George Carruthers, in front, third from right, with the Lunar Surface Ultraviolet Camera, for which he was the principal investigator. To the left of Carruthers are Apollo 16 lunar module pilot Charles Duke and Apollo program director Rocco Petrone. On the far right is Apollo 16 commander John Young.
NASA
David DeVorkin, senior curator emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, will present the last lecture of 2025 in our Lyne Starling Trimble Public Event Series on Wednesday, December 10. His talk will be based on his latest book, about the remarkable career of Naval Research Lab scientist George Carruthers, who is best known for constructing an ultraviolet telescope that was placed on the Moon during the Apollo 16 mission. RSVP to join us in person at the AIP offices in downtown Washington, DC. If you cannot attend, the talk will be recorded and posted afterward on the AIP History YouTube channel.
Update: This event has been postponed.
AIP’s Robert H. G. Helleman Memorial Grant and Fellowship Program is now accepting proposals for grants that will support research in the history of the physical sciences at a level of up to $150,000 per year. Senior researchers are invited to propose projects that support career development in the history of the physical sciences and involve collaborations between research institutions in two or more countries. The call for proposals closes on March 20, 2026, and projects may begin at any point between August 2026 and September 2027. For further details, please see our website.
AIP’s ability to support the preservation and communication of physical sciences history has grown enormously over the years thanks in large part to the generosity of our donor community. As we approach the end of another year, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through AIP Foundation to further empower our efforts.
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.
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History from Physics Today
- Roberta Humphreys, interviewed January 6, 2016, by Jarita Holbrook
- David Des Marais, interviewed May 2, June 3, and August 20, 2025, by Patrick McCray
- Mike MacCracken, interviewed March 26, 2025, by Anna Doel
American Astronomical Society (AAS) Collection: AAS Annual Meetings, 2010-2024
Lieutenant Toepel (left) and Samuel Goudsmit (right) driving a military jeep during the Alsos Mission in Stadtilm, Germany in 1945.
Photograph by Malcolm Thurgood, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives
The finding aid to the Samuel A. Goudsmit papers has been updated with an exciting discovery. Under “Material Separated from the Collection” there is a note about how in 1986 roughly 4 linear feet of material were sent to the Department of Energy for inspection. While most items were returned to NBLA, there is a list of items that were sent to the National Archives and placed under classification review. For likely the last three and a half decades, this section of the finding aid ended with “Their disposition is unknown.”
Thanks to a tip from a historian at the DOE, that is no longer the case! We now know that those Goudsmit records are open for research on a partially restricted basis at the National Archives and have been integrated into a larger collection of 9 boxes in total.
