A Forum of The American Physical Society
Volume IX No 3 Fall 2004
History of Physics Newsletter
Martin J. Klein, winner of first Pais Award in History of Physics
REPORT FROM THE CHAIR
Nina Byers, Forum Chair
Stephen S. Brush, one of our illustrious past officers, wrote an interesting and thought-provoking article entitled “Scientists as Historians” [Osiris, 10: 215-31 (1995)] which was very helpful to me when I first began to do research and writing on history of physics. He remarks that there is a distinction one can make between history of physics and physicists’ history. Though the distinction is subtle and somewhat arguable, I find it a useful way of classifying scholarship. Simply put (no doubt an oversimplification) the distinction is that history of physics tends to place developments in physics in the social environment (sociological, political, economic, historical, etc.) in which they took place, while physicists’ history tends to focus more narrowly on physics advances and how they occurred. Both are fields of study to which our members can make useful contributions.
The era we have lived through has been one of great discoveries and advances in physics. Many APS members have been, and perhaps still are, active participants, and have historical data they can share with other interested parties. To facilitate this we have sponsored FHP contributed paper sessions at April general meetings whenever a sufficient number of historical papers have been submitted, and would like to do so as well at the March meeting. We hope a good number of members will make such contributions. The length of FHP talks cannot be more than twenty minutes. We realize that for most us writing historical papers is an unfamiliar and difficult occupation but we hope members will find a short talk possible. Abstracts in total are limited to ~ 200 words. To be published in the Bulletin the abstracts must now be submitted electronically. See http://www.aps.org/meet/abstracts/. Contributors may also submit abstracts on paper, either by mail or fax. However contributors who submit abstracts on paper will have only their titles and author list published in the Bulletin of The American Physical Society. The text of the abstracts will not appear either in print or online. We are advised that the electronic submission form for the March and April 2005 meetings will be available online at the end of September 2004. If you are submitting an abstract, please be sure to indicate it is in category 18.3 (history). We hope to have lively FHP contributed paper sessions in the March and April meetings.
Before going on to tell you about other new and exciting innovations the Forum is working on for 2005, I would like to add a caveat to what I have written above. Many of our colleagues have spanned the divide between what might be termed history of physics and physicists’ history. Illustrious examples are Gerald Holton, Peter Galison, Stephen Brush himself and many others. It does not seem useful to me to keep these two forms of scholarship separate. I have drawn attention to this interesting distinction in an effort to encourage members to share with us their thoughts on past history, even though they may feel they are not historians and cannot do so professionally. Personal recollections of physicists who have been involved in the many wonderful discoveries of the past century are, in my view, of interest and great value. The remarks I have made here may be controversial and, if so, I hope they will provoke discussion which may appear in future Newsletters.
As Chair of the Forum I am proud that FHP provides a number of venues for scholarship and discussion of historical issues. We not only will be sponsoring contributed paper sessions, we also will sponsor several invited speaker sessions in both the March and April meetings. For celebrations of the World Year of Physics – the Einstein Year, the APS has suggested that, with their financial help, we provide invited speakers to regional APS meetings . (See Harry Lustig’s Treasurer’s Report for details. Please contact Chair-elect Bob Romer, chair of FHP Program Committee, for further information.) Our vice-Chair Virginia Trimble, together with the APS Topical Group in Gravitation (GGR), is creating a program of speakers who will be available for schools and other groups for 2005 - the World Year of Physics. See http://www.physics2005.org/speakers. Volunteers are being solicited for the list of speakers. As you will see on the website, schools and colleges around the country are invited to request a speaker. Details can be found at http://www.phys.utb.edu/WYPspeakers/REQUESTS/howto.html. The APS general fund is providing some funds to cover travel expenses for some speakers whose host institutions may not otherwise be able to support them.
Additional special plans for 2005 are the initiation of FHP ‘Named’ lectures in the March and April meetings and the award of the Abraham Pais Prize. The first recipient of the Pais Prize will be Martin Klein, and he will present an associated lecture. In the April meeting a ‘Named’ lecture will be given in honor of Gertrud Scharff Goldhaber and in March there will be a Robert H. Dicke lecture. Donors have generously given financial support for these. Please see the Treasurer’s Report regarding this and a new development, the creation of a ‘Special Fund’ in the FHP account to receive donations earmarked for Forum use. Finally I would like to draw your attention to the report of John Rigden from the Historical Sites Committee in this Newsletter which inter alia tells us that “During the year 2005, the centennial of Einstein’s most creative year and the year being celebrated internationally as the World Year of Physics, the Historical Sites Committee will seek to name several sites for national recognition.” We expect that the Historical Sites Program will be a continuing activity for years to come which will enrich our nation’s appreciation of its past.
