Stanford University

Interview with Paul Emma, retired and formerly Senior Staff Scientist at SLAC. Emma recounts his childhood in Illinois, and he describes his undergraduate work at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He explains why he left WWU early to accept an opportunity for graduate work at Caltech briefly before accepting a job at Fermilab where he worked in operations on the Main Ring and the Tevatron project. He describes the series of events leading to his work at SLAC, where he worked in operations and design on the LCLS, the SLC, and the NLC. Emma describes his work for the superconducting undulator for Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, and at the end of the interview he discusses his ongoing work on LCLS-II.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Steven Block, W. Ascherman Professor of Sciences, Stanford University. Block describes his German-Jewish heritage on his mother’s side, and his father’s Eastern European Jewish heritage. He describes growing up the son of a physicist and the importance of skiing and music in his family and spending his early childhood in Italy while his father was a visiting scholar. Block describes the rest of his childhood in North Carolina, and then Illinois, where his father worked for Duke and Northwestern, respectively. He explains his unique interests in Chinese and oceanography and why this led him to the University of Washington in Seattle, and he describes his subsequent pursuit of physics and ultimately biophysics at Oxford University. Block discusses the formative relationship he built with Max Delbruck at Cold Spring Harbor Labs where he worked on phycomyces, and he explains his decision to go to Caltech for graduate school to work with Howard Berg. He describes his postgraduate interests in sensory transduction in e. coli as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, and he provides a history on the discovery of kinesin and why this was key for his research. Block explains his decision to join the Rowland Institute and he discusses its unique history and the freedom it allowed its researchers, and he describes the opportunity that allowed him to secure tenure at Princeton. He describes some of the difficulties in convincing his colleagues to consider biophysics as “real” physics and the considerations that led to him joining the faculty at Stanford. Block describes the difficulties he has experienced when his laboratory site was displaced, and how, in dark way, he was prepared for the pandemic lockdown before most of his colleagues. At the end of the interview, Block reflects on his contributions, he explains the central importance of statistical mechanics to biophysics, he explains how he has tried to emulate his mentors in the care and interest he has shown his own students, and he prognosticates on the future of single molecule biophysics.

Interview with Peter Lepage, Tisch Family Distinguished University Professor of Physics at Cornell. He recounts his childhood in Montreal and his decision to pursue an undergraduate degree in physics at McGill. Lepage discusses his Master’s work at Cambridge University and his decision to do his thesis research in particle physics at Stanford. He describes the fundamental advances happening at SLAC during his graduate years and his work on bound states of electrons and muons under the direction of Stanley Brodsky. Lepage discusses his postdoctoral appointment at Cornell and his work in high-precision QED calculations in atoms, and he describes the foundational impact of Ken Wilson’s work on lattice QCD and the intellectual revolution of renormalization. He describes this period as his entrée into QCD research, and he emphasizes the beauty of Ithaca and the supportive culture of the Physics Department as his main reasons to accept a faculty position at Cornell. Lepage explains how and when computers became central to Lattice QCD research and why effective field theory was an area of specialization that was broadly useful in other subfields. He describes the ongoing stubbornness of the Standard Model, and he discusses his tenure as chair of the department, then as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and his work on PCAST in the Obama administration. Lepage explains his longstanding interest in physics pedagogy, and he discusses his current work on the numerical integration program called VEGAS. In the last part of the interview, Lepage emphasizes that the most fundamental advances in physics are in astrophysics and cosmology and that lattice QCD should be “kept alive” because it’s unclear where it is going until physics goes beyond the Standard Model.

