Amherst College

Youth and early education; undergraduate at Amherst; graduate work at MIT. Work with various laboratories: MIT, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and Fermilab. Involvement in JASON, ca. 1960-1973: projects, question of impact. Involvement with Union of Concerned Scientists, from 1969: creation and main projects; nuclear energy; nuclear arms control; achievements.

Youth and early education; undergraduate at Amherst; graduate work at MIT. Work with various laboratories: MIT, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and Fermilab. Involvement in JASON, ca. 1960-1973: projects, question of impact. Involvement with Union of Concerned Scientists, from 1969: creation and main projects; nuclear energy; nuclear arms control; achievements.

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.

Topics discussed include: family background; undergraduate experiences at Amherst College; teaching at Amherst College; Naval experiences in World War II; discovery of the hydrogen radio emission and fate of the Ewen-Purcell horn; Hydrogen-line radiometer at Harvard and aftermath; Harvard University physics department; work with Kenneth Bainbridge, Edward Mills Purcell, Norman Ramsey, and Victor Weisskopf; work for the Navy on submarine detection; Ewen-Knight Corporation.

Family background; father’s education; early education and musical interest; Amherst College with graduate fellowship; graduate school at Harvard University; influence of Elmer Kohler’s course on early research problems, bromination of ketones. Comments on staff, fellow students and influential faculty at Harvard (James B. Conant); teaching policies at Harvard. Postdoctoral work at Rockefeller Institute and Columbia University; wife’s contribution to career; University of Minnesota position, comments on Charles Frederick Koelsch’s work and on the facilities at Minnesota. Discussions of own work and works of Richard S. Berry, Robert Henry Rosenwald, Irving POkel. Research funds at University of Minnesota, the importance of National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH); move to Harvard, lengthy comments on teaching, graduate students and faculty, as well as on other organic chemists (Christopher Ingolf, William Gould Young, Howard Lucas); status of physical organic chemistry and the future of chemistry.