Light

Relation of the individual to the whole; California Institute of Technology (1939-1940); negative experience at Caltech; interest in Chinese and Japanese culture; Thesis – calculate scattering of light from a nebular gas cloud; University of California Berkeley (1941-1943); political interests and activity including Marxism, socialism, communism; better social, educational and natural environment at Berkeley; compute scattering of protons from deutrons [sic]; Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (1943-1946); electrostatic focusing, electric arc, nature of plasma, particle spin; effects of the atomic bombs on science and society; Research associate for J. Robert Oppenheimer (1946-1947); superconductivity; intuitive problem solving frowned upon by scientists; disillusionment with scientists; Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study (1947-1950); wrote Quantum Theory; structure of elementary particles; renormalization problem; meeting of theoretical physicists in the Pocono Mountains circa 1948, attended by notable scientists including Julian Schwinger, Victor Weisskopf, Niels Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman; hierarchy of scientists; end of his U.S. career.

Growing up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; father’s values in contrast with the values of the Polish/Irish community they lived in; unhealthy home environment; life during the Depression; the American Dream and the American West as a symbol of new horizons; perfectibility of human beings; development of views on socialism, fascism, Nazism, communism; usefulness of public libraries; love of nature in contrast to the chaos of the city; high school geometry and algebra; electrons and the fourth dimension; tornados and vortices; movement and being; light as an entity; Pennsylvania State University (1935-1939); friends and rural environment; ROTC training; chemistry and physics courses; introduction to quantum mechanics.