Electrons

Interviewed by
David Zierler
Interview date
Location
Video conference
Abstract

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Ralph Nelson, a radiation physicist at SLAC who retired just shy of forty years of service. He explains Panofsky’s original decision for Nelson to split his time doing physics and helping to create the radiation protection group, for which he did shielding calculations to ensure safety both to SLAC employees and to the surrounding community. He describes his research in accelerator health physics, and he recounts his education at Berkeley and his research as a nuclear emulsion scanner at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Nelson describes the scene at SLAC when he arrived in 1964, and he describes the arrangement by which he would pursue a Ph.D. in muon physics as an inter-departmental student in nuclear engineering, radiology, and physics, while retaining his employment. He explains the complex challenges associated with identifying the most dangerous areas in the lab in order to develop and deploy shielding. Nelson describes his advisory work for the site selection committee for the SSC, and he describes how he needed to tailor his safety objectives relative to different research endeavors over the years. At the end of the interview, Nelson reflects on Panofsky’s overarching vision for SLAC, and how his concern over radiation exposure was paramount in all of his considerations.

Interviewed by
Charles Weiner
Interview date
Location
Carl Anderson's office, Pasadena, California
Abstract

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.

Interviewed by
David Zierler
Interview date
Location
video conference
Abstract

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Richard Leapman, Senior Investigator in the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and Scientific Director of the intramural program. Leapman recounts his childhood in England and he describes his early and formative experience playing with an optical microscope. He describes his undergraduate work at Peterhouse College of Cambridge University and the influence of Aaron Klug in his physics education. Leapman explains his decision to remain at Cambridge for his Ph.D., and he describes his work in the Cavendish Laboratory and Klug's suggestion that he focus on inelastic scattering of electrons in electron microscopes to perform elemental microanalysis. He discusses his postdoctoral work at Oxford and the opportunity leading to his research at Cornell in the School of Applied Engineering Physics. Leapman explains his attraction to join the NIH upon learning that he would have access to an electron microscope and could work on electron energy-loss spectroscopy. He describes some of the biological implications of this work, including the ability to look at cells to detect elemental distributions inside subcellular organelles. Leapman discusses his many collaborations across the Institutes at the NIH and the development of NMR spectroscopy, and he describes the partnership between NIH and NIST that ensured his access to cutting-edge technology over the course of his career. He describes various aspects of his research that have direct clinical value to treating a variety of ailments, including asbestos exposure to coronavirus. Leapman describes his work at the chief of electron beam imaging and micro-spectroscopy and the numerous collaborations he has pursued beyond the NIH at both National Labs and university labs. He discusses some recent advances in his field, including new abilities to determine the 3D structure of proteins, and he explains his administrative duties as Scientific Director of the Institute. At the end of the interview, Leapman describes how the study of electrons has connected all of his research, and he discusses some of the challenges and opportunities he has confronted in his career as a physicist operating in a biologically-focused research environment.

Interviewed by
David Zierler
Interview date
Location
Video conference
Abstract

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews David Wineland, Philip H. Knight Distinguished Research Chair at the University of Oregon. Wineland recounts his childhood in Denver and then Sacramento, and he describes his early interests in math and engineering. He discusses his undergraduate education at University of California Davis and then Berkeley, where Frederick Byron played a formative role in his development as a scientist, and whom he followed to Harvard for graduate school. Wineland discusses working in Norman Ramsey’s lab, and the significance of Dan Kleppner’s demonstration of the hydrogen maser. He discusses his postdoctoral research at the University of Washington where he worked with Hans Dehmelt on making accurate measurements of the electron g-factor, and the opportunities that led to his career at NIST in Boulder. He describes the excellent research environment and instrumentation that made precision measurements for clocks feasible and the important of Shor’s algorithm for his work. Wineland explains the difference of accuracy and precision as those words apply to atomic clocks, and the societal benefits of achievement improvements in this field both for land- and space-based applications. He describes the day he learned that he would receive the Nobel Prize, the collaboration he enjoyed with Serge Haroche, and his post-Nobel work in quantum information. Wineland describes his reasons for moving to the University of Oregon. At the end of the interview, Wineland assesses the current and future prospects of true quantum computing and the societal benefits that this advance could confer, and ongoing developments that can further improve atomic clocks. 