Editor’s Note
Online vs. Paper
As with everyone else in our e-connected world we are confronted with the question of whether or not to continue sending our Newsletter to readers the old-fashioned way, that is, by paper. The alternative is to join the on-line revolution and offer it exclusively via the web, thereby saving considerable money. Fortunately we do not have to face this Hobson’s choice. Due to a generous, anonymous donation our paper mailing will continue, at least for the next several years. (See treasurer’s report). But please be advised, if you specifically request so, we will discontinue mailing the paper version to you. Please send an email to the Editor to this effect, if you would like to be taken off the paper mailing list. Of course the Newsletter is always available online at www.aps.org/units/fhp/FHPnews, in both pdf and html formats.
Invitation to our Members
Please consider this to be a continuing invitation to all our members to use this venue as a platform for any of you whose personal memories and observations are of possible interest to our readers, and I would like you to consider this to be a standing invitation to send us for consideration whatever items you think might be worth presenting. The Editor would also appreciate being alerted to articles and books in the history of physics, personal and institutional histories, memoirs, and any other works in physics history that would be worth calling to our readers’ attention, as well as announcements of appropriate meetings and other such activities.
FHP Homepage
We invite our readers to visit the FHP Homepage, where information concerning many FHP activities can be obtained. There you will find links to other history of science websites, details of committee memberships, all back issues of the FHP Newsletter, etc. Go to: www.aps.org/units/fhp/
Corregidum
The volume number of the Spring 2004 issue of the Newsletter was incorrectly listed as Volume XI No.2. The correct listing is Volume IX No. 2.
Call for Contributed Talks
In honor of the World Year of Physics, your Forum will host sessions of contributed talks at both the March (21-25, Los Angeles) and April (16-19, Tampa) meetings. This conveniently coincides with a decision by APS council to allow each member at each meeting to give a talk at a session of some forum as well as a technical talk at a division or topical group session, without either being placed on the supplementary program. Please consider sharing your interests in history of physics by giving such a talk! See the Report from the Chair above for further details.
For March (only) there will be some travel support, probably $500, available for one outstanding student, giving a contributed talk, who will be designated the John Bardeen Student, thanks to a donation from his family. If you have (or are) such a student, when the abstract is ready, please also send it to vtrimble@uci.edu with a note that this is a candidate for the Bardeen title. The student selected by a subcommittee will be notified early in December.-
FIRST PAIS AWARD GRANTED: WINNER IS ANNOUNCED TO BE MARTIN J. KLEIN Report by Roger H. Stuewer
Martin J. Klein, Eugene Higgins Professor Emeritus of History of Physics and Professor Emeritus of Physics at Yale University, is the winner of the 2005 APS/AIP Abraham Pais Award for the History of Physics “for his pioneering studies in the history of 19th and 20th-century physics, which embody the highest standards of scholarship and literary expression and have profoundly influenced generations of historians of physics.” He will deliver his Pais Lecture at the APS meeting in Tampa, Florida, April 16-19, 2005. The talk is entitled “Physics, History, and the History of Physics”.
Klein received his higher education in physics at Columbia University and MIT and was appointed to the faculty of the Case Institute of Technology in 1949. He spent a year as an NRC Fellow at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies in 1952-1953, received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study at the Lorentz Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Leiden in 1958-1959, and served as Acting Chairman of the Department of Physics at Case during 1966-1967. His research was principally on the theory of thin ferromagnetic films and on various theoretical problems in statistical mechanics.
Klein’s research began to turn to the history of physics during his year in Leiden, when he published a two-part paper on Ehrenfest’s contributions to the development of quantum statistics and edited Ehrenfest’s Collected Scientific Papers. In 1962-1963 he published further papers on Ehrenfest’s work and his penetrating studies of Planck and the beginnings of quantum theory and of Einstein’s first paper on quanta. During the following four years, he published several more papers on Planck’s and Einstein’s contributions to quantum theory, and Einstein’s, Schrödinger’s, Planck’s, and Lorentz’s letters on wave mechanics, which he translated into English. This distinguished body of historical work led to the award of a second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967-1968 and to his appointment as Professor of the History of Physics at Yale University in the fall of 1967. Since then he has held a number of visiting appointments at other universities, lectured widely, and published a large number of further historical papers, as well as his magnificent biography of Ehrenfest and biographies of Ehrenfest, Einstein, and Gibbs for the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. In addition, he served as senior editor of four volumes of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, further enhancing his reputation as one of the most profound analysts of Einstein’s life and work.
