Columbia University

Interview with John Regazzi, managing director of Akoya Capital. Regazzi provides a business executive’s perspective on the future of work after the pandemic, and he recounts his childhood in Brooklyn and his largely Catholic school education. Regazzi explains his initial interest in entering the seminary to become a priest before he decided to pursue a secular education in experimental psychology at St. John’s University. He discusses his graduate work in business at Columbia University and his developing interests in information science, which he developed at Northern Illinois University. Regazzi describes his subsequent work at the Foundation Center and then at Rutgers where he earned a PhD in information sciences. He explains how this research led to his career in publishing, first at the H.W. Wilson Company and then at Elsevier, where he rose to lead the company in New York. He narrates how and when digital media and the internet became central to the publishing industry, and he explains how he navigated these transitions. Regazzi describes his experiences on September 11 and the impact of this on Elsevier. He discusses his retirement, his decision to become a Dean at Long Island University, and his involvement with AIP and the key issue about making AIPP a separate organization. Regazzi describes his work as Chairman of the AIP board and the central work of finding a CEO. He explains why Michael Moloney became the successful candidate, and how Regazzi put his expertise in technical scientific publishing to the benefit of both AIP and AIPP. At the end of the interview, Regazzi reflects on his career and emphasizes the importance of identifying innovation in business, and he conveys optimism that the publishing industry will continue to evolve and adapt well into the future. 

Interview with Demetrius Venable, Professor Emeritus at Howard University. Venable discusses the administrative distinctions between physics and astronomy at Howard, and he surveys some of the most interest projects currently in train at NASA. He recounts his upbringing in segregated small-town Virginia, the educational limitations this imposed, and his service in ROTC at Virginia State University. He discusses a formative intensive summer program at Columbia, and he describes the opportunities that led to his graduate admission at American University to work with Richard Kay on the effectiveness of circular polarization versus linear polarization in excited states in solid material. Venable describes his postdoctoral research at IBM, then taking a faculty position at St. Paul’s College, before taking a longer-term position at Hampton Institute. He discusses his early involvement with NASA’s remote sensing program, he describes his tenure as director of the dual degree engineering program and the collaborative opportunities he was able to pursue with Jefferson Lab. Venable recounts his increasing administrative responsibilities leading to becoming Provost at Hampton, and he discusses the growth of the NASA-supported Center for Optical Physics. He explains his decision to move to Howard, where he could be more fully involved in research for CSTEA and the LiDAR system, and his partnership with NOAA on climate modeling. Venable conveys his enjoyment at receiving NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal, and he provides historical perspective on current and past calls to make STEM more diverse and inclusive. At the end of the interview, Venable explains his deep interest in physics education, and he expresses optimism in the long-term strength of Howard’s physics program.

Interview with Carl Haber, Senior Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Haber explains where his research fits within the broader matrix of the Lab, and he describes the challenges with remote work during the pandemic. He recounts his childhood in Queens, NY, and his early fascination with the Space Race. Haber describes his undergraduate work at Columbia, where he became interested in experimental physics and where he worked in Madame Wu’s group. He explains his decision to stay at Columbia for graduate school, his work targeting neutrinos at Fermilab, and a formative visit to SLAC. Haber discusses his postdoctoral research at the Tevatron collider and some of the technical challenges in building calorimeter devices. He describes the origins of CDF, and the focused interest on CERN for collider detectors, and he shares how he felt when the Higgs was discovered. Haber describes his entrée into the physics of audio recordings, and how he sees this work as part of his research agenda. At the end of the interview, Haber explains why he can’t conceive of a better place than Berkeley to pursue a career in physics.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Abraham Seiden, Distinguished Professor Physics Emeritus at UC Santa Cruz. Seiden discusses his current interests in developing silicon detectors for the high luminosity LHC and sensors for the TRIUMF accelerator, and he surveys the current interplay between theory and experiment in particle physics more broadly. He recounts his birth in a displaced persons camp after World War II and his childhood in Brooklyn and then in California, and he explains his decision to go to Columbia for his undergraduate studies. Seiden describes his graduate research at Caltech and then UC Santa Cruz under the direction of Clemens Heusch to conduct research on deep inelastic muon scattering at SLAC. He discusses his subsequent research on the intersecting storage ring at CERN and he describes how the “November Revolution” at SLAC resonated at CERN. Seiden describes the opportunities that led to him joining the faculty at Santa Cruz and his involvement on the high PT photon experiment at Fermilab. He recounts his interest in Higgs research and the leadership of George Trilling and he explains the origins of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics. Seiden discusses his advisory work for P5 and the broader state of play of particle physics in the United States and he describes the impact on CERN following the cancellation of the SSC. He discusses the import of the ATLAS upgrade, his involvement with LIGO, and his contributions to BaBar at SLAC. Seiden narrates the run-up and the impact of the Higgs discovery at CERN, and its impact on searching for physics beyond the Standard Model. He surmises how a particle physics approach will help to unlock the mystery of dark matter, and he explains his motivations to write an introductory textbook on particle physics. At the end of the interview, Seiden compares the opportunities in the field that were available to him as a graduate student as opposed to his own students, and he explains why working on the SSC was the most fun he’s had in the field, despite its ultimate fate.