Interview with Wick Haxton, professor of physics at UC Berkeley. Haxton recounts his childhood in Santa Cruz and his early interests in math and science. He describes his undergraduate education at the newly created UC Santa Cruz where his initial interest was in mathematics before he was given the advice that he did “mathematics like a physicist.” Haxton discusses his graduate work at Stanford where his original intent was to study general relativity before he connected with Dirk Walecka and Bill Donnelly to focus on nuclear theory and dense nuclear matter. He discusses his postdoctoral research at the University of Mainz where he concentrated on photo-pion physics during the early days of chiral perturbation theory, and he explains the opportunities that led to his next appointment at the LAMPF facility at Los Alamos. Haxton emphasizes the excellence of both his colleagues and the computational capacity at the Lab, and he describes his faculty appointment at Purdue and the solar neutrino experiment he contributed to in Colorado. He explains the opportunities that led to him joining the faculty at the University of Washington where the DOE was about to fund the Institute for Nuclear Theory. Haxton explains the “breakup” between nuclear theory and particle theory and how the INT addressed that. Haxton discusses the opportunities afforded at the INT to engage in nuclear astrophysics and he explains the rise and fall of the Homestake DUSEL project. He explains his decision to go emeritus at UW and to join the faculty at UC Berkeley and to be dual hatted at the Berkeley Lab, and he describes his tenure as department chair. At the end of the interview, Haxton describes his current work organizing the new Physics Frontier Center and the challenges presented by the pandemic, and he credits his formative time as Los Alamos for the diverse research agenda he has pursued throughout his career.

Interview with Andrei Linde, Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford. This discussion continues from the interview with Linde conducted by Alan Lightman in October 1987. He provides a detailed history on his improvement of Alan Guth’s work on inflation, which Linde dubbed “new inflation” and subsequently “chaotic inflation.” Linde describes the impact of Perestroika on Soviet scientists, and the pressures he felt in preparing for a series of talks in Italy, which contributed to his development of “eternal inflation.” He discusses his formative early communication with American physicists including Lenny Susskind and Norman Coleman, he describes his two-year visit at CERN as the Cold War was winding down, and he explains his decision to accept a faculty appointment at Stanford. Linde describes the alternating feelings of hope and despair in the 1980s regarding the possibility that inflation could be observationally verified. He explains the intellectual origins of self-generating fractals that sprout other inflationary universes and the value of compactification theory, and he explains the cultural relevance of his Russian heritage which compels him to value theoretical notions and not treat them in a throwaway manner that capitalism can encourage. Linde explains how and why multiverses can be testable and he reflects on the obvious philosophical or even spiritual implications of this proposition. He discusses the impact of the discovery of the accelerating universe and dark energy and how WMAP strained the theoretical viability of inflation. Linde explains why many string theorists have moved into investigating theories of quantum information, and at the end of the interview, he reflects on the value of competing theories to inflation and why, ultimately, he wants to see a major convergence of theories so that the origins of the universe are well understood. 

Interview with William Herrmannsfeldt, Staff Physicist at SLAC. Herrmannsfeldt recounts his German heritage, his upbringing in Ohio, and his early interests in physics which he pursued as an undergraduate at Miami University. He discusses his graduate work on beta decay and nuclear physics at the University of Illinois, under the direction of James Allen, and he describes his postdoctoral appointment at Los Alamos where he made detectors for bomb tests. Herrmannsfeldt explains the connection between his work at Los Alamos on electron optics and his initial research at SLAC, and he describes his work on linear accelerators. He describes his tenure as Secretary of the Advanced Development Group and his role at the AEC to concentrate on accelerator physics for Fermilab. Herrmannsfeldt explains the decision to move ahead with the PEP project and his LINAC work at Berkeley. Herrmannsfeldt explains the relevance of this research to nuclear fusion, and he describes some of the technical challenges in building the superconducting RF system. At the end of the interview, Herrmannsfeldt conveys the sense of fun he felt in learning new technological systems, the inherent challenges of beam dynamics, and he reflects on how SLAC has changed since its inception. 

Interview with Piero Pianetta, Research Professor in the Photon Science Department, joint with Electrical Engineering, at Stanford. He recounts his family’s Italian heritage, and his upbringing in Italy and then in California. He explains his interest in pursuing physics as an undergraduate at Santa Clara University, and his graduate work at Stanford where he worked on monochromator experiments and contributed to the SPEAR collaboration at SLAC. Pianetta discusses his scientific interests converging on surface science and the influence of Seb Doniach on his research. He describes his postgraduate work at HP where he focused on laser annealing and subsequently SSRL to conduct research on device technology and photoemission techniques. Pianetta explains how SSRL became integrated in SLAC and how he became administratively housed in the Photon Science department, and how this development is illustrative of the way SLAC has diversified its research and redefined its relationship with the Department of Energy. He describes his most recent responsibilities as chair of the photon science group at SLAC and his current work chairing the laboratory promotions committee. At the end of the interview, Pianetta reflects on the long-term impact of remote work for SLAC generally and he conveys optimism on improving SSRL’s long-term capabilities.

