Anderson talks almost exclusively about his work during the thirties with particles of high energy involved in nuclear reactions. He covers in detail his discovery of the positive electron, his pair production work with gamma rays, his expedition to Pike’s Peak with Neddermeyer and their discovery of the mesotron. He mentions that it was in his speech accepting the Nobel Prize in 1936 that he first mentioned the possibility of negative and positive particles of intermediate mass. After noting the absence of any cosmic ray work during the war years, he mentions the postwar development of cosmic ray work into high energy physics.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Philip Anfinrud, Senior Biomedical Research Scientist, National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, at the National Institutes of Health. Anfinrud likens his work environment to the “Bell Labs of Biophysics” and he expresses his pride in working with colleagues conducting research at the cutting-edge of their respective fields. He recounts his upbringing in small town North Dakota and how he developed his early interests in atmospheric chemistry. Anfinrud describes the circumstances leading to his graduate work at Berkeley, and how he approached his interests in physics from a physical chemistry perspective. He describes his work with Walter Struve on energy transport and picosecond lasers, and he describes his postdoctoral research with Robin Hochstrasser at the University of Pennsylvania where he worked on infrared spectroscopy on the femtosecond time scale. Anfinrud discusses his first faculty appointment at Harvard, and he describes the process building a laser lab in partnership with Mitsubishi. Anfinrud explains his research on myoglobin and photolysis laser pulses, and he describes his first forays in X-ray radiation and crystallography. He describes his move to the NIH, where he created Laboratory of Ultrafast Biophysical Chemistry. Anfinrud explains the value of NMR spectroscopy to understand protein folding, and he describes how his interests are situated more in the realm of basic science and not clinically-oriented research. He discusses the value of scaling laws in physics as a means for understanding biochemical phenomena, and he describes the numerous ways that the NIH provides an ideal environment for research. At the end of the interview, Anfinrud provides an overview of his current research in time-resolved crystallography and single molecule behavior, and he describes the public health impact of his work on speech droplets as a means of transmitting the coronavirus.
Christopher Stubbs, professor of physics and Dean of Sciences within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, is interviewed by David Zierler. Stubbs recounts his life moving around as the son of a U.S. Foreign Service officer and the decisions that led his mother, as a single parent, to move to Iran where he attended high school. He explains the circumstances that led to his enrollment at the University of Virginia for college and his clear decision to focus on experimentation and the considerations that led to his graduate work at the University of Washington. Stubbs describes the excitement surrounding Ephraim Fischbach’s work on the Fifth Force, and working under the direction of Eric Adelberger on signal noise calculation for a torsion pendulum experiment. He conveys what it felt like to be at the center of research so fundamental that it was fair to ask, “was Einstein right?” Stubbs explains how a talk by Michael Turner motivated him to pursue dark matter research as a postdoc at the Center for Particle Astrophysics at Berkeley, where he pursued research in optical wavelength observational astronomy. He describes his first faculty appointment at UC Santa Barbara where he worked on the MACHO project, and the financial constraints that led to his decision to accept a tenured offer back at the University of Washington. Stubbs discusses his research on supernova cosmology projects and his happiness at being in Seattle, and he explains the pull that led him to accept a faculty offer at Harvard. He describes his work as department chair, he deflates the myth of the bottomless money well that is Harvard’s endowment, and he describes his shortcomings as chair in promoting diversity in the department while emphasizing the importance of this work in his capacity as Dean. Stubbs describes the circumstances that led to him becoming Dean, and he surveys some of the key challenges he has encountered in this role. He explains how he has been able to maintain a research agenda, and he reflects on his accomplishments as an undergraduate teacher and graduate mentor. At the end of the interview, in surmising his post-Dean life as a full time physics professor, Stubbs points to the need for a more complete intellectual framework of physics that is based on astronomical data as a broad-scale method to pursue the kind of research he hopes to accomplish.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews George Wallerstein, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington. Wallerstein recounts his childhood in Manhattan and he describes how the atomic attacks on Japan fostered his interest in science as a teenager. He discusses his undergraduate experience at Brown University where he pursued his interests in astronomy and in some of the philosophical underpinnings of physics. Wallerstein describes his graduate work at Caltech, at a time when the Astronomy department was only five years old, and where he focused on the origins of elements in star formation and the spectra of type II Cepheids. Wallerstein discusses his postdoctoral research at Berkeley and subsequent promotion to the faculty there, and he explains the advances made possible with the advent of digital detectors in the mid-1980s which replaced photographic analysis of high-dispersion spectra. He describes the opportunity leading to his tenure at the University of Washington, and he explains the significance of his work on G dwarf stars and the utility of the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate interstellar lines in supernova remnants. At the end of the interview, Wallerstein surveys some of the key advances to which he has contributed over the course of his career, including infrared astronomy and star positioning.