Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Radiation Laboratory

Deals mainly with DuBridge's professional affiliations starting before World War II as member of National Research Council (NRC). War work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Lab and relations with other groups, e.g., at the British Telecommunication Research Establishment (TRE). President of California Institute of Technology after Robert Millikan. Relationship with military. Establishment and chairmanship of President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC); affiliations with PSAC and other organizations; PSAC's impact on science policy. Work with evolution and funding of Public Television, including James Killian's and Edward Land's roles. Also prominently mentioned are: Robert Andrews Millikan, Richard Milhouse Nixon; California Institute of Technology, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Research Council, National Science Board, National Science Foundation, Project Vista, United States Army Signal Corps, United States Army Atomic Energy Commission, and United States Office of Defense Mobilization.

Comments on parents and teachers; schooling in Rochester; studies at University of Rochester and at Princeton University with comments on faculty and fellow students; thesis collaboration with John Marshall; Victor Weisskopf, M.I.T. and the Radiation Laboratory during war, microwave techniques applied to atomic physics. Return to Princeton after war, Angular Momentum of Radiation; 1957 and the start of cosmology and relativity publications; Eötvös experiment and Mach's principle; discussions of own and others' experimental work; big science; George Gamow, Ralph Alpher, Robert Herman; paper with P. James Peebles Nostrums and Conundrums; National Academy of Sciences; funding in science.

World War II work at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. Early postwar years at Princeton University. Research orientations; application of microwave techniques to determination of fundamental atomic constants. Background to paper on super-radiance. Government committee work to about the mid-1950s. Princeton Applied Research, a company organized by Dicke & others. Contact with Charles H. Townes. Consulting for Radio Corporation of America; patent obligations to RCA. Sources of financial support for research; Signal Corps support. Methods for choosing student thesis topics. Signal Corps meetings; contact with colleagues. Technical support at the Princeton Physics Department. Graduate students; financial support; his style of super vision; modes of communication; comments on some specific students. Dicke's habits of documentation.

Family background and early education; early science interests (telegraph and radio transmission), wins American Chemistry Society Contest in high school. Caltech for both undergraduate and graduate studies, 1926-1934, comments on courses, teachers (Richard C. Tolman, Paul Epstein) and fellow students (Chet Carlson, the inventor of Xerox). Joins Charles Lauritsen's group as graduate student (nuclear physics), gets involved in research projects. J. Robert Oppenheimer's interest in their work, Ernest Lawrence's interest and objections to Lauritsen/Crane work on the radiative captive process (Enrico Fermi), Merle Tuve's involvement. Involvement in building machines for the Kellogg Laboratory (Seeley W. Mudd); Ph.D 1934 (The capture of protons by Carbon-12). Accepts offer from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; planning and building of a high voltage accelerator. Department involvement in applied work (GE, Ford), strong interest in biology; rising biophysics interest in the department. Wartime work. Recruited for MIT's Radiation Laboratory, later involved in Tuve's proximity fuse project; Manhattan District interest. Establishment of Biophysics Lab within Physics Department in Ann Arbor. The Racetrack Synchrotron. Also prominently mentioned are: Carl David Anderson, Ted Berlin, Sir John Cockcroft, John, Sir, Walter Francis Colby, James M. Cork, Leo Delsasso, David Mathias Dennison, William Alfred Fowler, Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Halpern, Fred Hodges, Lampe, Otto Laporte, Gilbert Newton Lewis, Edwin Mattison McMillan, Harrison McAllister Randall, William Ralph Smythe, Robert Thornton, George Eugène Uhlenbeck, A. E. White, Robley Williams, Ralph Walter Graystone Wyckoff; and Randall Laboratory of University of Michigan.

