Visual & Oral Histories

By now, if you’ve been following along as we post these Photos of the Month features, you know about the existence of AIP’s Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, which houses images relating to the history of physics. We like to say we’re providing researchers with an opportunity to see and experience “the human face of science” when they explore our visual materials. But what about the voice of science? Well, we have an oral history collection for that.

We have about 1,000 interviews in our collection, all of which provide unique insight into physicists’ work and personal lives as told by the scientists themselves. This set of Photos of the Month bring together our visual and oral history collections; they’re images taken during oral history interviews. You’ll see among these photos Walter Brattain at his desk during a 1974 interview, Charles Weiner in conversation with Otto Frisch in 1967, and David DeVorkin interviewing Geoffrey Burbidge in 1978. These interview transcripts are available online and are full-text searchable – if you are interested in hearing the audio of any of our interviews, feel free to contact our reference staff at nbl@aip.org.