University of Virginia

Interview with Blas Cabrera, Stanley Wojcicki Chair Professor of Physics at Stanford. Cabrera recounts his family’s Spanish heritage, he discusses being a third-generation physicist, and he explains the circumstances of his family’s arrival to the United States when he was five. He describes his childhood in Charlottesville, where his father taught at the University of Virginia’s Department of Physics. Cabrera describes his own undergraduate experience at UVA and the opportunities that led to his graduate admission at Stanford to work with Bill Fairbank. He discusses his research on relativistic corrections to the Cooper mass pairs and on developing low magnetic fields. Cabrera conveys the influence of Shelly Glashow’s ideas about the possibility that dark matter is magnetically charged particles, and he describes his postdoctoral work on the GP-B project. Cabrera describes the Valentine’s Day event in 1982 where there was initial excitement that he had detected a magnetic monopole, and he explains his subsequent focus on WIMPs and the broader search for dark matter. He describes his work on the international CDMS collaboration, he explains the transition from CDMS I to CDMS II, and he reviews how the project understands its goals in light of the ongoing mystery of dark matter. Cabrera discusses his tenure as department chair at Stanford and as director of the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory. At the end of interview, Cabrera reflects on accepting that he did not detect a magnetic monopole, and he surveys the accomplishments and future prospects of CDMS.

Interview with Gordon Bowden, Staff Engineer for over fifty years at SLAC. Bowden recounts his childhood in California, Oregon and New Jersey as his father moved around for work, and he explains his interest in physics and his undergraduate experience at the University of Virginia. Bowden discusses his subsequent work at a small electronics company doing research on X-ray diffraction and building equipment for the Space Radiation Effects Laboratory. He describes his subsequent work at Boeing on fluidic development, and he explains his motivations to focus on National Laboratories for his next opportunity. Bowden discusses his initial work in the hydrogen bubble chamber operations group at SLAC and he describes Dick Taylor’s leadership of Group A. He surveys his contributions to DELCO and PEP 1 and explains why SLC was so significant and how the klystron group fit within the overall Lab structure. Bowden explains how LCLS was an outgrowth of SLC and how SLAC became involved in the LSST camera collaboration. He discusses the function of the Technology Innovation Directorate, and he describes his recent work on X-ray cancer therapy. At the end of the interview, Bowden reflects on how SLAC has shifted from its early reliance on visualization in its detectors, which has changed completely as a result of computer analysis. 

Christopher Stubbs, professor of physics and Dean of Sciences within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, is interviewed by David Zierler. Stubbs recounts his life moving around as the son of a U.S. Foreign Service officer and the decisions that led his mother, as a single parent, to move to Iran where he attended high school. He explains the circumstances that led to his enrollment at the University of Virginia for college and his clear decision to focus on experimentation and the considerations that led to his graduate work at the University of Washington. Stubbs describes the excitement surrounding Ephraim Fischbach’s work on the Fifth Force, and working under the direction of Eric Adelberger on signal noise calculation for a torsion pendulum experiment. He conveys what it felt like to be at the center of research so fundamental that it was fair to ask, “was Einstein right?” Stubbs explains how a talk by Michael Turner motivated him to pursue dark matter research as a postdoc at the Center for Particle Astrophysics at Berkeley, where he pursued research in optical wavelength observational astronomy. He describes his first faculty appointment at UC Santa Barbara where he worked on the MACHO project, and the financial constraints that led to his decision to accept a tenured offer back at the University of Washington. Stubbs discusses his research on supernova cosmology projects and his happiness at being in Seattle, and he explains the pull that led him to accept a faculty offer at Harvard. He describes his work as department chair, he deflates the myth of the bottomless money well that is Harvard’s endowment, and he describes his shortcomings as chair in promoting diversity in the department while emphasizing the importance of this work in his capacity as Dean. Stubbs describes the circumstances that led to him becoming Dean, and he surveys some of the key challenges he has encountered in this role. He explains how he has been able to maintain a research agenda, and he reflects on his accomplishments as an undergraduate teacher and graduate mentor. At the end of the interview, in surmising his post-Dean life as a full time physics professor, Stubbs points to the need for a more complete intellectual framework of physics that is based on astronomical data as a broad-scale method to pursue the kind of research he hopes to accomplish.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Edmund Bertschinger, professor of physics at MIT. Bertschinger recounts his childhood in California and he describes how his natural curiosities developed into academic talents in math and science. He describes his undergraduate work at Caltech where he became interested in radio astronomy. Bertschinger describes his decision to pursue a Ph.D. under the direction of Arno Penzias at Princeton, and he explains the formative influence of Steve Weinberg’s book The First Three Minutes. He describes how he came to work with Jerry Ostriker on galaxy formation. Bertschinger describes some of the administrative decisions that defined where cosmology and astrophysics were studied at Princeton. He explains how he developed his interest in social issues including nuclear disarmament, and why he initially pursued a career at the State Department. Bertschinger discusses his postdoctoral work at the University of Virginia with Roger Chevalier and his next postdoctoral position at Berkeley where he worked with Chris McKee. He explains the importance of charge-coupled device detectors as a key technology advance for astronomy, and he describes the circumstances leading to his decision to join the faculty at MIT. Bertschinger recounts how his social interests had became increasingly focused on gender issues and how, in his view, the toxic masculinity that pervaded cosmology pushed him further and further from the field. He describes his ongoing interest in nuclear and social issues, and at the end of the interview, Bertschinger explains that he has been fortunate to have been able to shift his current research interests while remaining within the physics department. 

