Narrative account of discovery of the visible red HeNe laser in the Bell Laboratories Exploratory Development Group under Signal Corps contract, contributions of coworkers and supervisors, White's work on the arc lamp for cw pumping, collaboration with Dane Rigden (1962), knowledge of Javan-Bennett-Herriott infrared laser work and work of Spectra-Physics group, equipment and funding, atmosphere in the laboratory following the discovery.
Developments of the technique of separated oscillating fields and the atomic clock. Move to Harvard University from Columbia University and Brookhaven National Laboratory; work at Harvard concentrating on the first molecular beam magnetic resonance apparatus, doctoral thesis of Harwood Kolsky; Jerrold Zacharias and the cesium beam clock; Brookhaven Molecular Beam Conferences (beginning 1947), significant developments in resonance. Also prominently mentioned are: P. I. Dee, Harwood Kolsky, Polykarp Kusch, William Aaron Nierenberg, Pendulchron, Ken Smith, John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, Robert F. Vessot, Earl Wilkie; Brookhaven National Laboratory Molecular Beam Conferences, Fort Monmouth, Frequency Control Symposium, National Science Foundation (U.S.), United States Army Signal Corps, United States National Bureau of Standards, United States Office of Naval Research, and University of California at Berkeley.
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.
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.
Youth and family life in Turkish Armenia prior to turn of century; time at Yale Sheffield Scientific School and early research interests; World War I work for U.S. Signal Corp; teaching experience and associates at Sheffield School; his book on mechanics; experience at Cavendish Laboratory, 1914; impressions of Joseph J. Thomson, reaction to Niels Bohr's atomic theory. Trinity College in Hartford, state of physics department; his preoccupation with wartime plight of Armenians. Comments on philosophy of science, reaction at Yale University to the theory of relativity, hazards of x-rays, concepts of centrifugal force, indeterminacy and complementarity. Also prominently mentioned is Leigh Page.
Born in Russia 1921, moved to New York 1922; Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute (physics); Purdue University (Ph.D.), 1942- 1949; works teaching military students, 1943-1945; cyclotron and beta ray spectroscopy projects (related to Manhattan Project); Karl Lark-Horovitz as blanket-adviser; semiconductor project with Ron Smith; spreading resistance measurements; Edward Teller, John Bardeen, William Shockley; the self-transistor effect (Bell Laboratories); third electrode work by Seymour Benzer, 1949; semiconductor project; comments on Lark-Horovitz. Also prominently mentioned are: Joseph A. Becker, Walter Houser Brattain, Bill Fan, Arthur Ginsburg, Vivian Annabelle Johnson, Bernard Kurrelmeyer, Robert Green Sachs, Isidor Walerstein, Hubert J. Yearian; American Physical Society, Brooklyn College, Manhattan Project, and United States Army Signal Corps. Interview conducted as part of the International Project in the History of Solid State Physics.
