Nuclear reactors

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In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Hamish Robertson, Boeing Distinguished Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of Washington. Robertson recounts his childhood in Hamilton, Canada and his experiences as an undergraduate at Oxford University and his early interest in working at Los Alamos Lab. He describes his decision to pursue graduate work at McMaster University, which had just built the first nuclear reactor on a college campus in Canada, and his intent to focus on atomic beam physics. Robertson explains his post-doctoral research at Michigan State and his shift from nuclear structure physics to neutrino physics and his formative sabbatical year at Princeton and his tenure at Los Alamos, where he worked on neutrino mass. He describes his views on the standard model, and the recruitment process that led to his decision to join the faculty at UW, where he helped to create a laboratory to continue research on neutrinos. Robertson talks about the major influence of John Bahcall, and he describes the issues in physics research that remain compelling to him.

In this interview Richard Garwin discusses topics such as: his parents, growing up in Cleveland, education, Case Institute of Technology (Case Western Reserve University), Leon Lederman, muons, cyclotron,  University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi, nuclear reactors, coincidence circuits.This interview is part of a collection of interviews on the life and work of Richard Garwin. To see all associated interviews, click here.

Scientific background in solid state physics; early work in group theory; work in solid state with Frederick Seitz. His contemporaries; John Bardeen. Stored energy problem; war work on the nuclear reactor. Teaching career. Also prominently mentioned are: Felix Bloch, David Bohm, Milton Burton, Leon Cooper, Karl Kelchner Darrow, James Franck, Werner Heisenberg, Conyers Herring, John Robert Schrieffer, Erwin Schrödinger, I. Schur, John Clarke Slater, Roman Smoluchowski, Leo Szilard, Weissenberg; Argonne National Laboratory, Physical Review, Princeton University, and University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory.

In this interview, Edward Creutz discusses topics such as: his family background; Gregory Breit; doing his postgraduate work at the University of Wisconsin on nuclear physics; Ray Herb; Julian Mack; Fred de Hoffmann; Eugene Wigner; going to Princeton as a research assistant working on the small cyclotron; Carnegie Institute of Technology; Frederick Seitz; Office of Naval Research (ONR); Urner Liddel; Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); helping to build the first commercial nuclear reactor; working in the metallurgical lab at the University of Chicago working on the metallurgy of uranium; General Dynamics and General Atomic; Los Alamos; Niels Bohr; Richard Courant; TRIGA (Training Research Isotopes General Atomic) reactors; Lothar Nordheim; Hans Bethe; Edward Teller; Richard Feynman; Ted Taylor; Marshall Rosenbluth; Doug Fouquet; High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR); Freeman Dyson; Don Kerst.

In this interview, Edward Creutz discusses topics such as: his family background; Gregory Breit; doing his postgraduate work at the University of Wisconsin on nuclear physics; Ray Herb; Julian Mack; Fred de Hoffmann; Eugene Wigner; going to Princeton as a research assistant working on the small cyclotron; Carnegie Institute of Technology; Frederick Seitz; Office of Naval Research (ONR); Urner Liddel; Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); helping to build the first commercial nuclear reactor; working in the metallurgical lab at the University of Chicago working on the metallurgy of uranium; General Dynamics and General Atomic; Los Alamos; Niels Bohr; Richard Courant; TRIGA (Training Research Isotopes General Atomic) reactors; Lothar Nordheim; Hans Bethe; Edward Teller; Richard Feynman; Ted Taylor; Marshall Rosenbluth; Doug Fouquet; High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR); Freeman Dyson; Don Kerst.