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June 2025
Spring–Summer History Newsletter posted
David Bohm reading newspaper with headline "Reds Capture All Shanghai"

David Bohm reading the newspaper after invoking the Fifth Amendment before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1949.

Acme Telephoto, New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, courtesy of the AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.

The digital version of AIP’s semiannual History Newsletter is now available on our website . The issue’s feature article examines physicists’ varied experiences during the Red Scare, and it also includes updates from our programs, reports from grant-in-aid recipients, Q&As with physicists with a strong interest in history, and our annual list recognizing the donors who help sustain and expand our history work.

Harvard historian and Black Hole Initiative director Peter Galison discusses how history and philosophy are informing pathbreaking science as it happens.

This month from the AIP History Weekly Edition

Don’t wait for the Monthly Update! To receive the Weekly Edition in your inbox every Friday, subscribe here.

Kai Hostetter-Habib looks at how the destruction of Kameny’s astronomy career spurred him to become an early and influential LGBTQ+ rights activist.

AIP’s Ryan Dahn explores a popular origin myth for quantum mechanics involving Werner Heisenberg’s attempt to escape his debilitating allergies.

Highlights from an oral history with University of Auckland astrophysicist Jan Eldridge, a nonbinary transgender woman, LGBTQ+ rights advocate, and avid sci-fi fan.

AIP’s Anna Doel interviews American Philosophical Society archivists about their sprawling collection of personal papers donated by Garwin, who died last month at 97.

This month from Ex Libris Universum

This blog from the Niels Bohr Library & Archives provides a behind the scenes look at the history and collections we preserve and make accessible. Explore more posts here.

AIP archivist Benjamin Henry discusses correspondence between a displaced Chinese physicist and the American Physical Society treasurer during the Sino-Japanese War.

In the June Photos of the Month, AIP librarian Karina Cooper explores scientific instruments designed to study the sun during the 19th and early-20th centuries.

Olivia Campbell discusses her new book on Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen in an interview with AIP’s Trevor Owens.

A glimpse into the careers of six of the figures featured in the new book Women in the History of Quantum Physics.

Ride’s life partner discusses the new documentary about the late physicist and astronaut, for which she was a writer and executive producer.

The Temple University physicist discusses false accusations he faced in 2015 that he passed technology to China and his advocacy for others in similar situations.

Newly posted manuscript biographies

We recently posted digitized versions of over 100 manuscript biographies from our collections. These comprise unpublished memoirs written by scientists as well as other autobiographical, biographical, and historical documents. Here are some highlights:

Keith Brueckner, autobiography (1986)
Edward Condon, autobiography (1948)
Helen Dukas, eulogy given by Abraham Pais (1982)
Elizabeth Laird, autobiography (c. 1960)
Francis Low, autobiography (c. 1965)
Melba Phillips, speech transcript (1978)
Adam Riess, recollections on cosmology (2007)
John Schiffer, autobiography (2012)
Frederick Seitz, recollections of 1930–1940 (1992)
John Slater, recollections by John Van Vleck (1975)
Eizo Tajima, questionnaire response (1982)

Newly posted oral histories

Aomawa Shields, interviewed January 6, 2016, by Jarita Holbrook
Brent Tully, interviewed August 3, 2015, by Jarita Holbrook
Dale Van Harlingen, interviewed May 14, 2020, by David Zierler

New images now available
A man Raul Acevedo stands behind a large elaborate machine

A photograph taken at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the mid-2010s showing laboratory staff member Raul Acevedo working on the Inner Shell Spectroscopy beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II facility.

Brookhaven National Lab, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Federal agency and federally funded laboratory photos: AIP recently conducted a small project to pilot processes for incorporating into our Emilio Segrè Visual Archives photos from government-funded institutions that are in the public domain or have Creative Commons licenses.

More History
July Photos of the Month
An Interview with Archivist, Elizabeth Kata
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Newsletter
In memoriam: John Stachel, pathbreaking Einstein scholar
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Newsletter
Book spotlight: Women in the History of Quantum Physics

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