Interviewed by
Charles Weiner
Interview date
Location
University of Lund, Sweden
Abstract

Research, mostly with cyclotrons, at Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley; building Sweden's first cyclotron as part of the new Research Institute for Nuclear Physics in 1937, under Manne Siegbahn's directorship. Background and science interest in electron diffraction; people he met during six months spent in United States; meetings with other European cyclotron builders; characterization of Professor Siegbahn.

Interviewed by
Vern Knudsen and W. James King
Interview date
Location
University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract

Concentrates on oil-drop experiment. Family background and early education; undergraduate at Brigham Young University (physics); graduate at University of Chicago, Robert Millikan and Albert A. Michelson as physicists and teachers. Extensive coverage of the work and relationship with Millikan on the "oil-drop" technique with two versions of the nature of the collaboration presented by Vern Knudsen, one from Millikan's autobiography and Fletcher's own account. Work on modification of Stokes' law and Brownian motion. Impact of electric charge measurement. Teaching at Brigham Young 1911-1916; acoustics work at Western Electric Co.(later Bell Labs) on the determination of the critical bands of hearing; dynamics of the cochlea; development of stereophonic sound. Role in formation of Acoustical Society of America. Interests in electronic reproduction of musical tones. Successful effort to develop a school of engineering at Brigham Young. Discussion of Millikan's Nobel Prize, comments by Knudsen. Achievements of son. Also prominently mentioned are: Louis Begeman; Science (journal), and United States Bureau of Standards.

Interviewed by
Lillian Hoddeson
Interview date
Location
Dr. Fisk's office, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey
Abstract

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.

Interviewed by
Babak Ashrafi
Interview date
Location
Webster, New York
Abstract

Topics discussed include: family background, education at Duke University, graduate work at Princeton University with Don Hamilton, Ruby Sherr and Eugene Wigner, his work at General Electric with Roland Schmidt, Walter Harrison, and Gerry Mahan, magnetic breakdown, optical absorption spectrum of impurities and solids, teaching at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Rochester, electron scattering, involvement with the American Vacuum Society (AVS), his work at Pacific Northwest National Labratory, and his work at Xerox with Chip Holt and Sudendu Rai.

Interviewed by
Charles Weiner
Interview date
Location
Princeton, New Jersey
Abstract

Early life on Ohio farm. College of Wooster, A.H. Compton, Compton family AHC’s academic and extracurricular interests; Princeton years 1913-16, associations and fellowships; marriage 1916; experimentation at Westinghouse Lamp Co. 1917-19, work on “large electron” leading to National Research Fellowship at Cavendish Laboratory 1919-20, associations with Rutherford and J.J. Thompson, living arrangements, weekly colloquia, recollections of Einstein; bringing in new faculty as Chairman of Dept. of Physics at Washington Univ. 1920-23, freedom of research; Guggenheim fellowship at Punjab Univ. 1926-27, organizing Kashmir expedition, observational work and other expedition details. Reaction to AHC’s Nobel Award 1927, Nobel address and trip to Sweden.

Interviewed by
Frederick V. Hunt
Interview date
Location
Faculty room, Jefferson-Leyman Laboratory
Abstract

Graduate study at Harvard University; greatest influence was Wallace C. Sabine; Ph.D. on e/m as a function of accelerating voltage supervised by Harry Moss, 1907; as corollary he developed the "Chaffee quenched gap" for producing continuous oscillations. Work on oxide filament in thermionic vacuum tubes, 1910; the Chaffee Gap used in wireless telegraphy experiments, 1911; mercury arc work with Pierce resulting in mercury vapor detector. World War I: torpedo detectors, double modulation, warbling the spectrum by rotating condenser, super-heterodyne; travels to France and Italy to demonstrate his transmitter. Starts first vacuum tube course in U.S. at Harvard, 1920; work on regeneration in coupled circuits, 1924; elaborate equivalent circuits, 1929; works on electronic response of retina with Bovie (first application of vacuum tubes to biophysics; continued some work of Einthoven), 1920s. In 1930s, works on stimulation of autonomic responses in a monkey's brain (R. U. Light), and power tubes and non-linear systems; becomes chairman of Power Tubes Committee of the Institute of Radio Engineers. Also a short discussion of the invention of crystal oscillators by Cady, Pierce, and Arnold.