and Yale University. Early contacts and interests in photoelectric photometry, his pioneering efforts in red sensitive cell photometry, work at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT during World War II, postwar research at the Naval Observatory and his co-discovery of interstellar polarization. Also prominently mentioned are: Solon Bailey, A. L. Bennett, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Thomas Cochran, Robert H. Dicke, Harold Ewen, Fresnell, Green, Jesse Leonard Greenstein, Ejnar Hertzsprung, W. A. Hiltner, Gerald Edward Kron, J. A. Miller, Prescott, Jan Schildt, Frank Schlesinger, Harlow Shapley, Theodore Stoller, Otto Struve, David Todd, Robert Williams Wood; Amherst College Observatory, General Electric Co., Harvard University, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Science (journal), Sproul Observatory, United States Navy, and Yerkes Observatory.
Research career, and important contributions to TV and fluorescent lighting and subsequent transition to management which culminated in a stint as Director of Research for the RCA Laboratories in Princeton. Problems he had to deal with are described, including tension over the issue of how much undirected research to permit. The research atmosphere during the Depression and World War II is recalled, along with insights into Vladimir Zworykin, David Sarnoff, Irving Langmuir, and William Coolidge. Also prominently mentioned are: Booz Allen, W. R. G. Baker, John Bardeen, George H. Brown, Louis Clement, B. R. Cummings, Elmer Engstrom, Douglas H. Ewing, Phine Farnsworth, Harold Greig, James Hillier, Leslie Jesty, Loren F. Jones, Ray Kell, Mervin J. Kelly, George Langley, Nils Lindenblad, Nevill Francis Mott, Richardson Neeve, Wayne B. Nottingham, Frederick Seitz, William Shockley, Willis Whitney, Irving Wolff; Bell Telephone Laboratories, General Electric Co., Harvard University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Journal of Applied Physics, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Marconi Co., Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory, Paso Robles High School, Siemens Co., Stanford University, United States Patent Office, Victor Talking Machine Co., and Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.
Some of the topics discussed include: his early life and education; interest in physics; his only formal degree, a Bachelors from University of Buffalo; from college to defense work and Submarine Signal Company; his work at the MIT Radiation Laboratory; the Harvard Society of Fellows; the discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance in bulk matter; the Bloembergen, Pound, and Purcell paper (BPP); the Pound Box, NMR patent issue; applications of NMR; after the war, writing Rad Lab books; Chicago Federation Group; nuclear quadruple moments; nuclear moments; alpha-gamma correlations and gamma-gamma correlations; becoming Assistant Professor; implications and influence of Mossbauer's work; Glen Rebka; gravitational redshift; Physical Review Letters controversy; Victor Weisskopf; the Harwell group in England; the gravitational redshift experiment; Nobel Prize; heating with microwaves; life as a professor at Harvard; Julian Schwinger leaving Harvard; overview of his career; physicists he has known; changes in the culture of physics; etc.
Some of the topics discussed include: his early life and education; interest in physics; his only formal degree, a Bachelors from University of Buffalo; from college to defense work and Submarine Signal Company; his work at the MIT Radiation Laboratory; the Harvard Society of Fellows; the discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance in bulk matter; the Bloembergen, Pound, and Purcell paper (BPP); the Pound Box, NMR patent issue; applications of NMR; after the war, writing Rad Lab books; Chicago Federation Group; nuclear quadruple moments; nuclear moments; alpha-gamma correlations and gamma-gamma correlations; becoming Assistant Professor; implications and influence of Mossbauer's work; Glen Rebka; gravitational redshift; Physical Review Letters controversy; Victor Weisskopf; the Harwell group in England; the gravitational redshift experiment; Nobel Prize; heating with microwaves; life as a professor at Harvard; Julian Schwinger leaving Harvard; overview of his career; physicists he has known; changes in the culture of physics; etc.
In this interview Robert Pound discusses topics such as: family background and childhood; Harvard University department of physics; undergraduate work at the University of Buffalo; Submarine Signal Company; microwave radar; Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during World War II; Henry Torrey; Ed Purcell; Ewen Fletcher; Emory Chaffee; Nicolaas Bloembergen; nuclear magnetic resonance; quadrupole moments; crystal fields; I. I. Rabi; ionic crystals; George Watkins; Christopher Dean; Mossbauer effect; E. Bright Wilson; Zeeman effect; K. T. Bainbridge; Office of Naval Research; National Science Foundation (NSF); Edwin H. Land.
On Henry Torrey as physicist and friend. Lunches in Central Square during the Radiation Lab days. Pound’s physics degree earned at University of Buffalo, where his father was a physics professor. Rabi’s and Zacharias’ and A. G. Hill’s roles as superiors and mentors in Radiation Lab days and in early NMR work. Story of Pound’s visit to Frisch and Meitner in Cambridge, UK. Story of Frisch and Weisskopf’s visit to Pound’s home in Arlington and their piano playing. Van Vleck and his wife as best friends. Pound’s labeling as “electronics expert” which he somewhat resented; George Pake’s letter to Pound on Pound as excellent physicist, not only electronics expert. Generational issues at The Radiation Lab. The Physics program in Toronto, early in the 20th century. First and only funeral Pound attended, at age four. On an ancestor and Weland, Canada. Pound’s start in amateur radio. Pound as professor at Harvard against core curriculum. Pound’s invention of “frequency locking.” Sabbatical year spent in Boulder, CO. Work habits. Enjoyment of The New Yorker. On The Pound Box. Nuclear Quadrupole Interactions. Pound’s two sisters.
On family physics connections. On The Submarine Signal Company sonar and radar work. On Britain during World War Two. On Charles Lindbergh. The Tizard Mission. E. G. Bowen. Pound as chair of Harvard Physics for eight years. Number of physicists at The MIT Rad Lab. Molecular beams and magnetic resonance. Gorter’s summer at Harvard. Alfred Loomis. On The Queen Mary ship docked in Boston harbor. 50-cm radar. Pulsed vs. continuous radar. Radar as similar to NMR. Erwin Hahn and Spin Echoes. On The New Yorker magazine. Transfer of equipment from The Rad Lab to Harvard. Signal-to-noise work at MIT. On Bell Labs. First teaching assignment at Harvard. BPP paper.
This interview is primarily focused on Purcell's life and work at Harvard University, which includes a description of his life there as a graduate student in the 1930s; recollections about older professors Black, Bainbridge, Bridgman, Hall, Kemble, Lyman, Saunders, and Van Vleck; work on new cyclotron with Bainbridge leading to Ph.D.; World War II years at MIT Radiation Laboratory leading to NMR work with Pound, Torrey and Bloembergen; description of 100,000 volt storage battery in the basement of Lyman Laboratory.