Interview with Charles Prescott, Professor Emeritus at SLAC. Prescott discusses his activities in physics since retiring in 2006, and he conveys his interest in the muon anomaly results from the g-2 experiment at Fermilab in light of his longstanding work in spin physics. He offers a wide perspective on the creation of the Standard Model and when the field began to search for new physics beyond it, and he recounts his childhood in Oklahoma. Prescott discusses his undergraduate education at Rice and his interests in physics, and he describes the opportunities that led to his graduate admission to Caltech, where Bob Walker advised his thesis research on the eta meson. Prescott conveys the importance of Steve Weinberg’s work on particle theory in the late 1960s, and he describes the circumstances that led him to SLAC after a brief appointment at UC Santa Cruz. He describes joining Group A, which was led by Dick Taylor, and how he organized the first parity violation experiment. He discusses the E95 and E122 experiments, and he describes early advances in understanding the nucleon sub-structure. Prescott explains his proposal to add polarized beams to the SLC and a new drift chamber for the SLD, and he discusses the origins of the DELCO collaboration. He describes his tenure as leader of Group A and then as Associate Director of the Research Division, and as chair of the International Spin Physics symposium. Prescott discusses his work on SLAC’s Enriched Xenon Observatory, and he prognosticates the poor political and budgetary prospects of future linear accelerators. At the end of the interview, Prescott reflects on receiving the Panofsky Prize, and he segments SLAC into its constituent historical eras as defined by the dominant experiments over the decades.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Carl Wieman, professor of physics and DRC endowed chair in the Department of Engineering at Stanford University. Wieman describes the circumstances leading to this unique appointment and the various responsibilities this service entails. He describes his childhood in a densely wooded area near Corvallis, Oregon, and he conveys the opportunities leading to his undergraduate studies at MIT, where he pursued a major in physics and was mentored by Dan Kleppner in lasers and atomic physics. Wieman explains his decision to attend Stanford for graduate school and he discusses his thesis research on advancing techniques in the spectroscopy of hydrogen. He describes his postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan to work on a parity violation experiment, and he explains the circumstances of his move to the University of Colorado and the attraction of joining the faculty at JILA. Wieman discusses his work on Bose-Einstein condensation and his collaboration with Eric Cornell which led to their recognition with the Nobel Prize. He explains his post-Nobel focus on education research, and he discusses why this field has remained central to his work since 2001. Wieman describes his motivation to join the University of British Columbia faculty, where he found adequate funding support to pursue education research which required his conscious decision to stop doing physics experiments. He describes his policy advising work in OSTP for the Obama administration, and he explains his move to Stanford for which he retained his exclusive interest in education but where he started on new projects including federal support for science education. At the end of the interview, Wieman explains why the future of humanity hinges on advancing science education, and relatedly, why scientists need to conceive of their work beyond the immediacy of their specific research.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Nathalie de Leon, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton. de Leon describes being an “interloper in EE” because her degree is in chemical physics, and she surveys her research agenda and how it fits across a range of departments at Princeton. She describes her Filipino heritage and her upbringing in the Philippines and in California, and discusses her scientific interests and her admission to Stanford for her undergraduate study. de Leon describes her interests in laser spectroscopy and she compares the difficulties as a student woman of color in STEM against those as a faculty woman of color in STEM. She describes her graduate research at Harvard to work with Hongkun Park on a variety of projects, including nanowire devices, photoelectrochemistry, and plasmonics. de Leon discusses many exciting developments in NV centers, and she explains her decision to remain at Harvard for her postdoctoral research to do QED experiments with atoms. de Leon describes the opportunities that led to her faculty appointment at Princeton, and the process of getting her lab operational. She discusses advances in superconducting qubits and she describes the value of applying metrics to make STEM more inclusive. At the end of the interview, de Leon explains why her curiosity about applying material science to quantum technology permeates all her research, and she expresses optimism for the future, but unknown, possibilities of quantum computing.