HISTORY OF PHYSICS NEWSLETTER
Volume VI Number 5 -- October 1996
APS AND AIP NEWS APS Council Meeting
The APS Council met on May 5-6, 1996, in conjunction with the APS's spring meeting. The principal item of interest to Forum members was a report on the APS's major effort to develop and use electronic publishing for its journals. A particularly useful development has to do with the Physical Review On-Line Archive, or PROLA. This is a joint enterprise involving the Naval Research Laboratory, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the APS to develop an archive of past issues of APS journals with full linking and searching capabilities. The aim is to merge PROLA with current on-line APS journals. The status of this project can be monitored on line by starting with the Internet address:
http://publish.aps.org.
Celebrate the Centenary of the APS
The following progress report has been prepared by Brian Schwartz, Special Assistant to the APS Executive Officer for the Centenary.
The American Physical Society will be celebrating its 100th year in 1999, and the Forum on History of Physics is expected to play an important role in several of the centenary activities. These include the preparation of a chronological wall chart on 20th century physics, organization of a speakers bureau, and special sessions and displays at the Centenary Meeting in Atlanta scheduled for the last week in March 1999.
The APS has appointed a Planning Committee, chaired by Schwartz. Other members are Stephen G. Brush (University of Maryland), Luz Martinez-Miranda (University of Maryland), J. Thomas Ratchford (George Mason University), Martha H. Redi (Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory), Edward W. Thomas (Georgia Institute of Technology), Hans C. von Baeyer (College of William & Mary) and James T. Wynne (IBM Watson Research Center).
Each APS unit has appointed "centenary liaisons" to work with the unit and with the Centenary Committee in planning the celebration. The Forum on History of Physics has named C. Stewart Gillmor, Stanley Goldberg, John Rigden and Virginia Trimble as liaisons. Forum members may send suggestions and information to them and/or to any of the committee members listed above. [NB: e-mail addresses of the Forum's centenary liaisons are given above under Forum Officers.]
Wall Chart. A time-line wall chart will be produced by the APS and distributed free of charge to physics departments, high school physics teachers, libraries and laboratories. It will present a history of physics with an emphasis on the 20th century, including relations to other sciences, technology, and contemporary culture. Modular production techniques could supplement the wall chart, such as a multimedia CD-ROM and/or an Internet-accessible program as well as a "coffee table" book. On the recommendation of the Centenary Committee, APS has hired two consultants to prepare the wall chart: Prof. Sidney Perkowitz of Emory University as physicist/historian/writer, and Albert Gregory as the designer.
A wall on the 5th floor of the American Center for Physics building in College Park, MD, has been reserved for displaying the research materials and to aid in developing design possibilities for the wall chart. A "zeroth draft" chart should be ready for previewing by late September 1996. All visitors to the ACP will be urged to view and comment on this work-in-progress. This should be especially convenient for anyone who visits the Niels Bohr Library (on the 3rd floor in the same building) or comes for APS/AIP/AAPT committee meetings. Near-final versions will be available for display and comments at the March 1997 APS meeting in Kansas City and the April 1997 meeting in Washington, DC. Printing and mailing are scheduled for Spring 1998.
Centenary Speakers Bureau. The Centenary Committee, working with the APS unit liaisons, will identify a large number of first rate speakers willing to give historical/review talks on topics in physics. A booklet will be prepared, listing the speakers, their topics, and geographical locations; it will be widely distributed to colleges, universities, laboratories, high school teachers groups, etc., encouraging the recipients to schedule one or more talks at their institution to celebrate the Centenary during the 18-month period from Fall 1998 through the end of 1999. The booklets will be mailed in Summer 1998. Some funds may be available to subsidize invitations to speak at institutions with limited resources. APS members are encouraged to nominate speakers from all areas of physics, not only their own units.
Stamp. A proposal will be submitted to the U. S. Postal Service requesting a series of 4 stamps to celebrate the "Century of Physics" during the APS Centenary Year. Letters of support for this proposal, and suggestions for images and specific topics, should be sent directly to Brian Schwartz, c/o the APS, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD, 20740.
Atlanta Meeting. The Forum should start to plan special sessions for the 1999 Centenary meeting. Displays should also be prepared, such as history of women in physics in the 20th century, comparison of physics course work and text in 1899 with similar material in 1999, etc. In addition to Forum's own sessions, there will be plenary sessions at which a few speakers review the accomplishments of various subfields of physics in the 20th century.
All living Nobel Prize winners in physics will be invited to attend, and to speak briefly about one or two events in their lives of scientific and personal importance. There will be a Nobel Prize exhibit using the AIP Meggers Collection of prizewinner photos.
The meeting is expected to be international in character, with representatives from governments and physics societies of many countries. It will combine the usual March and Spring APS meetings, and will begin with two extra days (Saturday and Sunday, March 20-21) for celebratory events.
Center for History of Physics
Grants-in-Aid. The AIP's Center for History of Physics has a program of grants-in-aid for research in the history of modern physics and allied sciences (such as astronomy, geophysics, and optics) and their social interactions. Grants can be up to $2,400 each. They can be used only to reimburse direct expenses connected with the work. Preference will be given to those who need part of the funds for travel and subsistence to use the resources of the Center's Niels Bohr Library in College Park, Maryland, to microfilm papers, or to tape-record oral history interviews with a copy to be deposited in the Bohr Library. Applicants should either be working toward a graduate degree in the history of science (in which case they should include a letter of reference from their thesis adviser) or show a record of publication in the field. To apply, send a vitae plus a letter of no more than two pages describing your research project, and include a brief budget showing the expenses for which support is requested. Send to Spencer Weart, Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, tel. (301) 209-3174, fax (301) 209-0882, e-mail
sweart@aip.org. Deadlines for receipt of applications are June 30 and December 31 of each year.
New Web Site. A site featuring the history of physics and allied sciences is now available on the World Wide Web, mounted by the AIP Center for History of Physics. The address is
http://www.aip.org/history/. The Web is an outstanding new way to advance public understanding of the physical sciences and their relationship to society, and the AIP Center has moved aggressively to take advantage of the opportunity.
Users entering the site will find a number of options:
pages about the Center for History of Physics with information on the programs and services--for example, grants-in-aid and advice on oral history interviewing.
information on the AIP's Niels Bohr Library, including general descriptions of the holdings, a sample of finding aids to archival materials and abstracts of oral history interviews in the Library's collections, and information on how to get access to the materials (in person or by mail or e-mail).
an introduction to the Emilio Segr? Visual Archives, including a sample of photographs--some of them enlivened with quotes or vignettes--and forms that can be submitted to request copies of pictures.
a variety of Web links to other sites useful to anyone interested in the history of physics and allied sciences such as astronomy, geophysics and optics.
pages for the Friends of the Center for History of Physics, including "plaques" honoring past donors, and information on programs such as the donation of bookplates to honor or memorialize colleagues.
the AIP History of Physics Newsletter with information on current work, bibliography of books and articles, reports of new archival deposits in the field, photographs, etc.
a featured Web exhibit: Einstein: Image and Impact, using photographs, quotes, and text to present highlights of Albert Einstein's life. By the end of the year this will be expanded to a major site including over 80 photographs and 70,000 words of text.
Besides expanding the Einstein exhibit, during the coming year Center staff will mount a number of additional finding aids to collections and hundreds of additional photographs from the visual archives. Under development is a major search engine to support on-line access to abstracts of all the Library's archival holdings (published in the 1994 Guide to the Archival Collections in the Niels Bohr Library, but including more recent accessions), the Library's catalog of books, and the entire International Catalog of Sources for History of Physics and Allied Sciences..
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