Regge poles

Interview with David Gross, Chancellor’s Chair Professor of Physics at University of California in Santa Barbara and a permanent member of the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (KITP). Gross begins by describing his childhood in Arlington, Virginia and his family’s later move to Israel. This led to his decision to enroll at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for his undergraduate studies in physics and mathematics. Gross recalls his acceptance at Berkeley for his graduate studies, where Geoffrey Chew became his advisor. He explains his early interests in strong interactions, quantum field theory, and S-matrix theory. Gross then describes taking a fellowship at Harvard after completing his PhD, where he recalls his early involvement in string theory. He speaks about his subsequent move to join the faculty at Princeton, as well as his introduction to Frank Wilczek, one of his first graduate students with whom he later shared the Nobel Prize. Gross takes us through the discovery of asymptotic freedom, the development of quantum chromodynamics, and the impact these had on the Standard Model. He discusses his decision to leave Princeton for UCSB, where he focused on growing the KITP and securing funding. Gross describes how his research interests have shifted over the years across topics such as confinement, quantum gravity, and more recently back to string theory. Toward the end of the interview, Gross speaks about his work to develop institutes similar to KITP in other countries, as well as his term as President of the American Physical Society in 2019.

In this interview, Fred Gilman, Buhl Professor of Theoretical Physics at Carnegie Mellon University discusses his career as a theoretical physicist and hopes for the future. He details his early passion for theoretical physics and his decision to attend Michigan State University for his undergraduate degree. He discusses attending Princeton University for graduate school and his thesis on Baryon Electromagnetic Mass Differences with his advisor Murph Goldberger. Gilman describes his time at Caltech as an NSF postdoctoral fellow. Gilman reflects on his involvement with the Snowmass Conference as well as his work on the High-Energy Physics Advisory Panel.

Interview with Toichiro Kinoshita, a Japanese-born physicist who is best known for pioneering the value of muon g-2, the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Kinoshita describes his education—Daiichi High School, Tokyo University—how he avoided military service during World War II, and meeting and marrying his wife, Masako Matsuoka. He describes his introduction to quantum electrodynamics and renormalization through papers by Dyson and Feynman. His early research also involved work on the C-meson theory developed by Sakata. After the war, Kinoshita came to the United States to the Institute for Advanced Study, then as a postdoc at Columbia in 1954. In 1955 Kinoshita moved to Cornell. He became particularly interested in making calculations to test the theory of quantum electrodynamics. He describes his introduction to computers at Princeton, using von Neumann’s computer. The interview covers how he became interested in calculating g-2 at CERN in 1966, and his subsequent efforts, the first being the sixth order calculation, where the light-by-light diagram enters for the first time. He describes his efforts doing the eighth order calculation, and his collaboration with Makiko Nio, as well as his calculations of the tenth order. Physicists whom he describes more than briefly include Kodaira, Tomonaga, Nambu, and Nio. Near the end, Kinoshita describes the importance of g-2 experiments, and his recent work. 

Interview with Ronald E. Mickens, Distinguished Fuller E. Callaway Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, at Clark Atlanta University. Mickens recounts his childhood in segregated Virginia and how his entrepreneurial instincts and exposure to farm life fed into his budding interest in science. He explains the opportunities that led to his undergraduate education at Fisk University, where he majored in physics on the basis of his ability to combine his talents in math and chemistry. Mickens describes his formative summer research at Vanderbilt University on thermodynamics, and he explains the influence that his graduate advisor Wendell Holladay played in his life and his decision to continue at Vanderbilt for his graduate work. He discusses his involvement with the Civil Rights movement during his time in Nashville and how he dealt with the possibility of getting drafted for military service in Vietnam. Mickens describes his postdoctoral research in the Center for Theoretical Physics at MIT, and he explains how events that can appear to be supernatural must be explicable within the single physical world. He describes his research at MIT as a time to expand on his thesis work on Regge poles, and he explains how his work with James Young connected him with his research at Los Alamos. Mickens describes his teaching and research record while he was a professor at Fisk, and he discusses his summer research at SLAC and his focus on the Pomeron and elastic scattering. He describes his many research visits to Europe and his work at CERN where he probed the theoretical underpinnings of high energy scattering. Mickens explains his fascination with Newtonian formulation equations and the utility of his visits to the summer Aspen Institute program. He describes some of the frictions he experienced with the administration at Fisk, his work at JILA, and the professional and personal considerations that compelled him to accept a professorship at Clark Atlanta and its transformation from Atlanta University. Mickens conveys the fundamental importance that geometry and numerical modeling has played in his career, and he contextualizes his academic achievements by emphasizing that everyone in his family has achieved a terminal degree. At the end of the interview, Mickens offers a history of the origins of the National Society of Black Physicists, and explains the significance of, and the lessons that should be learned, from Edward Bouchet’s life.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian, interviews Paul Grannis, emeritus professor of physics at Stony Brook University. He recounts his childhood in Ohio and describes his early interests and talents in math and science. He explains his decision to attend Cornell University and his reasons to focus on engineering physics while also developing an interest in theory. Grannis describes his graduate work at Berkeley, where he joined the Chamberlain group, which had focused on aligning the proton spin with the magnetic field by transferring the electron polarization to the proton polarization. He reflects on the differing approaches in particle physics as represented by East and West coast institutions. Grannis discusses his research work on the Cyclotron and Bevatron, and he describes his dissertation research on Regge poles and measuring the polarization of lanthanum nitrate crystals. He discusses his postdoctoral research at the Berkeley Radiation Lab, and he explains his decision to join the faculty at Stony Brook, which struck him as an exciting and up-and-coming place to pursue a career. Grannis describes the additional attraction of being in close proximity to Brookhaven Lab, and how he contributed to the overall broadening and improvement of the physics department. He explains his involvement in the ISABELLE project, and he describes the origins of the D0 endeavor and the feeling of excitement at Fermilab during that time. Grannis provides perspective on some of the inherent challenges in the SSC planning project and the existential challenges Fermilab faced as a result of focusing so exclusively on the Tevatron project. He describes the current state of high-energy physics and Europe’s leadership in this field, and some of the hypothetical advancements that could be made with the ILC endeavor. At the end of the interview, Grannis discusses his current work as co-spokesman of D0, his ongoing planning work on the ILC, he muses about what science projects he would fund if he had discretion on where to deploy 10 billion dollars, and he shares what he sees as some of the most exciting short and long term prospects in the field.