Princeton University

Michael MacCracken discusses topics such as: his family background and childhood; climatology; undergraduate work at Princeton University in engineering; being interviewed by Edward Teller for a fellowship; University of California, Davis; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Michael May; Chuck Leith; geophysics; Project Plowshare; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center; Climate Impact Assessment Program (CIAP); United States Department of Energy; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); climate change; George Hidy; Peter Mueller; Fred Koomanoff; National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Bob Watson of NASA; Dan Albritton of NOAA; Chuck Hakkarinen; United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP); Jerry Melillo; Climate Institute. 

This interview was conducted as part of the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics project, which includes tapes and transcripts of oral history interviews conducted with circa 100 atomic and quantum physicists. Subjects discuss their family backgrounds, how they became interested in physics, their educations, people who influenced them, their careers including social influences on the conditions of research, and the state of atomic, nuclear, and quantum physics during the period in which they worked. Discussions of scientific matters relate to work that was done between approximately 1900 and 1930, with an emphasis on the discovery and interpretations of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. Also prominently mentioned are: Edwin Plimpton Adams, Karl Compton, Harris Hancock, James Jeans, Owen Willans Richardson, Dean West; University of Pennsylvania, and Princeton University.

Discusses his work at Princeton as a student of John Wheeler in 1961-1965. Interactions with Wheeler at the University of Texas, Austin. Wheeler's role in the department as a teacher. His leadership in departmental affairs as in research. His books on relativity. Comment on Janette Wheeler.

Discusses his family background and education; World War I experiences; J. J. Thomson; return to Princeton as a graduate student in physics; research at Cambridge/Rutherford; Toronto, spectroscopy, and McClennan; collaboration with Russell; team of Russell, Turner, & Shenstone; laboratory astrophysics; spectra of highly ionized elements; publications; Charlotte Moore Sitterly; World War II years in Ottawa; Manhattan Project; radar research; Radiation Laboratory at MIT; retirement from Princeton; his debt to Russell.

Interview covers Charles Misner's family background and childhood interest in science; influential chemistry teacher in high school; education at Notre Dame and mentorship with Arnold Ross; early interest in mathematics; encouragement of parents to go into science or to become a priest; graduate education at Princeton; work with John Wheeler on relativity and topology; introduction to cosmology by Jim Peebles in 1965; attitude toward the steady state model; Wheeler's preference for a closed universe; history of the flatness problem (the "Dicke paradox"); initial attitude toward the flatness problem; motivation for looking for mechanisms to isotropize the universe; the mixmaster model; history of the horizon problem; Misner's attempt to change the goals of cosmology from describing the universe to explaining it; Russian work on mixmaster type models; reaction of the community to the mixmaster model; change in Misner's view of the flatness problem after the inflationary universe model; attitude toward missing matter; problem of reconciling theory and observations with a flat universe; Misner's attitude toward the inflationary universe model; attitude of the community toward the inflationary universe model; attitude toward recent observations of large-scale structure; nature of the inhomogeneity of the universe; importance of Freeman Dyson's discussion of the fate of an open universe over very long time scales; role of visual pictures in science; relationship of theory and observation in cosmology; outstanding problems in cosmology; inflation, particle physics, quantum cosmology; ideal design of the universe; philosophy, science, and religion; necessity of the laws of physics; question of whether the universe has a point.

Interview examines early life in Pennsylvannia; family background; schooling; college years at Swarthmore, 1916-1920; choice of major subjects; contact with J. A. Miller and choice of mathematics curriculum; move to Princeton and work with Henry Norris Russell; arrival at Princeton, 1920; recollections of Russell family; research on the position of the Moon and eclipsing binaries; work at Mount Wilson on the solar spectrum, 1925-1928; the origins of the Multiplet Table; return to Princeton; the organization of the Princeton Astronomy Department; Ph.D. thesis under A. O. Leuschner at University of California, Berkeley; early work on the solar spectrum, influence of A. Unsöld; line intensity work; collaboration with physicists; Russell's mode of research; work with William F. Meggers; molecular spectra; atomic spectra during World War II; move to National Bureau of Standards after World War II; Russell and R. Dugan; J. Q. Stewart; recollections of Russell and Princeton years; organization of work at NBS.

