Michigan State University

Interview with Herman B. White, physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. White recounts his childhood in Tuskegee, Alabama and growing up during segregation. He discusses his early interests in science and his decision to enroll at Earlham College in Indiana as an undergraduate. White then describes his time at Michigan State University as a graduate student, during which he also held a position as a resident research associate at Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. White talks about his transition from nuclear physics to particle physics upon completing his master’s degree at MSU. He discusses the events that led him to accept a position at Fermilab rather than immediately pursue a PhD. White was the first African-American scientist appointed at Fermilab, and he recounts his early years there being mentored by Raymond Stefanski. He then describes his research fellowship at Yale and his non-traditional path to getting a PhD in 1991 from Florida State University. White talks about returning to Fermilab to work on kaon physics, and his eventual involvement in the Tevatron experiment. Toward the end of the interview, White reflects on the changes and trends he has seen in the research being done at Fermilab over the years, as well as his involvement in the National Society of Black Physicists.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Richard Casten, D. Allan Bromley Professor of Physics Emeritus at Yale, and consultant for the Facility for Rare Ion Beams facility at Michigan State. Casten recounts his childhood in Manhattan and his decision to attend Holy Cross for his undergraduate studies, where he pursued a degree in physics from the outset. He describes the long term benefits of a degree that required significant coursework in the humanities, and how he came to focus on nuclear physics as a research focus. Casten describes his graduate work at Yale and his work with Allan Bromley, who at the time was working on lower energy accelerators. Casten explains the major research questions in nuclear physics at that time, and he describe his research in the Coulomb excitation in the osmium isotopes. He recounts his time at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, his work using the triton beam at Los Alamos, and his subsequent research on the tandem accelerator at Brookhaven. Casten explains the rise of interest in the interacting boson model, and he describes his decision to join the faculty at Yale where he directed the Wright Nuclear Structure Lab. He describes his research over the course of his tenure at Yale, and the import of the collaborations he has maintained with his colleagues in Cologne. At the end of the interview, Casten provides an overview of his key contributions, and he shares what is most compelling to him for the future of nuclear physics.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Hamish Robertson, Boeing Distinguished Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of Washington. Robertson recounts his childhood in Hamilton, Canada and his experiences as an undergraduate at Oxford University and his early interest in working at Los Alamos Lab. He describes his decision to pursue graduate work at McMaster University, which had just built the first nuclear reactor on a college campus in Canada, and his intent to focus on atomic beam physics. Robertson explains his post-doctoral research at Michigan State and his shift from nuclear structure physics to neutrino physics and his formative sabbatical year at Princeton and his tenure at Los Alamos, where he worked on neutrino mass. He describes his views on the standard model, and the recruitment process that led to his decision to join the faculty at UW, where he helped to create a laboratory to continue research on neutrinos. Robertson talks about the major influence of John Bahcall, and he describes the issues in physics research that remain compelling to him.

In this interview, Dr. Aaron Galonsky, Professor of Physics Emeritus, describes his early days working with the Midwestern Universities Research Association (MURA) and experimental nuclear physics. He describes the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) during the 1960s and gives details regarding the K-500 and K-1200 cyclotrons.

In this interview Robert Doering discusses topics such as: his family background and childhood; his undergraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Philip Morrison; Jack Rapaport; nuclear physics; doing his graduate work at Michigan State University; Sherwood Haynes; quantum mechanics taught by Mort Gordon; Aaron Galonsky; working at the cyclotron laboratory; George Bertsch; teaching at the University of Virginia; low-energy heavy-ion collisions; switching to industrial physics research; beginning work at Texas Instruments (TI); working with semiconductors; Don Redwine; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); George Heilmeier; Semiconductor Research Corporation; SEMATECH; Moore's Law; complementary metal oxide semiconductors (CMOS); Birch Bayh and Robert Dole; Morris Chang; research and development changes throughout his career.

Mack Breazeale has been an active member of the Acoustical Society of America and the IEEE almost his entire career. He was born August 15, 1930 in a mining community in Virginia. He later moved to a small town in Tennessee near the current Oak Ridge Laboratory. From there he attended undergraduate school at Berea College and received his Masters from the University of Missouri where he began his studies of ultrasound in liquids. He then studied with Professor Hiedemann at Michigan State. There he continued his studies of ultrasound in liquids. At Michigan State he studied with Bill Cooke and Walter Meyer who went on to recognition in acoustics. He then spent a year on a Fulbright Fellowship in Germany with Professor Kneser. Soon after his return he accepted a position at the University of Tennessee where he spent much of his career studying nonlinear properties of solids. During his time at the University of Tennessee, he directed theses and dissertations of about 50 graduate students. In 1988, he moved to the National Center for Physical Acoustics at the University of Mississippi where he has continued his studies of nonlinear properties of solids.