Zinc crystals

Family background and early education; studying chemistry at Occidental College. Work at Bell Labs (1930’s), the job freeze during the 1930’s Depression. Morgan’s work on dielectric constants. Columbia University, Rabi’s course, comparison of academic and industrial scientists. Colloquia and study groups, Darrow, Nix, Shockley. Transfer to Metallurgy Department, work on single crystals of zinc; The Bell Laboratories Record; work under Germer and Davisson, their experiments; work on carbon deposits on filaments using x-ray diffraction, Grisdale, W. E. Campbell. Evolution in role of basic research at Bell Labs; Kelly’s role; Buckley; Bell Labs conference (1954), AIP symposium. Awareness of work on copper oxide rectifiers by Becker, Davisson, Brattain; work on microphone carbon; Holden’s work on quartz; changes in the solid state program. Work during the war years; material research of Scaff and Grisdale; pn junction; technological application. Effects of war on solid state research, interactions with other solid state centers. Postwar years, work in Woolen’s group (1945), work in Wooldridge’s group; reasons for Bardeen’s leaving; Fisk’s group; development of transistor under Shockley.

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.