Klein is a Fellow of the AAAS and of the APS and has been elected to the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
PAIS AWARD FUND RAISING CONTINUES Report by Harry Lustig
After three years of effort, the APS Award in the History of Physics, under the aegis of FHP and AIP’s Center for History of Physics, is now firmly established. It has been named in honor of Abraham Pais, and the first winner has been chosen, as noted above.
The endowment of $100,000 that is required to establish an Award has been reached and mirabile dictu, and, most fortuitously on the threshold of the centenary celebration of Einstein’s annus mirabilis, it has been exceeded. We now have $140,000 in hand.
As soon as the Award Selection Committee, the FHP Executive Committee, and APS noted that achievement, there was a unanimous agreement and commitment to mount an effort to elevate the Pais Award to the Pais Prize. A prize, which carries a stipend of $10,000 based on an endowment of $200,000, is the highest scholarly distinction that the APS can confer. Most of the divisions of APS, which unite physicists in the traditional research disciplines, award such a prize. We believe that it is important for the recognition of the field of history of physics and of its practitioners that there be a Pais Prize.
Therefore, our fund-raising continues. We have some outstanding prospects for donations and a pledge from a foundation to contribute the last $13,000. However, a substantial gap remains. Thus, both personal contributions and pledges, as well as "tips" about individuals who may be prospects for sizeable gifts, are very much welcome and needed. Please send the former, as well as inquiries on how to make a gift or pledge to
Darlene Logan, Director of Development, The American Physical Society,One Physics Ellipse College Park, MD 20740-3844, Phone (301)209-3224, Fax (301)209-0867; E-mail logan@aps,org. Send the latter to me or any other member of the committee. It consists of Benjamin Bederson (chair through 2004), Gloria Lubkin, Michael Riordan, Roger Stuewer, Spencer Weart, and Harry Lustig, Chair
APS FORMS HISTORICAL SITES COMMITTEE
Report by John S. Rigden
The designation of a site as “historical” can attract attention. More importantly, however, a historical site can be the means of informing and educating the viewing public. With these ends in mind, Michael Riordan, in his capacity as chairman of the APS Forum on the History of Physics, established the Historic Sites Committee (HSC). Appointed to the committee were Gordon Baym, Sid Drell, Millie Dresselhaus, Gerald Holton, and John Rigden. Spencer Weart serves as an advisor to the committee. Rigden was named the chairman by the committee.
The charge, pending approval by the APS Executive Board to the HSC is to “examine policy issues and other questions regarding the implementation of a proposed American Physical Society project to select, signify and publicize noteworthy institutions and locations in the United States where major advances in physics occurred….The Committee may also serve as the selection committee charged with naming these sites if that option is later deemed desirable by the Executive Committee of the Forum on History of Physics, and it will keep the Executive Committee well informed of its recommendations.”
We, members of the committee, believe the presence of strategically-placed plaques that identify sites of historical significance to physics will be an effective means to raise public awareness of physics. We also recognize that the initiative will benefit physicists by increasing their own awareness of important past scientific advances, hence of the historic evolution of their profession.
Two categories of sites will be selected: the first category, (C1), consists of those sites with national/international significance to physics and its history; the second category, (C2), consists of sites with more local significance. The committee will select both C1 and C2 sites either from potential sites suggested by committee members or from those sites formally nominated by APS members. Both C1 and C2 sites will carry the imprimatur of the American Physical Society.
C1 sites can be focused on an individual(s) or an event such as the Michelson-Morley experiment in Cleveland, Henry Rowland’s lab in Baltimore, Willard Gibbs at Yale, Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. Also, C1 sites can be a place (examples might be Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Jefferson Laboratory at Harvard, University of Chicago, MIT, Fermilab, SLAC, Bell Labs) where many important advances have been made by physicists of renown.
Before APS makes public a selected site, the committee will obtain the endorsement of those individuals historically connected to the event being celebrated and an agreement will be made with the local authority administering the selected site that enables the plaque to be mounted at the site in a way that is readily accessible to public view. For C2 sites, nominations will be made largely by individuals at the local level familiar with events of physics-related interest. A standard nomination form will be posted on the Historic Sites (HS) web page along with a few selection criteria. From these nominations, the HSC members will select sites to be recognized. The HSC will keep the FHP Executive Committee informed about its activities.