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian, interviews Paul Grannis, emeritus professor of physics at Stony Brook University. He recounts his childhood in Ohio and describes his early interests and talents in math and science. He explains his decision to attend Cornell University and his reasons to focus on engineering physics while also developing an interest in theory. Grannis describes his graduate work at Berkeley, where he joined the Chamberlain group, which had focused on aligning the proton spin with the magnetic field by transferring the electron polarization to the proton polarization. He reflects on the differing approaches in particle physics as represented by East and West coast institutions. Grannis discusses his research work on the Cyclotron and Bevatron, and he describes his dissertation research on Regge poles and measuring the polarization of lanthanum nitrate crystals. He discusses his postdoctoral research at the Berkeley Radiation Lab, and he explains his decision to join the faculty at Stony Brook, which struck him as an exciting and up-and-coming place to pursue a career. Grannis describes the additional attraction of being in close proximity to Brookhaven Lab, and how he contributed to the overall broadening and improvement of the physics department. He explains his involvement in the ISABELLE project, and he describes the origins of the D0 endeavor and the feeling of excitement at Fermilab during that time. Grannis provides perspective on some of the inherent challenges in the SSC planning project and the existential challenges Fermilab faced as a result of focusing so exclusively on the Tevatron project. He describes the current state of high-energy physics and Europe’s leadership in this field, and some of the hypothetical advancements that could be made with the ILC endeavor. At the end of the interview, Grannis discusses his current work as co-spokesman of D0, his ongoing planning work on the ILC, he muses about what science projects he would fund if he had discretion on where to deploy 10 billion dollars, and he shares what he sees as some of the most exciting short and long term prospects in the field.
In this interview, Paul Hansma, research professor in the department of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara describes his childhood growing up in multiple places due to his father’s academic work at numerous colleges and his early interests as a tinkerer. Hansma recounts his experience at New College and the unique curriculum offered there, and he discusses his graduate work at Berkeley, where he worked with John Clarke and where he conducted research on electron tunneling. He explains the circumstances leading to his appointment of UC Santa Barbara where he initiated electron tunneling spectroscopy, and built pioneering microscropes. Hansma discusses his work on the atomic structure of bones and studying bone deterioration. At the end of the interview, Hansma discusses his research work in the neuroscience of chronic pain.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Bernard Brooks, Chief of the Computational Biophysics Section in the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Brooks describes the long scientific tradition in his family and he recounts his childhood in Massachusetts, where he displayed aptitude for the sciences at an early age. He describes his undergraduate education at MIT where he focused on chemistry from a computational perspective. Brooks discusses his graduate work at Berkeley where he worked with Fritz Schaefer on the configuration interaction code in quantum chemistry. He describes his postdoctoral research at Harvard with Martin Karplus, where he helped to develop the CHARMM project to study protein simulations. Brooks describes the circumstances leading to his work at the NIH, and he describes his ongoing work on CHARMM over the years. He explains the development of computational biophysics over the past thirty years and the numerous ways this work is relevant across the institutes at the NIH. At the end of the interview, Brooks assesses the impact of the rise of computation power over the course of his career and he forecasts how his work will contribute to ongoing improvements in physics models.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Edmund Bertschinger, professor of physics at MIT. Bertschinger recounts his childhood in California and he describes how his natural curiosities developed into academic talents in math and science. He describes his undergraduate work at Caltech where he became interested in radio astronomy. Bertschinger describes his decision to pursue a Ph.D. under the direction of Arno Penzias at Princeton, and he explains the formative influence of Steve Weinberg’s book The First Three Minutes. He describes how he came to work with Jerry Ostriker on galaxy formation. Bertschinger describes some of the administrative decisions that defined where cosmology and astrophysics were studied at Princeton. He explains how he developed his interest in social issues including nuclear disarmament, and why he initially pursued a career at the State Department. Bertschinger discusses his postdoctoral work at the University of Virginia with Roger Chevalier and his next postdoctoral position at Berkeley where he worked with Chris McKee. He explains the importance of charge-coupled device detectors as a key technology advance for astronomy, and he describes the circumstances leading to his decision to join the faculty at MIT. Bertschinger recounts how his social interests had became increasingly focused on gender issues and how, in his view, the toxic masculinity that pervaded cosmology pushed him further and further from the field. He describes his ongoing interest in nuclear and social issues, and at the end of the interview, Bertschinger explains that he has been fortunate to have been able to shift his current research interests while remaining within the physics department.