Photoelectricity

Dealing with early life in Southern California; training at Pomona College and University of California at Los Angeles; research at Lick Observatory on absolute calibration standards; Albert E. Whitford and Gerald Kron and photoelectric astronomy; position at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the contemporary job market. Also prominently mentioned are: J. Mayo Greenberg, Richard Grosch, James Jeans, George Low, Paul Routly; Arizona State University, and National Science Foundation (U.S.).

Interview discuss John S. Hall's early interest in astronomy; comments about family background and early childhood, schooling in Connecticut and college training at University of Amherst and Yale University. Early contacts and interests in photoelectric photometry, his pioneering efforts in red sensitive cell photometry, work at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT during World War II, postwar research at the Naval Observatory and his co-discovery of interstellar polarization. Also prominently mentioned are: Solon Bailey, A. L. Bennett, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Thomas Cochran, Robert H. Dicke, Harold Ewen, Fresnell, Green, Jesse Leonard Greenstein, Ejnar Hertzsprung, W. A. Hiltner, Gerald Edward Kron, J. A. Miller, Prescott, Jan Schildt, Frank Schlesinger, Harlow Shapley, Theodore Stoller, Otto Struve, David Todd, Robert Williams Wood; Amherst College Observatory, General Electric Co., Harvard University, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Science (journal), Sproul Observatory, United States Navy, and Yerkes Observatory.

A preliminary conversation mainly about the construction of the Rochester Cyclotron in the 1930s; comments on the Physics Department, the theorists, weekly colloquia; DuBridge as chairman and dean; Washington University's graduate program's influence on the Rochester program; work on the FP-54 vacuum tube; interest and support from Ernest O. Lawrence; design and building of cyclotron. Graduate projects; photoelectric research and cyclotron research at Rochester, cooperation with Hans Bethe at Cornell University. World War II work. Relationship of teaching and research at University of Wisconsin, Cornell University, and California Institute of Technology.

This interview is part of a small program to document the recent history of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). These interviews were used as background studies to help authors of chapters of the centennial history volume of the Society research and organize documentary materials. The volume to be published in 1999. This interview discusses Baum's attendence at the AAS meetings in the early 1950s; Ira Bowen, director of Mt. Wilson-Palomar Observatories; Baum's role in developing photoelectric system for use at Palomar and using the system to study stars of globular clusters.