Interview with Tsuneyoshi (Tune) Kamae, Professor Emeritus, both of the University of Tokyo, Department of Physics and of SLAC. Kamae discusses his current work configuring digital devices on science education for the visually impaired, and he recounts his childhood in Himeji and then Osaka, Japan and his early memories of World War II. He describes his undergraduate education at Kyoto University and his developing interest in physics and the opportunity that led to his acceptance at Princeton to work with Val Fitch on the root cause of CP violation. Kamae describes his postdoctoral work at KEK in Japan, where he studied the internal motion of the proton inside the nucleus, and he explains the circumstances that led him to LBL and then SLAC to work on the Time Projection Chamber. He discusses his involvement with the SSC planning and how he became involved in X-ray astronomy. Kamae discusses SLAC’s embrace of astrophysics under the leadership of Burt Richter, and he reflects on some of the cultural differences in physics environments in the United States and Japan. At the end of the interview Kamae shares his hopes for the future of the education program he is developing, and he discusses some of the strategic challenges Japan is facing in light of its demographic trends.
Interview with Blair Ratcliff, emeritus physicist and Permanent Member of the Laboratory Staff at SLAC. Ratcliff describes his ongoing work at the Lab since he retired in 2017, and he recounts his childhood in Iowa after World War II. He describes his undergraduate education in physics at Grinnell College and he explains the opportunities that led to his graduate work at Stanford, where he immediately gravitated toward SLAC as it was being built. Ratcliff describes working under the direction of Burt Richter in Group C, and he discusses his postgraduate research at CERN where the ISR colliders were starting. He discusses returning to SLAC to join David Leith on Group B and his work as spokesman on the spectroscopy program. Ratcliff narrates the origins of BaBar and his decision to create the Physics Analysis Group and to build up the SuperB factory. He discusses his advisory work for the Dune and LZ experiments, and he reflects on winning the APS Instrumentation Award. At the end of the interview, Ratcliff considers BaBar’s contribution to understanding the cosmic imbalance of matter and antimatter, and he conveys a sense of serendipity that BaBar came together at the right time, at the right place, and with the right people.