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews John Schwarz, Harold Brown Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at Caltech. He describes his family background as a childhood of European emigres, both of whom were scientists, and who escaped Nazi persecution at the beginning of World War II. Schwarz recounts his childhood in Rochester and then on Long Island, and he describes his undergraduate experience at Harvard, where he studied mathematics. Schwarz explains how his interests in the “real world” drew him to physics, which he pursued in graduate school at Berkeley and where he worked with Geoffrey Chew on pursuing a theory of the strong nuclear force. He explains Chew’s conclusion that quantum field theory was not relevant toward developing a theory on the strong nuclear force, and he proposed, alternatively, the S-matrix, which in turn was overtaken by the Yang-Mills gauge theory known as quantum chromodynamics. Schwarz explains how Veneziano’s Eular beta function grew out of the S-matrix program, which extended into a new theory called the dual resonance model, which came to be known as string theory because the model was understood as a kind of quantum theory of one-dimensional objects called strings. Schwarz recounts his contributions to these developments during his time at Princeton, where he collaborated with David Gross, André Neveu, and Joël Scherk. He discusses the significance of Claud Lovelace’s work at CERN, where he found that singularities could be made into poles, and he explains how the second string theory came about in 1971 which required ten spacetime dimensions. Schwarz explains why string theory was not part of the work Glashow and Georgi were doing to unify the three forces of electromagnetism, weak interactions, and strong interactions within a larger gauge symmetry. He describes Feynman’s reluctance in accepting QCD but why, in the end, it proved to be the superior way to explain the strong nuclear force. Schwarz describes his decision to join the faculty of Caltech with the encouragement of Gell-Mann, and he explains the ongoing value of string theory even with QCD firmly established, because it gives gauge theory interactions. He recounts the “second revolution” of string theory in 1984 and his work with Michael Green, and he describes the initial optimism that supersymmetry would be discovered with the advent of the LHC. Schwartz describes Ed Witten’s rising stature in the field, and he shares his views on why thousands of people remain captivated by string theory today. He provides a response to the common criticism that string theory is untestable, and he explains the significance of Juan Maldacena’s discovery of the connection between string theory and conformally invariant field theories. At the end of the interview, Schwarz reviews what among the original questions in string theory he feels have been answered, and which remain subjects of inquiry, including his interest in new approaches to quantum gravity.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Charles Zemach, retired from the staff of the Hydrodynamics Group (T3), Theoretical Physics Division at Los Alamos. Zemach recounts his childhood in Manhattan as the son of Jewish immigrants and his experience at Stuyvesant High School. He describes his undergraduate work at Harvard and the influence he felt from Julian Schwinger and George Mackey, and he explains his decision to remain at Harvard for his Ph.D., which he earned under the direction of Roy Glauber. He describes some of the major questions in theoretical particle physics in the early 1950s and the excitement surrounding quantum electrodynamics, and he explains his research on neutron scattering, which grew out of Fermi’s work on simple delta-function interactions twenty years earlier. Zemach discusses his postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania, and then at Berkeley, where he describes the relevance of his research on the bootstrap theory that Geoffrey Chew was developing. He describes the series of events leading to his work for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) in Washington, which Sid Drell encouraged him to pursue because it would allow him to participate in some of the great challenges in nuclear arms control during the Nixon administration. He explains how the ACDA was set up to solidify Kissinger’s control of nuclear policy, and he describes his role in the SALT I and SALT II negotiations. Zemach discusses his subsequent work at Los Alamos, where Harold Agnew recruited him to become leader of the Theoretical Division and where he focused on fluid dynamics as it related to nuclear bomb design. At the end of the interview, Zemach discusses some of his activities in physics since his retirement in 1993, including his ongoing interest in fluid dynamics and his work on river rights in the Santa Fe area.