Interview with Elena Aprile, Centennial Professor of Physics at Columbia University. Aprile describes the feeling of just having been elected to the National Academy of Science and she describes how the XENON Dark Matter search has continued despite the pandemic. She explains why so much of physics is devoted to try to understand dark matter and where she sees the interplay of theory and experiment toward that end. Aprile describes why finding dark matter will mean finding new physics beyond the Standard Model, and she recounts her upbringing in Milan and her developing interests in physics during high school. She describes her first visit to CERN when she was a student at the University of Naples and what it was like to meet Carlo Rubbia. Aprile discusses her graduate work at the University of Geneva where she worked on scattering protons to study time violation effects. She explains her interest in the UA1 and UA2 experiments at CERN and her work on noble liquid detectors, her appointment at Harvard, and her first involvement with radiation spectroscopy. Aprile narrates her realization that xenon would be valuable for astrophysics and dark matter specifically, and she describes the origins of the LXeGRIT telescope project. She explains why Gran Sasso was chosen on the site of the XENON experiment and some of the technical and economic challenges in dealing with xenon on the scale required to search for dark matter. Aprile reflects on the difficulties she has faced as a woman in her field, and she describes the competitive value in having the LZ experiment and its search for dark matter. She explains how one goes about searching for dark matter without knowing what dark matter is. At the end of the interview, Aprile imagines what it will mean to find dark matter, what mysteries it will solve, and why she will remain steadfastly cautious before confirming the discovery. 

Interview with Stanley Brodsky, Professor Emeritus at SLAC. Brodsky surveys his current projects after his retirement last year following 54 years of service to SLAC; they include new initiatives on hadron physics and his interest in the muon G-2 experiment at Fermilab. He recounts his upbringing in St. Paul, his early interests in electrical engineering, and his decision to stay close to home and attend the University of Minnesota for his undergraduate education. He explains his decision to remain at Minnesota for his thesis research, where he worked under the supervision of Donald Yennie on computing atomic levels from first principles in quantum electrodynamics. Brodsky describes his postdoctoral appointment at Columbia, where he worked with Sam Ting at DESY computing the QED radiative corrections for Bethe-Heitler pair production. He recalls his original contact with Sid Drell and his decision to come to SLAC to join the theory group in support of the many experimental programs in train, and he recounts the November Revolution and Sam Ting’s visits to SLAC. Brodsky describes some of the key differences in East Coast and West Coast physics in the 1970s, and he discusses his collaboration with Peter Lepage at the beginning of QCD’s development. He highlights the importance of thinking beyond conventional wisdom and he references his work on intrinsic heavy quarks to illustrate the point. Brodksy discusses his research on the Higgs VEV and the long range value of the Brodsky-Lepage-Mackenzie procedure, and he reflects on the many surprises in QCD color confinement that he has encountered. He explains the value of supersymmetry in his research and he considers why it has not been seen yet and why Maldacena’s work on AdS/CFT has been revolutionary. Brodsky describes SLAC’s increasing involvement in astrophysics and how he has managed his research agenda by working on many different projects at the same time. At the end of the interview, Brodsky emphasizes the significance of Bjorken scaling, he historicizes the first work in physics that explored beyond the Standard Model, and he reflects on the importance that luck has played in his career, simply by finding himself, at so many junctures, in being at the right place at the right time.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Nicholas Samios, Director Emeritus of Brookhaven National Laboratory.  He describes his family’s Greek heritage and he recounts his childhood in Manhattan and the value of the education he received at Stuyvesant High School. He describes his decision to attend Columbia as an undergraduate, where he studied under Jack Steinberger, Polycarp Kusch, and I.I. Rabi. Samios explains his decision to remain at Columbia for graduate school, and he explains some of the exciting things that were happening in particle physics then, including the use of cloud chambers to discover the “strange particles” called lambdas and thetas. He describes his dissertation research studying these particles using bubble chambers and searching for parity violation, and he explains his interest in the research at the Nevis Cyclotron in Westchester. Samios discusses his postdoctoral research at Columbia before accepting a position at Brookhaven, which was in the middle of building the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron, and he describes the difference between this work on pions and what Panofsky was doing with electrons at Stanford. He describes his subsequent work designing neutrino beams and his contribution to the discovery of the baryon charm, and he describes his tenure as chair of Brookhaven’s physics department and his efforts to produce complementary and not redundant work with the other National Labs. Samios recounts his time as Director at Brookhaven, and he describes in detail the ISABELLE project and why it was cancelled by the Reagan administration. He connects the fall of ISABELLE with the origins and ultimate failure of the SSC and the inevitable loss of leadership the U.S. experienced in high energy physics.  Samios discusses why the RHIC endeavor delayed his retirement and the significance of RHIC’s discovery of the quark-gluon plasma.  At the end of the interview, Samios surveys the fundamental discoveries that occurred over his career on the Standard Model and parity conservation, the ongoing mystery of dark matter, and he outlines the many ways that particle physics has positively influenced technology and human well-being.