Scientific background in solid state physics; early work in group theory; work in solid state with Frederick Seitz. His contemporaries; John Bardeen. Stored energy problem; war work on the nuclear reactor. Teaching career. Also prominently mentioned are: Felix Bloch, David Bohm, Milton Burton, Leon Cooper, Karl Kelchner Darrow, James Franck, Werner Heisenberg, Conyers Herring, John Robert Schrieffer, Erwin Schrödinger, I. Schur, John Clarke Slater, Roman Smoluchowski, Leo Szilard, Weissenberg; Argonne National Laboratory, Physical Review, Princeton University, and University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory.

Arrival in the U.S. in 1930; comparison of social, scientific, general intellectual climates in U.S and Europe; early interest in nuclear physics, relationship with graduate students; beta decay, compound nucleus model, Breit-Wigner formula, early shell model; review articles by Bethe; relation of early meson theory to nuclear physics; nuclear forces; charge independence; journal literature of physics ca. 1937; effectiveness of group-theoretic models in nuclear physics; effectiveness of quantum mechanics for nuclear physics; significant early experimental discoveries in nuclear physics: neutron, deutron, artificial radioactivity; fission, shell model of Mayer and Jensen; rotational levels in nuclei; the specialization of physics; effect of World War II on nuclear physics research; work at Chicago; conferences after the war; branching off of high-energy physics from nuclear physics; work personally regarded as interesting.

This interview was conducted as part of the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics project, which includes tapes ard transcricts of oral history interviews conducted with ca. 100 atomic and quantusl physicists. Subjects discuss their family backgrounds, how they became interested in physics, their educations, people who influenced them, their careers including social influences on the conditions of research, and the state of atomic, nuclear, arid quantum physics during the period in which they worked. Discussions of scientific matters relate to work that was done between approximately 1900 and 1930, with an emphasis on the discovery and interpretations of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. Also prominently mentioned are: Richard Becker, Niels Henrik David Bohr, Max Born, Gregory Breit, Richard Courarit, Paul Adren Maurice Dirac, Freeman Dyson, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Ferdinand Georg Frobenius, Werner Heisenberg, Walter Heitler, David Hubert, Friedrich Hund, Ernst Pascual Jordan, Max Theodor Felix von Laue, Fritz London, Herman Francis Mark, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli, Michael Polanyi, Ratz, Riemer, Erwin Schroedinger, G. Schur, Leo Szilard, John Neumann, Victor Frederick Weisskopf, Hermann Weyl, Wigner (Eugene’s father), Enos E. Witmer; Berlin Technische Hochschule, Princeton University, and Universitaet Goettingen.

This interview was conducted as part of the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics project, which includes tapes ard transcricts of oral history interviews conducted with ca. 100 atomic and quantusl physicists. Subjects discuss their family backgrounds, how they became interested in physics, their educations, people who influenced them, their careers including social influences on the conditions of research, and the state of atomic, nuclear, arid quantum physics during the period in which they worked. Discussions of scientific matters relate to work that was done between approximately 1900 and 1930, with an emphasis on the discovery and interpretations of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. Also prominently mentioned are: Richard Becker, Niels Henrik David Bohr, Max Born, Gregory Breit, Richard Courarit, Paul Adren Maurice Dirac, Freeman Dyson, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Ferdinand Georg Frobenius, Werner Heisenberg, Walter Heitler, David Hubert, Friedrich Hund, Ernst Pascual Jordan, Max Theodor Felix von Laue, Fritz London, Herman Francis Mark, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli, Michael Polanyi, Ratz, Riemer, Erwin Schroedinger, G. Schur, Leo Szilard, John Neumann, Victor Frederick Weisskopf, Hermann Weyl, Wigner (Eugene’s father), Enos E. Witmer; Berlin Technische Hochschule, Princeton University, and Universitaet Goettingen.