Selection criteria are now being developed. In this process, we are guided by the experience of the National Register and groups, such as the Institute of Physics, that recognize sites of historical importance. Since we believe that local sites have a great potential for raising a community’s awareness of physics, we shall adopt somewhat more liberal selection criteria for C2 sites. During the year 2005, the centennial of Einstein’s most creative year and the year being celebrated internationally as the World Year of Physics, the Historical Sites Committee will seek to name several sites for national recognition.
Plaques will have a standard format.. A ceremony will be held at the site when the plaque is unveiled.
After the APS Executive Board has approved the HSC initiative, an announcement will be made inviting nominations for site recognition.
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS Report by Michael Riordan
This year the Forum’s Nominating Committee, which I chair, faces a truly daunting task. In addition to convincing good candidates to run for Vice Chair and the Executive Committee positions that will come open, it must also find them for Treasurer and Forum Councilor. The latter will be vacated in 2006 by Gloria Lubkin, who has ably represented the Forum on the APS Council for two terms. Thus we need an unusually large number of good historians and physicists to come forward in the next few months and offer to take on these responsibilities.
The health and vitality of the Forum depend crucially on such people. Therefore I seek the help of the entire membership in identifying these candidates in the coming months, when the Nominating Committee will be doing its work. Please forward your suggestions to me at my new email address, mriordan@ucsc.edu. And if you wish to run for office yourself, we would of course be delighted!
FHP OFFICERS 2004-2005
Chair: Nina Byers
Chair-Elect: Robert Romer
Vice Chair: Virginia Trimble
Acting Secretary-Treasurer: Kenneth W. Ford
MEMBERS AT LARGE
Patrick McCray, Daniel Siegel, Noemie Benczer-Koller , Michael Nauenberg , John Rigden, Roger H. Stuewer
EX OFFICIO MEMBERS
Michael Riordan, Gloria B. Lubkin, Spencer R. Weart, Benjamin Bederson
COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIPS
Editorial Board and Publications Committees
Benjamin Bederson, Chair, William Evenson, Daniel Greenberger, John Rigden, Michael Riordan, Spencer Weart
Fellowship Committee
Virginia Trimble, Chair,Gerald Holton, Robert Romer, Roger Stuewer
Nominating Committee
Michael Riordan, Chair , Noemie Benczer-Koller, Gloria Lubkin, Daniel Segal, George Trilling
Program Committee
Robert Romer, Chair, Nina Byers, Laurie Brown, Gerald Holton, Harry Lustig, Michael Nauenberg, John Rigden, Roger Stuewer, Virginia Trimble
(Pais) Award Committee
Harry Lustig, Chair, Benjamin Bederson, Gloria Lubkin, Michael Riordan, Roger Stuewer, Spencer Weart
(Pais) Award Selection Committee
Roger Stuewer, Chair, Allan D. Franklin, Lillian Hoddeson, Anne J. Kox, Spencer Weart
Membership Committee
Harry Lustig, Chair, William Evenson, Patrick McCray, Michael Nauenberg, Daniel Siegel, Virginia Trimble
Historic Sites Committee
John Rigden, Chair, Gordon Baym, Alan Chodos, Sidney Drell, Mildred Dresselhaus, Gerald Holton, Spencer Weart
INVITED PAPERS, MARCH AND APRIL APS MEETINGS.
We present a short summary of the two invited paper sessions at the March APS meeting and the three such sessions at the April meeting. Several of these sessions were jointly sponsored by other APS units, as indicated. We thank all of the organizers of these sessions; they were well attended and received. Several summaries of talks are included; abstracts of most of the remaining talks can be obtained from the APS website by clicking on “meetings”.
March Meeting
The History of Physics in Canada: Some Highlights.