In this interview, Lee Pondrom, Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, recounts his childhood in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston and describes his early interest in science. He explains his motivations to attend Southern Methodist University, where he pursued a degree in physics. Pondrom discusses his graduate work at the University of Chicago where the long-range influence of the Manhattan Project remained strong, even in the early and mid-1950s. He describes his summer research work at Los Alamos, and his thesis research on cyclotrons and pi mesons under the direction of Albert Crewe and Uli Kruse. Pondrom conveys the feeling of excitement at the discovery of parity violation while he was a graduate student, his postdoctoral work on the Nevis cyclotron while at Columbia, and he describes his Air Force service after he defended his dissertation. He describes the opportunities leading to his tenure at the University of Wisconsin and a research agenda that included long-term projects at the Chicago cyclotron, and at Fermilab and at Argonne. Pondrom discusses his contributions to CP violation, hyperon decay and how computers have been useful over the course of the career. He describes the origins of Fermilab and his experiences at Madison during the student unrest during the late 1960s, where bombers targeted science buildings. Pondrom discusses the significance of the E8 experiment as an extension of the Garwin-Lederman experiment and the origins of the Tevatron project. He explains the ups and downs of U.S. high energy physics during the SSC years and he surmises what would be known now in particle physics had the SSC been completed. At the end of the interview, Pondrom describes his extensive collaborations in Russia and his study of Soviet-era physics, including his work on Stalin’s nuclear diplomacy.

Early interest in physics. Education and career prior to joining JASON: two years in the Royal Air Force; switch from mathematics to physics after the war; enrollment at Cornell University in 1947; difference between American and British physics. Exposure to science policy (Federation of Atomic Scientists, Philip Morrison); U.S. citizen 1957. Motivation for joining JASON; JASON work vs. work in Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; work on active optics in JASON; technical tasks vs. policy advice; Oregon Trail; availability of JASON bibliography; public profile of JASON members; divisions within JASON; other science policy activities; reasons for leaving JASON. Also prominently mentioned are: Abraham S. Besicovich; Columbia University, General Atomic Company, Nike-X (Missile), United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and University of Birmingham.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Wayne Hendrickson, Violin Family Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University. Hendrickson recounts his childhood on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and explains how this environment fostered his interest in the natural world. He describes his undergraduate experience at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls, and his formative work at Argonne Lab where he studied Caesium-137 levels in beagle dogs. Hendrickson describes his intent to focus on biophysics in graduate school and his decision to accept at offer at Johns Hopkins, where he became interested in protein crystallography and electron microscopy. He discusses his dissertation research under the direction of Warner Love and the importance of the research conducted at Woods Hole which influences his work on studying hemoglobin in lampreys. Hendrickson describes the importance of computational biology and the promises this offered protein crystallography, and he explains the influence of Linus Pauling in advancing the field. He explains why he stayed on at Hopkins after his defense because he felt there was more work for him to complete on the Patterson function. Hendrickson discusses his work at the Naval Research Laboratory on parvalbumin molecules and his developing interests in anomalous scattering techniques. He discusses how the field matured and had gained broader acceptance, and he surmises how these trends led to recruitment efforts that led to his tenure at Columbia in the 1980s. Hendrickson explains the labyrinthine nature of his many appointments and affiliations at Columbia, and the opportunities he has had to teach and to mentor graduate students within an environment that is primarily research-focused. He discusses the improvement of technology over the course of his time at Columbia, and he discusses his work on beamlines at Howard Hughes and Brookhaven. Hendrickson describes his work as scientific director of the New York Structural Biology Center, and he explains how his research has moved closer toward clinical motivations in recent years. At the end of the interview, Hendrickson reflects on his long career in biophysics, and he draws on the story of HIV infectivity as an example of how the field can progress from a place of really not understanding basic biological problems, to developing effective therapies.