Optical Society

Early family life and early education in Toronto during the Depression. Interest in radio engineering; math-physics scholarship to University of Toronto 1937. During World War II (from 1941) teaching Army, Air Force, Navy students in basic physics. Masters degree with Arnold Pitt during that period. Work with G. Byers on microwave guide antennas. Poor graduate education at Toronto. Interest in nuclear physics; constructs atomic beam light source; 'his definition of a diatomic molecule. Receives Carbide and Carbon Chemicals Corporation post-doc fellowship (Rabi); work with C. Townes at Columbia University on application of microwave spectroscopy to organic chemistry; comments on faculty and co-workers at Columbia. To Bell Labs to work on superconductivity in Stan Morgan's group in early 1950's. Work with Lewis and Matthias on the intermediate state nuclear quadrupole resonance. The Clad Rob Laser; work atmosphere at Bell Labs; decision to leave Bell for Stanford. Works with graduate students; Emmett, Holzrichter on flashlamps; solid state spectroscopy. Role in Optical Society of America and American Physical Society.

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.