University of Cambridge

After surveying Martin Harwit's family background and early education, the interview concentrates on: his graduate education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; his career in physics at Cambridge Unviersity as a NATO Fellow; his time at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) as a National Science Foundation Fellow; and, principally, his work at Cornell as assistant and associate professor of astronomoy, professor, and chairman of the Physics department.  While discussing his childhood and education, Harwit addresses the antisemitism he and his family faced in German and in the United States.  This interview covers a broad range of his scientific interest: galaxy and star formations; comets; infrared optics, especially relating to detector technology; infrared astronomy; rocketry; history of philosophy in science; use of balloons in observation; and astronomy education.  Some affliliations discussed include:  John Decker, Herbert Friedman, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle.

After surveying Martin Harwit's family background and early education, the interview concentrates on: his graduate education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; his career in physics at Cambridge Unviersity as a NATO Fellow; his time at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) as a National Science Foundation Fellow; and, principally, his work at Cornell as assistant and associate professor of astronomoy, professor, and chairman of the Physics department.  While discussing his childhood and education, Harwit addresses the antisemitism he and his family faced in German and in the United States.  This interview covers a broad range of his scientific interest: galaxy and star formations; comets; infrared optics, especially relating to detector technology; infrared astronomy; rocketry; history of philosophy in science; use of balloons in observation; and astronomy education.  Some affliliations discussed include:  John Decker, Herbert Friedman, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle.

Gamow's involvement with nuclear physics. His later work in astrophysics and his interest in biology. Personal anecdotes about Gamow's childhood in Odessa, student life with Lev Landau and Dmitriy Ivanenko at the University of Leningrad, his fellowship at Göttingen, work in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr, and at University of Cambridge with Ernest Rutherford. Emigration to America in 1934, subsequent work in the United States. Work on penetration barriers, saturation, the beta decay rule, and the nuclear droplet model. Also prominently mentioned are: Hans Albrecht Bethe, Hermann Bondi, Walter Bothe, Maurice de Broglie, James Chadwick, John Cockcroft, Edward Uhler Condon, Francis Crick, Critchfield, Marie Sklodowska Curie, Max Delbrück, Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, Paul Ehrenfest, Enrico Fermi, James Franck, Alexander Friedman, Barbara Gamow, Thomas Gold, Ronald Gurney, Fred Hoyle, Petr Kapitsa, Krutkow, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Nikolaivitch Luchnik, Chester Nimitz, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli, Léon Rosenfeld, Dimitri Rozhdestwenski, Martin Schwarzschild, Edward Teller, Merle Antony Tuve, James Watson, John Archibald Wheeler, A. M. Wood; Associacion Venezueliana para Promocion de la Sciencia, University of Cambridge Press, Carlsbergfondet Fellowship, George Washington University, Institut de Physique Solvay, Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi universitet imeni A. A. Zhdanova, Moscow M. V. Lomonosov State University, National Academy of Sciences (U.S.), and Odessa I. I. Mechnikov State University.

Post-war career at Caltech, federal funding for research, relationships among Caltech, Jet Propulsion Lab and Office of Naval Research. Work through 1950 in nuclear physics, astrophysics, element synthesis in stars, influence of Bethe, Greenstein; Bowen/Lauritsen seminars, astronomical observations. Fellowship to Cambridge (1954-55), beginning of collaboration with Hoyle and Burbidges; return to Caltech, further work on stellar element synthesis with Burbidges, personalities of G. Burbidge and Hoyle; contemporary views on cosmology.

Post-war career at Caltech, federal funding for research, relationships among Caltech, Jet Propulsion Lab and Office of Naval Research. Work through 1950 in nuclear physics, astrophysics, element synthesis in stars, influence of Bethe, Greenstein; Bowen/Lauritsen seminars, astronomical observations. Fellowship to Cambridge (1954-55), beginning of collaboration with Hoyle and Burbidges; return to Caltech, further work on stellar element synthesis with Burbidges, personalities of G. Burbidge and Hoyle; contemporary views on cosmology.

Born 1910 Rhode Island. Engineering interest at an early age; Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduate, aeronautical engineering; graduate studies in physics (John Slater, Philip Morse); assistant to Stark Draper, 1932-1934; fellowship at University of Cambridge (Professor Ralph H. Fowler); internal conversion of x-rays (with Geoffrey I. Taylor, 1934); MIT Ph.D. (P. Morse) scattering of slower electrons; William Shockley; junior fellow at Harvard University, 1936-1938; work with Ivan Getting on an electrostatic generator; Harvard Society of Fellows; Bell Laboratories, 1939 (Shockley-Fisk fission work); war work mostly electronics; interaction with industrial research and with universities, 1946 reorganization of physics department forming a solid state physics group; team representing various disciplines to study fundamentals of solid state (Fisk associate director); Director of Research, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1947; professor at Harvard, 1948; Director of Physics Research at Bell Labs, 1949; President of Bell Labs. Also prominently mentioned are: John Bardeen, Oliver E. Buckley, Karl Taylor Compton, Frank Jewett, J. B. Johnson, Ralph Johnson, Mervin J. Kelly, and Gerald Leondus Pearson.

Undergraduate atmosphere at University of Cambridge: course work, lecturers, extra-curricular groups, training experiments in radioactivity and scintillation-counting; obtains old radon tubes for neutron experiments while doing radioactivity work with Robert W. Woods at Johns Hopkins University in 1929; discussions with James Chadwick of Joliot papers, 1932; move with Chadwick to University of Liverpool, 1935; return to University of Cambridge 1936; reaction to selection of William Bragg as Ernest Rutherford's successor; shift in Cavendish Laboratory's world role in nuclear physics; World War II service at Cambridge: administration, teaching, measurement of fission cross-sections; move to University of Edinburgh to replace Charles D. Barkla, 1945.

Undergraduate atmosphere at University of Cambridge: course work, lecturers, extra-curricular groups, training experiments in radioactivity and scintillation-counting; obtains old radon tubes for neutron experiments while doing radioactivity work with Robert W. Woods at Johns Hopkins University in 1929; discussions with James Chadwick of Joliot papers, 1932; move with Chadwick to University of Liverpool, 1935; return to University of Cambridge 1936; reaction to selection of William Bragg as Ernest Rutherford's successor; shift in Cavendish Laboratory's world role in nuclear physics; World War II service at Cambridge: administration, teaching, measurement of fission cross-sections; move to University of Edinburgh to replace Charles D. Barkla, 1945.