In Memoriam

In 1905 Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) was awarded the second John Fritz Medal for a lifetime of outstanding achievements in science and technology. I sketch Kelvin’s life, education, and work in thermodynamics, electrical technology, and instrumentation, and his role in the laying of the Atlantic cable. I then turn to Kelvin’s four visits to America, in 1876 on the centenary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America; in 1884 when he gave his famous Baltimore Lectures at The Johns Hopkins University; in 1897 when he visited Niagara Falls for the third time and advised George Westinghouse (1846–1914) on how to develop its enormous water power for the generation of electricity; and in 1902 when he advised George Eastman (1854–1932) on the development of the photographic industry. Written in connection with the Kelvin Centenary Year 2007; see “Celebrating the Life of Lord Kelvin,” University of Glasgow News Review No. 11 (2007), 4. Matthew Trainer: Matthew Trainer received his M.Phil. degree in physical sciences at the University of Edinburgh in 1980 and currently is a laboratory instructor at the University of Glasgow where his research focuses in part on the life and work of Lord Kelvin.     

New injector boosts light intensity at the LNLS

The active participation by more than 70 attendees in a one-day workshop on in situ XAFS studies of nanocatalysts demonstrated that even though in situ XAFS studies of catalysts have been performed for over 30 years, the field is as vibrant and stimulating as ever. The workshop, held May 16, part of the 2006 Joint NSLS/CFN Users' Meeting, was co-organized by Simon Bare (UOP LLC) and Anatoly Frenkel (Yeshiva University). The format of the workshop was two overview presentations on the Synchrotron Catalysis Consortium, followed by nine technical presentations, and a poster session in conjunction with the main Users' Meeting. It is a pleasure to announce that the first place cash award for best student/postdoc poster was given to Minhua Shao (Stony Brook University) for his work on “novel electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction,” and the second place award was presented to Wen Wen (BNL – Chemistry) for his work on “in situ time-resolved characterization of novel Cu-MoO₂ catalysts during the water gas shift reaction.”     

First Protein Crystallography Experiments on a Synchrotron

My story started in the winter of 1973/1974. I was a graduate student at UCLA, my thesis work was going nowhere, and my wife was expecting a baby in the early summer, while we had no health insurance that would pay for this happy event. It was clearly time to find a place other than Los Angeles to continue work in protein crystallography. Since I wanted to study crystal structure of the nerve growth factor (NGF), and the West Coast expert in that field was Eric Shooter at Stanford, I asked him if he would be willing to accept me as a postdoc. He was, but had no funds. However, somehow he contacted Keith Hodgson and the two of them managed to find some money, to the best of my recollection in the Department of Psychiatry. Although Keith agreed to let me work on the structure of NGF and a few other proteins, he stipulated that my primary objective should be to help in setting up the first in the world beamline devoted to the use of synchrotron radiation for single-crystal diffraction from protein crystals. To tell the truth, I initially had some problems understanding what exactly he had in mind—somehow my undergraduate degree in physics did not cover that particular subject. Thus, in the late spring of 1974, the team was established—Keith at the lead, two postdocs (Margueritte Yevitz Bernheim and myself) and a graduate student, James Phillips. We were joined by Julia Goodfellow (now Dame Julia) a year later. And the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project also officially commenced at about the same time.     

Einstein as Engineer:The Case of the Little Machine

I first discuss Albert Einstein’s practical and educational background in engineering and then his invention of his “little machine,” an electrostatic induction machine, while working in the Patent Office in Bern, Switzerland, between 1902 and 1909. He believed that it could be used as a voltage or potential multiplier in experiments to test his new theory of Brownian motion of 1905. I then discuss Einstein’s search for collaborators to produce it and the work that his friends Conrad and Paul Habicht, in particular, did in designing and testing it. Although the initial response to it was promising, it never became a success after Paul Habicht manufactured a few specimens of it beginning in 1912.Today only three specimens are known to exist; these are preserved at the Zürcher Hochschule Winterthur, Switzerland, in the Physics Institute of the University of Tübingen, Germany, and in the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden,The Netherlands.     