In this interview, Joanna Behrman, Assistant Public Historian for AIP, interviews Marta Dark McNeese, Associate Professor of Physics at Spelman College. McNeese recounts her childhood in Maryland and early interest in science. She describes her decision to attend the University of Virginia and to major in physics. McNeese discusses the climate she experienced during graduate school at MIT and her support network. She further elaborates on her graduate research with Michael Feld on the ablation of biological materials by lasers. She describes work as a postdoc at the Naval Research Lab and how she was drawn to join Spelman College. McNeese recounts how Etta Falconer was instrumental in growing the physics department at Spelman. McNeese discusses mentoring students at the undergraduate level and the importance of women’s colleges and HBCUs. At the end of the interview, she describes the development of her research in biophysics and her involvement with APS and NSBP.

This short interview touches briefly on Erwin Hahn's education at Juniata College, Purdue University, and the University of Illinois; initial interest in nuclear magnetic resonance; his postdoctoral years with Felix Bloch's group at Stanford University; and his three years as a research scientist with IBM. Hahn also comments briefly on his consultantship with Hughes' maser group; his work on self-induced transparency; and his collaboration with Richard Brewer at IBM. Also prominently mentioned are: Sam Bass, Jesse Wakefield Beams, Felix Bloch, Nicolaas Bloembergen, Richard Brewer, John Clarke, Gene Commins, Harry Daghalian, Robert Henry Dicke, Gordon Gould, Donald W. Kerst, Theodore Maiman, Sam McCall, Mitsunaga, Arthur Leonard Schawlow, Norman Shiren, Charles Slichter, Dick Slusher, Russell Harrison Varian; Bell Telephone Laboratories, Columbia University, IBM Watson Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Science Foundation (U.S.), United States Navy, and University of Virginia.

In this interview Robert Doering discusses topics such as: his family background and childhood; his undergraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Philip Morrison; Jack Rapaport; nuclear physics; doing his graduate work at Michigan State University; Sherwood Haynes; quantum mechanics taught by Mort Gordon; Aaron Galonsky; working at the cyclotron laboratory; George Bertsch; teaching at the University of Virginia; low-energy heavy-ion collisions; switching to industrial physics research; beginning work at Texas Instruments (TI); working with semiconductors; Don Redwine; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); George Heilmeier; Semiconductor Research Corporation; SEMATECH; Moore's Law; complementary metal oxide semiconductors (CMOS); Birch Bayh and Robert Dole; Morris Chang; research and development changes throughout his career.

Discusses his career in astronomy and astrophysics through his student days at the University of Chicago (PhD, 1950, astronomy and astrophysics); and his teaching and administrative positions at the University of Virginia (1950), the University of Wisconsin and Washburn Observatory (1951-56; 1959- ), and briefly with the California Institute of Technology at Palomar and Mt. Wilson Observatories (1956-58). The interview centers on his work in space astronomy, with emphasis on his use of an X-15 airplane for UV stellar spectroscopy, and his role in the development of the OAO series and Copernicus. Also discussed is his work with instrumentation, especially photoelectric photometry, and his theoretical interest in cosmology.