United States. Army

Interview with Lynwood Randolph, physicist and former space program administrator at NASA. Randolph recounts his childhood in a segregated Richmond and remembers his love for music as well as his introduction to physics in high school. He explains his decision to attend Virginia State University, where he participated in the ROTC program and served in the military upon graduation. After his service, Randolph decided to pursue graduate school and received a National Defense Education Act fellowship to attend Howard University. He explains his focus on experimental work during his graduate studies, pertaining to radiation effects and optical properties of materials. Randolph began a summer job at Harry Diamond Laboratories in DC, where he went on to work for 10 years. Randolph discusses the limitations in the types of jobs available to African Americans at the time, and explains the opportunity at NASA that led him to spend 23 years there. He served in many roles such as Manager for Advanced Concepts in the office of Aeronautics and Space Technology, Chief of the Management Programs Branch, and, later, Information Technology Standards Manager. Randolph reflects on the diversity within NASA over the years and how technology innovations impacted the workplace landscape. He discusses his work with HBCUs and his creation of LES Associates, a consulting company that works in a variety of educational and technological areas. Randolph concludes the interview with reflections on the importance of mentorship and diversity within the field.

In this interview, Chuck Ebbing discusses his career and involvement with the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Ebbing discusses his time at Purdue University as an undergraduate student where he studied electrical engineering. He details his time working at Carrier and his work designing anechoic rooms. He speaks about his time in the U.S. Army and his experience attending guided missile school. Ebbing discusses getting his master’s degree at the Cornell Aeronautical Lab where he built and designed a magnetostrictive transducer. He describes his time as a member of ASA where he worked on a standard regarding air conditioning measurements. Lastly, Ebbing discusses his displeasure with ASA’s lack of encouragement for creativity. 

This is an interview with Roger Stuewer, Professor Emeritus, History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Stuewer recounts his childhood in rural Wisconsin, and he discusses his undergraduate work in physics education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the formative course in optics taught by Ed Miller. He describes his service in the U.S. Army and his deployment to Germany in the mid-1950s, and the opportunities provided by the GI Bill to further his education. He discusses his brief career teaching high school math and physics before he was offered an instructor job in physics at Heidelberg College. Stuewer describes the circumstances leading to his return to Wisconsin to pursue a graduate degree in the history of science, where he was advised by Erwin Hiebert and where he was deeply influenced by Heinz Barschall. He describes his fascination with Arthur Holly Compton and the Compton Effect which was the subject of his dissertation, and he explains his decision to join the faculty at Minnesota. Stuewer recounts his efforts to build the history of science and technology program there, and the opportunities he was afforded with a joint appointment in the physics department. He describes some of the major methodological and historiographical debates in the field over the course of his career, including competing ideas of whether the history of physics should be pursued at the conceptual level or have as its focus social phenomena. Stuewer discusses the major impact of Thomas Kuhn and he explains his decision to take a faculty position at Boston University before returning to Minnesota for the rest of his career, where he subsequently focused on the history of nuclear physics. He describes his motivations for creating a symposium on this topic, where Han Bethe delivered introductory remarks, and he explains his longstanding interest in John Hasbrouck Van Vleck. Stuewer describes his advisory work for AIP’s history program, and how his work as an editor for the American Journal of Physics provided him a unique vantage point of the field. At the end of the interview, Stuewer reflects on what his scholarship has taught him about how humankind makes sense of the physical world.  

In this interview, Andrew Carballeira interviews architectural acoustician William Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh discusses his family and childhood, his education at MIT, and experiences in the US Army. He describes his subsequent work as a consultant for Bolt, Beranek, and Newman designing acoustics facilities at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the Air Force Academy. Cavanaugh then describes his work as an independent consultant after leaving BBN, and his role in the formation of the National Council of Acoustical Consultants. Finally, Cavanaugh discusses his writing on acoustics and architecture, particularly Architectural Acoustics: Principles and Practice, which he co-edited with Gregory Tocci and Joseph Wilkes.

