Mathematics

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for the American Institute of Physics, interviews James H. Simons, Founder and Board Chair of the Simons Foundation. The interview takes place over three sessions, each covering the three main chapters of Simons’ life. In the first session, Simons discusses his family background and upbringing in Boston, his academic accomplishments in mathematics as an undergraduate at MIT and in graduate school at UC Berkeley; in the second session he discusses the origins and impact of his success as a financial investor; and in the third session Simons discusses his motivation and accomplishments with the creation of the Simons Foundation and the broad array of scientific and humanitarian causes it supports. Simons reflects on some of the intellectual and moral themes that connect each major chapter of his life; he explains how aspects of his mathematical research have advanced physics, and he conveys the enjoyment he feels at being able to support cutting edge research that enhances both theoretical science and real world advances that are improving lives all over the world. 

Interview examines early life in Pennsylvannia; family background; schooling; college years at Swarthmore, 1916-1920; choice of major subjects; contact with J. A. Miller and choice of mathematics curriculum; move to Princeton and work with Henry Norris Russell; arrival at Princeton, 1920; recollections of Russell family; research on the position of the Moon and eclipsing binaries; work at Mount Wilson on the solar spectrum, 1925-1928; the origins of the Multiplet Table; return to Princeton; the organization of the Princeton Astronomy Department; Ph.D. thesis under A. O. Leuschner at University of California, Berkeley; early work on the solar spectrum, influence of A. Unsöld; line intensity work; collaboration with physicists; Russell's mode of research; work with William F. Meggers; molecular spectra; atomic spectra during World War II; move to National Bureau of Standards after World War II; Russell and R. Dugan; J. Q. Stewart; recollections of Russell and Princeton years; organization of work at NBS.

Founding of the school of physics, Università di Roma, role of Orso Mario Corbino and others in recruiting young physicists; the decision to work on nuclear physics; financial support for and public knowledge of work at the university; contacts with other laboratories in Europe and the U.S.; available technology in Rome, ca. 1930; journal literature; visitors to Rome; circumstances of move to Università di Palermo, 1936; work and facilities in Palermo; early failures of physicists to recognize fission; early uses of cyclotron; mathematics and nuclear physics in 1930s; models of the nucleus and experimental work; circumstances of move to University of California at Berkeley, 1938; experiment and theory in nuclear physics at Berkeley; work on radiochemistry; alteration of half-lives of beta-radioactive substances; detection equipment; effect of work at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory on nuclear physics; significance of nucleon-nucleon scattering experiments; entry into nuclear physics of students trained in technology during World War II; beginnings of high-energy physics; experimental physics and particle accelerators; fashions in physics; discovery of the antiproton; work considered personally satisfying. Also prominently mentioned are: Edoardo Amaldi, Felix Bloch, Niels Henrik David Bohr, Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, Michael Faraday, Otto Robert Frisch, Guglielmo, Georg von Hevesy, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Tullio Levi-Cività, Lo Surdo, Ettore Majorana, Lise Meitner, Ida Noddack, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Carlo Perrier, Franco D. Rasetti, Ernest Rutherford, Glenn Seaborg, Elfriede Segrè, V. Volterra, Chien-Shiung Wu, Hideki Yukawa; Columbia University, and Purdue University.

Early life in London during World War I; developing interests in mathematics; training at University of Oxford under John Nicholson, I. O. Griffith and Edward A. Milne; contact with Sydney Chapman and research on solar magnetic field and stellar structure; position at Imperial College with Chapman; comments on stellar structure studies of James Jeans, Edward Milne, and Arthur Eddington; work on Kinetic Theory of Gases and Magnetohydrodynamics and continued work in stellar structure; work during World War II and later contact with Hannes Alfvén; later positions and move to University of Leeds; growth and progress of astronomy in Britain. Also prominently mentioned are: Victor Amazaspovich Ambartsumian, Ludwig Franz Benedikt Biermann, Walter M. Elsasser, Bertil Lindblad, Alla Genrikhova Massevitch, H. S. Ruse, Erwin Schrödinger, Andréi Borísovich Sevérnyi, H. H. Turner; Baptist Church, Royal Astronomical Society, Royal Society (Great Britain), University College of North Wales, University College of Swansea, and University of Oxford.

In this interview, Konrad Bleuler discusses his memories of Wolfgang Pauli. Topics discussed include: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich; quantum physics; Werner Heisenberg; mathematics; Gregor Wentzel; Ernst Stueckelberg; Friedrich Dürrenmatt; renormalization.