Low temperatures

Interview with Tony Tyson, Distinguished Research Professor at UC Davis in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The interview begins with Tyson sharing stories from his childhood in southern California and his early interest in ham radio. He discusses his undergraduate studies at Stanford and his introduction to low-temperature physics. Tyson describes his graduate studies at University of Wisconsin and a fellowship at University of Chicago. He explains his thesis experiment on phase transitions and discusses having both Dave Douglas and Chandrasekhar as advisors. Tyson recalls being recruited by Bell Labs and talks about his initial work there on gravitational radiation. He describes branching out into cosmology and astrophysics and recounts his time in John Wheeler’s gravity group at the Institute for Advanced Study. Tyson reflects on the impact of CCDs and his role in their development for astronomy. Tyson also discusses the evolution of the LSST project, of which he is the founding director. Topics include site selection, funding and fundraising, and the renaming of the project for Vera Rubin. The interview concludes with Tyson sharing his hopes for the future of the field and his excitement for the new discoveries that will inevitably come from the LSST. 

Interview with Sir Anthony Leggett, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Leggett begins with recollections from his childhood as the son of two schoolteachers. He discusses studying classics at Oxford and having minimal science or math education. Leggett explains that he contemplated pursuing graduate studies in philosophy, but he met a priest who taught him complex mathematics concepts, leading to his interest in physics. He describes obtaining his second undergraduate degree in physics from Oxford, as well as his graduate studies in theoretical condensed matter physics under Dirk ter Haar. Then Leggett recalls going to UIUC for a postdoc with David Pines and also to Japan to study with Takeo Matsubara. Leggett discusses his appointment at Sussex University and his shift from low temperature physics into quantum mechanics. He reflects on accepting the offer to move back to UIUC as the endowed MacArthur Chair, as well as what it was like to receive the call about winning the Nobel Prize. The interview ends with Leggett sharing advice for physics students and reflections on his time teaching in Ghana.

The interviewee has not given permission for this interview to be shared at this time. Transcripts will be updated as they become available to the public. For any questions about this policy, please contact [email protected].

Interview with Alice White, Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University. She recounts her childhood as the daughter of a Bell Labs physicist and her early interests in learning how things work, and she explains her decision to attend Middlebury College. White describes her formative fellowship at Bell Labs and her graduate research in physics at Harvard, where Mike Tinkham supervised her research. She describes being hired by Bob Dynes at MTS in Bell Labs for her postdoctoral research in low temperature physics and she discusses her subsequent work with John Poate on ion implantation. White explains her increasing involvement in optics and the significance of this work during the "dot com" boom and she narrates the reorganization and breakup of Bell. She describes the opportunities that led to her faculty appointment at BU, and she describes working at the interface between mechanical engineering and physics. White describes creating the Multiscale Laser Lithography Lab and her overlapping research interests with biologists, and she reflects on some of the advantages at BU of operating in the shadows of MIT and Harvard. She discusses her tenure as department chair and her research on 3D printing for cardiac repairs. At the end of the interview, White reflects on working at Bell Labs at the height of American power and ingenuity, she emphasizes the importance of encouraging her students to take scientific risks, and she indicates that her future research will be devoted to climate change.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interviews Marius Clore, NIH Distinguished Investigator, Chief of Section of Protein NMR, Lab of Chemical Physics at the NIH. Clore recounts his childhood in London and his early interests in science, and he explains in detail the British education system that leads to specialization early in one’s undergraduate career. Clore discusses his experience at University College London, where he obtained a medical degree by age 24, and his residency at St. Charles Hospital. He describes his early interests in low temperature kinetic methods and NMR spectroscopy at Mill Hill. He describes his decision to pursue NMR as a career path, which he recognized was in its early stages at that point and which he felt was ripe for development. Clore explains how he taught himself General Relativity from Dirac’s book, and his decision to study at the Planck Institute. He describes the arc of his career at the NIH and his contributions to advancing NMR research and the intellectual atmosphere that allowed him to pursue interesting projects, including HIV research and the XPLOR program. Near the end of the discussion, Clore explains the difference between biophysics and classical physics, and why the NIH has been the ideal place to pursue his research.

In this interview Richard Garwin discusses topics such as: low-temperature physics, cryogenics, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, hydrogen bomb, International Business Machines (IBM), superconductivity, nuclear magnetic resonance, John Tukey, fast Fourier transforms, computers, Erwin Hahn, patents and licenses, lasers.This interview is part of a collection of interviews on the life and work of Richard Garwin. To see all associated interviews, click here.

H. Frederick Dylla discusses topics such as: ruby laser; Bell Laboratories; RCA Engineering Research Center, Canton, New Jersey; Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc. (EG&G); Harold Edgerton; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Franklin Instiutte; Richard Feynman; Mark Zemansky; Princeton University; John King; molecular beams; atomic clocks; bachelors work on acoustics; masters research on low temperature physics; doctoral research on surface physics; Ted Madey; John Yates; Jim Murday; Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory; tokamaks; Sandia National Laboratories; Ray Weiss; Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO); benefits of professional societies; Manfred Kaminsky; Argonne National Laboratory; AVS; Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology; National Bureau of Standards (NBS); National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST); Paul Redhead; National Research Council (NRC), Canada; Dennis Manos; College of William and Mary; John Coburn; Harold Winters; Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF); Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA); George Neil; Jefferson Laboratory; free electron lasers; Star Wars program; electron beam accelerator; linear accelerator (LINAC); Rey Whetten; American Institute of Physics.