University of Oklahoma

Interview with Neal Lane, University Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University, with an additional affiliation at the Baker Institute for Public Policy. Lane recounts his childhood in Oklahoma and his education at the University of Oklahoma, where Chun Lin became his thesis advisor for his research on the excitation of a sodium atom from its ground state. He discusses his postdoctoral appointment at Queen’s University of Belfast to work with Alex Dalgarno before taking a position at JILA in Boulder. Lane describes his work with Sydney Geltman and the opportunity to take a faculty position at Rice, and he discusses his role as NSF physics division director. He narrates his decision to become chancellor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, before returning to Rice to serve as provost. Lane describes how the Clinton administration invited him to lead the NSF. He explains the importance of direct communication with OMB, his relationship with Al Gore, and the key guidance offered by National Academy reports. Lane describes the LIGO effort from his vantage point at the NSF, and he explains his time as director of OSTP and Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. Lane discusses his work for PCAST and in the creation of the NNSA, and he describes returning to Rice after Gore lost the presidency, where the Baker Institute allowed him an environment to continue working in science and policy. At the end of the interview, Lane emphasizes the power of human connections as the foundation of all good science and policy endeavors.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral historian for AIP, interviews Jerry C. Elliot-High Eagle, president and CEO of High Eagle Technologies. Elliot-High Eagle discusses his current work at High Eagle Technologies, where he is focused on developing blood oxygenation solutions relevant to therapies for a variety of health maladies. He recounts his childhood in Oklahoma, his Cherokee heritage, and the early visions he experienced for which he saw his involvement in the moon landing as destiny. He describes growing up poor, and the opportunities which made it possible for him to graduate from the University of Oklahoma as the first Native American to attain a degree in physics. Elliot-High Eagle describes his work in law enforcement and how he almost got drafted to go to Vietnam, and he explains the unlikely events that led to his work at NASA, where he worked over a long career in many positions, including as lead retrofire officer for the Apollo 13 mission, for which he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Elliot-High Eagle discusses the numerous difficulties he experienced at NASA as a minority. He describes the frontier mentality at NASA at the beginning of his career, when there was no precedent for anything that was being developed for the space missions. Elliot-High Eagle explains how his sense of patriotism to the United States only grew stronger in the face of the adversities he endured at NASA, and he describes some of the key differences in his work from Apollo 11 to Apollo 13. He discusses his involvement in efforts to improve telecommunications access for Native Americans, and why he was well-positioned to do this as a NASA employee. Elliot-High Eagle discusses his work on the Apollo-Soyuz mission, and he reflects on the role of space missions amid the broader Cold War competition. He describes his long-term mentoring interest in increasing educational and professional opportunities for young Native Americans, and at the end of the interview he explains how and why he has integrated his spiritual views and experiences within his professional life and pursuits in advancing science.

Family background and early education; University of Oklahoma; graduate work and electrical engineering at California Institute of Technology. Bell Laboratories, 1936-1946; colloquium and other social structures; early solid state physics work; Fletcher’s group with Foster Nix and William Shockley; war years, work on radar bomb sights; postwar years. Move to Hughes Aircraft Company, 1946-1953; formation and accomplishments of Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge after 1953; current interests. Also prominently mentioned are: Joseph A. Becker, R. S. Bowen, Walter Houser Brattain, Oliver E. Buckley, Joseph Ashby Burton, Karl Kelchner Darrow, Clinton Joseph Davisson, Paul Sophus Epstein, Conyers Herring, C. N. Hickman, Howard Hughes, J. B. Johnson, Edward Karrouse, Mervin J. Kelly, G. A. Kelsall, J. W. McRae, Robert Andrews Millikan, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Gerald Leondus Pearson, Don Quarles, Simon Ramo, Rhine, Duane Roller, Hellvar Skaade, William Ralph Smythe, Leopold Stokowski, Richard Chase Tolman, Charles Hard Townes, Howell J. Williams, Jewel Wurtzbaugh, Fritz Zwicky; American Physical Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States Air Force, and Western Electric Company.