Family background and early education; early science interests (telegraph and radio transmission), wins American Chemistry Society Contest in high school. Caltech for both undergraduate and graduate studies, 1926-1934, comments on courses, teachers (Richard C. Tolman, Paul Epstein) and fellow students (Chet Carlson, the inventor of Xerox). Joins Charles Lauritsen's group as graduate student (nuclear physics), gets involved in research projects. J. Robert Oppenheimer's interest in their work, Ernest Lawrence's interest and objections to Lauritsen/Crane work on the radiative captive process (Enrico Fermi), Merle Tuve's involvement. Involvement in building machines for the Kellogg Laboratory (Seeley W. Mudd); Ph.D 1934 (The capture of protons by Carbon-12). Accepts offer from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; planning and building of a high voltage accelerator. Department involvement in applied work (GE, Ford), strong interest in biology; rising biophysics interest in the department. Wartime work. Recruited for MIT's Radiation Laboratory, later involved in Tuve's proximity fuse project; Manhattan District interest. Establishment of Biophysics Lab within Physics Department in Ann Arbor. The Racetrack Synchrotron. Also prominently mentioned are: Carl David Anderson, Ted Berlin, Sir John Cockcroft, John, Sir, Walter Francis Colby, James M. Cork, Leo Delsasso, David Mathias Dennison, William Alfred Fowler, Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Halpern, Fred Hodges, Lampe, Otto Laporte, Gilbert Newton Lewis, Edwin Mattison McMillan, Harrison McAllister Randall, William Ralph Smythe, Robert Thornton, George Eugène Uhlenbeck, A. E. White, Robley Williams, Ralph Walter Graystone Wyckoff; and Randall Laboratory of University of Michigan.

Born July 19, 1915 in Cleveland, OH; family background and early childhood growing up in Cleveland; early interest in acoustics, the flute, electronics, and radio; graduated from high school in 1933; attended Case Institute of Technology, graduating with a B.S. in physics in 1937; moved to University of Illinois for graduate school, specialized in nuclear physics research (also maintained abiding interest in acoustics); thesis research on nuclear cross sections classified by wartime Manhattan Project; completed Ph.D. in 1941; awarded Westinghouse Research Fellowship in 1941 to work on wartime microwave electronics at corporate laboratories in Pittsburgh; collaborated with researchers at MIT Radiation Laboratory; concentrated on development of magnetrons and other high-power electron tubes; accepted full time position at Westinghouse in 1944; developed x-ray image amplifier, major innovation for medical fluoroscopy; transitioned into management positions initially overseeing electronics projects (and some nuclear physics work); graduatlly moved into senior management positions focusing on research strategy and policy; retired in 1980; continued work in acoustics field.

Graduate research on nuclear magnetic resonance at Harvard with Edward M. Purcell and Robert V. Pound, 1946-1947. Leiden postdoctoral fellowship, 1947-1948. Microwave and nuclear experiments as a Harvard Junior Fellow, 1949-1951. Early years in the Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Physics. The 3-level maser. Nonlinear optics in the 1960s. Also prominently mentioned are: John A. Armstrong, Nikolai Gennadievich Basov, George Benedek, Francis Bitter, Felix Bloch, Gregory Breit, Vannevar Bush, Al Clogston, James Bryant Conant, William Culver, Gene Cummins, Damon, Robert Henry Dicke, Peter Alden Franken, Elsa Meints Garmire, Alexander J. Glass, Glauber, Gordon, Gorter, Grivet, William Webster Hansen, Herscher, Clarence Lester Hogan, Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes, Robert Karplus, Rudolf Kompfner, André Lallemand, Jim Meyer, Peter Pershan, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Arthur Leonard Schawlow, Julian R. Schwinger, Malcolm Woodrow Pershing Strandberg, Charles Hard Townes, John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, Shih Wang, Welton, Irvin Wieder, Wolf, Zeldovitch; American Physical Society, Bell Telephone Laboratories, Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), International Business Machines Corporation, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Lincoln Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Radiation Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Netherlands Ministerie van Oderwijs en Wetenschappen, and Optical Society of America.

Includes information on his pre-Harvard education and postdoctoral experience; pre-World War II work at Harvard with students and in building of the cyclotron; wartime work on radar in U.S. and Britain; move to the Manhattan Project and responsibility for Trinity Test site; return to Harvard and start of new cyclotron building.