Plasma physics

Interview with Warren W. Buck, Chancellor Emeritus, Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of Washington at Bothell, and Adjunct Professor of Physics and Special Advisor to the President for Equity in the 21st Century at William and Mary. Buck recounts his upbringing in segregated Washington DC, his early interests in science, and the opportunities that led to his admission to Lincoln University for his undergraduate degree before transferring to Morgan State. He discusses the racial strife and the civil rights movements of the late 1960s, his interest in physics as an undergraduate, and his decision to pursue a graduate degree at William and Mary. He explains his decision to leave after getting a master’s degree to teach at Bowie State and to be more involved in Black student organizing, and he describes his thesis research on deuteron theory under the direction of Franz Gross. Buck describes sailing in the Bahamas after graduate school and his appointments at Stony Brook and Los Alamos, and he explains his interests in nucleon-nucleon interactions. He describes a formative research year in Paris and his subsequent faculty position at Hampton University, his collaboration with Jefferson Lab, and his work introducing theoretical mesonic form factors. Buck discusses meeting Lillian McDermott and his recruitment to help build a new UW satellite campus at Bothell as chancellor. He surveys his accomplishments in that role and explains his decision to retire, and at the end of the interview, Buck discusses his interest in Buddhism and how Buddhist philosophy can be understood in the context of nuclear theory.

Interview with Elaine Oran, Professor of Aerospace Engineering and O’Donnell Foundation Chair at Texas A&M. Oran describes her core interest in fluid dynamics and why aerospace engineering provides an ideal home department for her research. She recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her early interests in science, and her undergraduate experience at Bryn Mawr. She explains her decision to attend Yale for her graduate work in physics, where she focused on phase transitions, and she explains the opportunities that led to her work at the Naval Research Laboratory. Oran describes her research in laser-matter interactions and the value of the Laboratory for Computational Physics. She discusses her early interests in reactive flows and how this field became broadly applicable across the sciences. Oran describes being in Washington on 9/11 and her involvement in studying the explosions. She discusses her decision to join the faculty at the University of Maryland and her research in fire whirls and she explains her subsequent move to A&M where she was attracted by the interdisciplinary research opportunities. Oran describes her work in numerical simulations and the interplay between theory and experiment in her research. At the end of the interview, Oran emphasizes the importance of spontaneity and an openness to pursue science in unexpected directions.

Interview with Bruno Coppi, Professor of Physics Emeritus at MIT. Coppi recounts his childhood in Lombardi, Italy. He discusses his early interests in nuclear engineering and his graduate work in Milan on neutron transport theory. He explains the opportunities that led to his postgraduate appointment at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and his subsequent work at Stanford for his postdoctoral research in collision-less plasma. Coppi discusses his work at the Institute for Advanced Study where he interacted closely with Freeman Dyson, and he explains his decision to join the faculty at MIT where he could work with Bruno Rossi. He describes his collaborations in the Soviet Union with nuclear physicists, and he explains the sequencing of the Alcator program to the Ignitor program. Coppi describes the changes inherent in the AEC’s transformation into the DOE, and he explains the import of the Voyager 2 space mission. He describes his current interest in spontaneously rotating plasma and he reflects on why science is a humbling profession, even for geniuses. At the end of the interview, Coppi explains why the role of angular momentum remains profoundly mysterious, and why he is optimistic that he will continue to make contributions to the understanding of burning plasmas.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews John Galayda, Project Director for the NSTXU project at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Galayda recounts his childhood in New Jersey and his undergraduate experience at Lehigh University. He discusses his research work as a graduate student at Rutgers, where he was interested in applying accelerator physics to energy supply solutions, and where he focused on quantum field theory. Galayda discusses his research at Brookhaven he worked on the NSLS and the Transverse Optical Klystron. He explains his decision to move to Argonne where he conducted research on X-ray beams, and he describes the factors that convinced him to join SLAC in 2001. Galayda describes SLAC’s interest in building a next-generation Linear Collider. He explains some of the major research questions that propelled the LCLS and he describes the recruitment process that led to his current work at PPPL. In the last portion of the interview, Galayda surmises on the future of plasma physics and he emphasizes the importance of working with good people.

In this interview, AIP Oral Historian David Zierler interviews high energy physicist Sekazi Mtingwa. Mtingwa describes his upbringing in Atlanta, life under segregation as a child, and his early interests as a budding scientist. He discusses his undergraduate education at MIT, where he developed his interest in theoretical physics and became involved in student protests in the late 1960s. Mtingwa describes his graduate work at Princeton, the cultural differences he experienced there versus at MIT, and his dissertation, which focused on collisions of elementary particles at high energies. He describes his postdoc at the University of Rochester, and some of the changes he felt personally that led to his decision to change his name. Mtingwa discusses his work at Fermilab, where he worked on creating the Antiproton Source, and his decision to move to Argonne Lab to work on plasma wakefield accelerators. Mtingwa describes his decision to build up the physics program at North Carolina A&T and his work at Morgan State. At the end of the interview, Mtingwa discusses his work in recent years, which has included trips to Africa to expand science education, supporting minorities in science, and his service for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In this interview, Klaus Hasselmann discusses topics such as: his family background and how he became interested in physics; getting his PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Gottingen University; Walter Tollmien; University of California, San Diego Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics; Scripps Institute of Oceanography; Walter Munk; Norman Barber; John Miles; Hugh Bradner; George Backus; Klaus Wyrtki; Carl Eckart; Charles David Keeling; researching storms in the south pacific including Hawaii; Frank Snodgrass; Gordon Groves; measuring waves in the North Sea; becoming director of the newly formed Department of Theoretical Geophysics at the University of Hamburg; Donald Menzel; the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Wolfgang Sell; Art Maxwell; Dirk Olbers; Heinz-Hermann Essen; Peter Muller; wave dynamics; Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP); Reimar Lust; Kirk Bryan; World Climate Research Programme; European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF); Lennart Bengtsson; El Nino predictions; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); carbon dioxide emissions; Hans Hinzpeter; plasma physics; quantum field theory.

In this interview Raoul Franklin discusses topics such as: getting his doctorate at University of Oxford; [Alfred] Hans Von Engel; atomic and molecular physics; ionized gases; Sandy Brown; plasma physics; David Bohm; City University in London; Manfred Biondi.

In this interview, Betsy Ancker-Johnson:, a solid state physicist, discusses such topics as: her family background and early education; her undergraduate work at Wellesley College; Hedwig Kohn; Lise Meitner; her graduate work in Germany at Tubingen University; Donald Menzel; Walther Kossel; measuring lattice constants of zinc and zinc crystals; Charles Kittel; the Minerals Research Laboratory (MRL) at University of California, Berkeley; George Gamow; working in microwave electronics at Stanford University in the Sylvania Microwave Physics Laboratory; her work at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA); L. S. Nergaard; zeolites; working with hot electrons with Maurice Glicksman; Boeing Scientific Reseach Laboratories (BSRL) and plasma physics; Jim Drummond; speaking at the Lebedev Institute; Ivar Gunn; Glen Keister; President Nixon asking her to be the Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology in the U. S. Department of Commerce; women in physics; National Bureau of Standards; trying to switch to the metric system; Dixie Lee Ray; Fred Dent; working at Argonne National Laboratories; becoming a vice president at General Motors; and Elmer W. Johnson.