In this interview, on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America, Rich Peppin interviews Carl Rosenberg, Principal Consultant and Co-Founder of Acentech. Rosenberg discusses his upbringing in Poughkeepsie, New York, his educational experiences at Princeton and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his service in the U.S. Army. Rosenberg describes his involvement with early card-punch computing, his entrance into the world of architectural acoustics and the career developments leading to him becoming President of Acentech. The interview concludes with Rosenberg sharing details of his family life.

Marcia Neugebauer discusses her childhood in New York City; mother's education at Vassar; her education at Cornell University in physics and philosophy; applying for jobs and graduate school; Master's at the University of Illinois, working with David Lazarus measuring diffusion in metals; marriage to Gerry Neugebuer; interviewing with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL); hired alongside Conway Snyder to study possible use of nuclear reactors for rocket propulsion; competition between the Army and Air Force; learning to work with instrumentation; Space Science Section of JPL; Ray Newburn; solar wind; Russian probes to study solar wind; Mariner 2 mission and subsequent media; Solar Wind Conference; Christopher Russell; Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ASLEP); International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE); Ulysses; leadership role with the American Geophysical Union (AGU); women in sciences and at JPL.

In this interview, Floyd Dunn discusses topics such as: the Acoustical Society of America (ASA); biomedical ultrasound; graduate school and working at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; working at the University of Arizona Department of Radiology; advised by Bill Fry; physical acoustics; Henning von Gierke; American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM); his family background; serving in the Army in World War II; acoustic radiation; Bill O'Brien; Leon Frizzell; becoming a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Family background, early education, and science-technology interests in California and Oregon; Willamette College and radio electronics; contacts with E.O. Lawrence; career as graduate student at University of California, Berkeley, 1942-1949; war work at Berkeley Radiation Laboratory and Los Alamos; security; attitudes toward Trinity test and Hiroshima; postwar political involvement; big machines and general comments on postwar physics.

Family background, education, and emergence of scientific orientation. Undergraduate years at Wellesley College (1912-1916); description of physics department. Assistant examiner in U.S. Patent Office during World War I. At MIT under E.B. Wilson as graduate student and laboratory assistant, then lab instructor (1920-24). Returned to MIT for doctoral work in 1928. Mathematical physics thesis under Norbert Wiener, while teaching at Wellesley. Depression years brought teaching position at Wilson College (1930-43), used Wellesley as model. Work on Zeeman Pattern earns her Guggenheim Fellowship (1949-50) at MIT and European labs. World War II years as head of OSRD British Report Section. Returned to Wilson (1945-56), worked part-time at National Science Foundation (1953-56). Retirement years including affiliation with U.S. Army and spectroscopic work at Harvard College Observatory. Comments on women in physics in U.S., her own opportunities, and teaching in general.

Early life in New York and California, and decision to do undergraduate work in astronomy at University of California at Berkeley. Decision during army service, 1955-1957, on a career in astronomy; return to Berkeley, 1957, for graduate work. Professional career: work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 1961-1964; return to Berkeley as professor in 1964, and research in galaxy-related problems. General problems in cosmology. Also prominently mentioned are: Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade, Jerry Brown, Armin Deutsch, Jesse Leonard Greenstein, Louis Henyey, Alfred H. Joy, Lou Kaplan, Richard Kron, Gerard Peter Kuiper, Nicholas Ulrich Mayall, Rudolph Leo Bernhard Minkowski, William Wilson Morgan, Guido Münch, George Preston, Ronald Reagan, Allan Sandage, Emanuel B. Spinrad, Bengt Georg Daniel Strömgren, Otto Struve, George Wallerston, Joe Wampler, Harold Weaver, Albert Edward Whitford; California Institute of Technology, Hayden Planetarium, International Astronomical Union, Lick Observatory, San Diego State University, Sky and Telescope, United States Army Map Service, and Yale Conference on Cosmology (1977).