Early Gravity-Wave Detection Experiments, 1960-1975

I discuss the experiments of Joseph Weber (1919-2000) of the University of Maryland between 1960 and 1973 that were aimed at the detection of gravity waves. He used throughout a quadratic detector to demodulate his antenna signal, which I analyze and compare to a linear detector.The latter was used by all of the other groups that entered the field. Of these, Richard Garwin and I at IBM were one of the first groups to publish, and I discuss in detail our experiments between 1973 and 1975. I then discuss the experiments that were carried out at Bell Labs-Rochester, Glasgow, Munich-Frascati,Moscow, and Tokyo. I compare the results, all of which were negative, with Webers claimed detection of large numbers of gravity-wave events, as many as seven per day. I conclude that these were not in fact gravity waves, but artifacts of his extremely hands-on data-analysis procedures, which I discuss in detail. Finally, I speculate on how this came about.     

Robert Vivian Pound and the Discovery of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Condensed Matter

This paper is based upon five interviews I conducted with Robert Vivian Pound in 2006–2007 and covers his childhood interest in radios, his time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory during the Second World War, his work on the discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance in condensed matter, his travels as a professor at Harvard University, and his social interactions with other physicists.     

In Memoriam

I sketch the rich life and multifaceted work of Philip Morrison (1915–2005), from his early life in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and higher education at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley, to his contributions to the Manhattan Project, his research at Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after the war, his subsequent political activity on behalf of nuclear disarmament, his role in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and his enormous influence as an educator, public speaker, and writer. A.P. French is Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.     

The National Synchrotron Light Source, Part II:The Bakeout

This is the second part of a two-part article about the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS), the first facility designed and built specifically for producing and exploiting synchrotron radiation. The NSLS,a $24-million project conceived about 1970 and officially proposed in 1976, had its groundbreaking in 1978. Its construction was a key episode in Brookhaven’s history, in the transition of synchrotron radiation from a novelty to a commodity, and in the transition of synchrotron-radiation scientists from parasitic to autonomous researchers. In this part I cover the construction of the NSLS.The story of its construction illustrates many of the tensions and risks involved in building a large scientific facility in a highly politicized environment: risking a facility’s quality by underfunding it versus asking for more funding and risking not getting it; focusing on meeting time and budget promises that risk compromising machine performance versus focusing on performance and risking cancellation; and the pros and cons of a pragmatic versus an analytic approach to commissioning. Robert P. Crease is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, and historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory.     

Fritz Reiche and the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars

I discuss the family background and early life of the German theoretical physicist Fritz Reiche (1883–1969) in Berlin; his higher education at the University of Berlin under Max Planck (1858–1947); his subsequent work at the University of Breslau with Otto Lummer (1860–1925); his return to Berlin in 1911, where he completed his Habilitation thesis in 1913, married Bertha Ochs the following year, became a friend of Albert Einstein (1879–1955), and worked during and immediately after the Great War. In 1921 he was appointed as ordentlicher Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Breslau and worked there until he was dismissed in 1933. He spent the academic year 1934–1935 as a visiting professor at the German University in Prague and then returned to Berlin, where he remained until, with the crucial help of his friend Rudolf Ladenburg (1882–1952) and vital assistance of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, he, his wife Bertha, and their daughter Eve were able to emigrate to the United States in 1941 (their son Hans had already emigrated to England in 1939).From 1941–1946 he held appointments at the New School for Social Research in New York, the City College of New York, and Union College in Schenectady, New York, and then was appointed as an Adjunct Professor of Physics at New York University, where his contract was renewed year-by-year until his retirement in 1958.     

Adsorption of iodoalkanes on graphite

In this work, we present a study of linear iodoalkanes physisorbed from their bulk liquid and at submonolayer coverages onto a graphite substrate by combining calorimetry, incoherent neutron scattering and synchrotron diffraction techniques. We identify that there is solid monolayer formation for these molecules for alkyl chain lengths of 5–12 carbons at high surface coverages. The monolayer structures of the odd homologues (5, 7, 9 and 11) have been addressed using synchrotron X-ray and neutron scattering at sub-monolayer coverages and indicate that the molecules lie with their carbon backbone parallel to the graphite surface with a Pgb plane group. Evidence for a non-bonded I–I interaction in the monolayers is also discussed.     

Personal Reminiscences from Daresbury

At Daresbury, the Three Bees commissioned the southern beamline on NINA (the Northern Institute for Nuclear Accelerators; see figure). John Beaumont was the first there. He was a member of Bill Hayes' group in Oxford and designed a custom, polarization-preserving, vertical Wadsworth monochromator, with 45 m entrance. I was the first doctoral student in synchrotron radiation, not only in our university but also at Daresbury before the early second-generation SRS (Synchrotron Radiation Source) storage ring was built. Joan Bordas was also a pioneer there, a pole vaulter from Cambridge where he worked with Yao Liang in Abe Yoffe's group. Daresbury was a country village, the birth place of Charles Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll.     

