University of Chicago

Early life and education; research on spectroscopy with Robert A. Millikan at University of Chicago and Caltech; early teaching career at Caltech; work on forbidden lines, 200-inch telescope project; visitors to Caltech during the 1930s include Albert Einstein and Arnold Sommerfeld; effects of the Depression and World War II on astronomy; postwar reorganization, staff and funding at Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories; Edwin P. Hubble's role at the observatory; educational aspects of the observatory program (professional and public); research groups and research interests; theorists and observationalists, Jesse Greenstein, Guido Münch, Jan Oort, radio astronomy; recollections and evaluations of own work after retirement. Also prominently mentioned are: Walter Sydney Adams, Harold Delos Babcock, William Alvin Baum, Wilhelm Bjerknes, T. Bowen, Geoffrey R. Burbidge, Margaret Burbidge, Vannevar Bush, J. Carroll, Lee Alvin DuBridge, Theodore Dunham Jr., Edlén, Robley Dunglison Evans, William Alfred Fowler, Henry Gordon Gale, Cecilia Helena Payne Gaposchkin, George Ellery Hale, John L. Hall, Don Hendrix, Alfred H. Joy, Thomas Lauritsen, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Max Mason, Edwin Mattison McMillan, Merriam, Paul Merrill, Rudolph Leo Bernhard Minkowski, R. Otis, Henry Norris Russell, John Donovan Strong, Richard Chase Tolman, Merle Antony Tuve; Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Early education in physics, University of Chicago 1930’s; high-energy particle counter; discovery of positron; discovery of neutrons; neutron experiments; reminiscences of Berkeley; Foundation support of research; 60-inch cyclotron building cloud chambers; neutron spectroscopy; neutron time-of-flight; magnetic moment of the neutron: transuraniun elements; announcement of fission; Tizard Mission; war research work; building of a betatron; effect of war techniques on post-war research; cyclotron work 1947; impressions of present day nuclear physics 1966.

Early education in physics, University of Chicago 1930’s; high-energy particle counter; discovery of positron; discovery of neutrons; neutron experiments; reminiscences of Berkeley; Foundation support of research; 60-inch cyclotron building cloud chambers; neutron spectroscopy; neutron time-of-flight; magnetic moment of the neutron: transuraniun elements; announcement of fission; Tizard Mission; war research work; building of a betatron; effect of war techniques on post-war research; cyclotron work 1947; impressions of present day nuclear physics 1966.

Mildred Allen was born in Massachusetts in 1894, the elder of two daughters of an MIT professor of civil engineering who had met her mother while working in New Mexico. She graduated from Vassar College in 1916 with training in mathematics and physics. Her Ph.D. in physics (1922) was granted by Clark University where she studied with A. G. Webster, but her thesis research was one at MIT. She taught at Mt. Holyoke, Wellesley and Oberlin Colleges during the 1920s and early 30s, as well as studying further at the University of Chicago and Yale. She did research at the Bartol Foundation, 1927-30, and at Harvard University, 1931-33. She then taught at Mt. Holyoke from 1933 until her retirement in 1959. Since then she has done additional research, most recently (paper published 1971) on the behavior of torsion pendulums especially during solar eclipses.