Enrico Fermi in Pisa

I discuss the early work of Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) as a student in Pisa at the Scuola Normale Superiore and at the University of Pisa (1918-1922), paying particular attention to the four papers he published during those years and to his licenza and doctoral theses.     

Edward Gerjuoy: From Physics to Law and Back Again

Theoretical physicist Edward Gerjuoy discusses his family background, elementary and secondary education in Brooklyn, New York, undergraduate studies at City College, graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, research during World War II, and subsequent career at the University of Southern California, New York University, the General Atomics Laboratory, the Radio Corporation of America, and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as his work as a lawyer and service as a judge on the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board in Pittsburgh.     

Personal View: Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation: A Personal Experience

The scope of this two-day meeting (held June 25–26, 2007), organized by the French MELUSYN (Medicine and Synchrotron Light) work group at the new synchrotron radiation facility SOLEIL (Saint-Aubin, France), was to create a timely forum for multi-disciplinary discussions on modern radiation biology. The meeting brought together physicists of diluted and condensed matter, chemists, biochemists, biologists, as well as physicians having a common interest in using synchrotron radiation in the UV, VUV, soft and hard X-ray ranges and the related techniques in order to explore at molecular, cellular or tissular levels various aspects of radiation effects on living systems and the medical consequences for radiotherapy.     

Richard Gans: The First Quantum Physicist in Latin America

Richard Gans (1880–1954) was appointed Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Physics of the National University of La Plata,Argentina, in 1912 and published a series of papers on quantum physics between 1915 and 1918 that marked him as the first quantum physicist in Latin America. I set Gans’s work within the context of his education and career in Germany prior to 1912 and his life and work in Argentina until 1925, as well as the foundation of the Institute of Physics of the National University of La Plata in 1906–1909 and its subsequent development by Emil Bose (1874–1911). I conclude by commenting on Gans’s life after he returned to Germany in 1925 and then immigrated once again to Argentina in 1947.     

A Conversation with Robert F. Christy – Part I

Robert F. Christy, Institute Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at Caltech, recalls his childhood in British Columbia; his undergraduate years at the University of British Columbia; his graduate work with J. Robert Oppenheimer at Berkeley; and his work on the Manhattan Project, first with Enrico Fermi at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago and then as a member of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos.     

Adventures with Synchrotron Radiation at Harvard

In the late 1950s, a 6 GeV electron synchrotron (the CEA) was being built at Harvard/MIT. Ed Purcell, who generally trafficked in volts (or maybe kilovolts), but never gigavolts, was thinking about what one could do with all that synchrotron radiation that otherwise would uselessly warm up the walls of the beamline (I remember well his student Roger Tsien's nice drawing of radiation from kinks in the outgoing E-field lines of an electron in relativistic circular motion; see Figure 1).     

Ultrafast X-ray science at the advanced light source

On May 19, 2004, 250 guests from all over the world joined the DESY research center to celebrate 40 years of research with synchrotron radiation at DESY in Hamburg. “The first measurements with the light beam from the DESY ring accelerator started in 1964. DESY was one of the seed laboratories in which the worldwide success story of research with synchrotron radiation began,” Albrecht Wagner, chairman of the DESY Board of Directors, explained in his welcoming address. “Today, more than 1,900 scientists from 31 countries come to DESY every year to carry out experiments with synchrotron radiation.”

Forty years ago, synchrotron radiation at DESY started from scratch. At the beginning of the 1960s, the radiation generated by the electrons in the bending magnets of their new 6 GeV electron synchrotron was regarded by DESY particle physicists as an unwanted, disruptive effect.     

Arthur E. Haas,His Life and Cosmologies

This paper describes the life and scientific development of Arthur E. Haas, from his early career as young, ambitious Jewish-Austrian scientist at the University of Vienna to his later career in exile at the University of Notre Dame. Haas is known for his early contributions to quantum physics and as the author of several textbooks on topics of modern physics. During the last decade of his life, he turned his attention to cosmology. In 1935 he emigrated from Austria to the United States. There he assumed, on recommendation of Albert Einstein, a faculty position at the University of Notre Dame. He continued his work on cosmology and tried to establish relationships between the mass of the universe and the fundamental cosmological constants to develop concepts for the early universe. Together with Georges Lemaître he organized in 1938 the first international conference on cosmology, which drew more than one hundred attendants to Notre Dame. Haas died in February 1941 after suffering a stroke during a visit in Chicago.