Harriet Brooks: Canada’s First Woman Physicist Geoffrey Rayner-Canham (Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University)
McLennan, Allen and Misener : Low temperature physics at Toronto in 1920-1936 and the discovery of superfluidity. Allan Griffin (Department of Physics, University of Toronto)
Boris P. Stoicheff (Department of Physics, University of Toronto)
Brockhouse and others: Neutron Scattering and Condensed Matter Physics at Chalk River Labs
Eric Svensson (National Research Council Canada, Steacie Institute Neutron Program, Chalk River Laboratories, Stn. 18. Chalk River, ON, K0J 1J0 Canada)
The History of Physics in Industrial Laboratories. Jointly sponsored by FHP and FPS
From X-Rays to MRI: Physics in GE Roland W. Schmitt (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) The Rise of Basic Research at tha Bell Labs: Young Turks and Younger Turks Philip Anderson (Princeton University) The History of Physics at IBM T.J. Watson Laboratories Allen Fowler (IBM) Physics at Microsoft Research Jennifer Chayes (Microsoft)
Monolayers and Multilayers: Agnes Pockels and Katharine Blodgett. Jointly sponsored by FHP and CSWP
Agnes Pockels: Life, Letters and Papers
Christiane A. Helm (Institut fur Physik, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Universitat, 17489
100 Years of Monolayers at the Air/Water Interface: Agnes Pockel’s Scientific Legacy
Charles Knobler (Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1569)
Katharine B. Blodgett: Aunt, Friend and Physicist Katharine Gebbie (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
70 Years of Built-Up Films: Katharine Blodgett's Scientific Legacy Daniel Schwartz (Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder)
April Meeting
The Discovery of Black Holes. Jointly sponsored by DAP and FHP—report by Virginia Trimble
Observers’ black holes have sizes comparable with their Schwarzschild radii, R = 2GM/c^2, are too massive to be neutron stars, and swallow things. These undoubtedly exist in two, three, or more contexts concurred the five speakers at “The Discovery of Black Holes” session (Drs. Omer Blaes on active galaxies, Fulvio Melia on the Milky Way, Jeff McClintock on X-ray binaries, Cole Milleron undetected, primordial, intermediate mass, and other obscure black holes, and Virginia Trimble, a last minute substitute for Werner Israel on history and theory of the topic.)
The consensus contexts are galactic centers and binary stars. Black holes of millions to billions of solar masses, accreting from their surroundings, have long been accepted as the best-bet power sources for quasars and other active galaxies. A more recent discovery is that nearly all galaxies have such black holes, with masses typically 0.1% of their masses in old (bulge, spheroid) stars. The non-active ones are hungry rather than hole-less, and progress on the details of how the accretion energy is transformed into magnetic fields and relativistic particles has been painfully slow in the 40 years since the basic model was put forward (Blaes).
Our own Milky Way is only mildly active, with a compact central radio source known for decades as Sgr A* and its X-ray and infrared counterpartsfound more recently (indeed the infrared one in the last few months). It is fairly hungry at best, because there isn’t much around for it to accrete, but it is in fact even fainter than the gas supply would suggest, meaning that, one way or another, energy goes down the tubes. There are, of course, competing mechanisms (Melia).Compact sources of X-rays in our own and other nearby galaxies are generally associated with close orbiting star pairs. Radial velocity curves of the star you see optically can then be used to estimate the mass of the star you don’t see, and a dozen or more of these now fall unambiguously in the black hole X-ray binary category, with masses of 6 - 16 solar masses and some evidence for distortions of the surrounding space-time, swallowing, etc. Theorists are quite happy to produce these in requisite numbers (McClintock).
Among the other sorts of possible black holes are the very small, the very large, and the very intermediate. Mini (primordial) BHs are either not very common in the universe, do not emit Hawking-Bekenstein radiation in the expected fashion, or both. Very large ones floating alone through space would gravitationally lens their backgrounds and are also not a major part of the cosmic dark matter.
The newest category contains the intermediate mass black holes of 100 - 1000 solar massses, bigger than the XRB ones but smaller than the galactic nuclei citizens. These are the most straightforward explanation of compact X-ray sources, mostly in other nearby galaxies with active star formation, that have energy outputs which must otherwise be greatly in excessive of the Eddington limit or strongly beamed. There is also some dynamical evidence for these at the centers of a few star clusters, and theorists (including Miller) are hard at work producing them. A theorist’s black hole has strange things inside, and of the existence of these we are far less certain. Possibilities include balls of superstring, time and space exchanging their identities, true singularities, and entrances to time machines. A good many theoretical issues (white holes, Einstein-Rosen bridges, implications of alternative theories of gravity...) remain, but the most exciting unanswered question is whether naked singularities, without a censoring horizon, can form in the real world
(Trimble substituted as Chair)
Science Advising. Jointly sponsored by FHP and Forum on Physics and Society
D. Allan Bromley, Yale University, "The President's Scientists: Reminiscences of a White House Science Advisor"
Gregg Herken, University of California, "Presidential Science Advising from Roosevelt to Reagan"
Wolfgang Panofsky, SLAC, "Science Advising Successes and Failures"
Jack H. Gibbons, "On Advising Congress and the President" See article.
Joel Primack, UC Santa Cruz, "The Congressional Science Fellow Program and Other Efforts to Help Congress and the Public Make Wiser Decisions on Technology"
Mössbauer Spectroscopy: Various Historical Perspectives. Report by Catherine Westfall
Argonne National Laboratory
This session, which was organized by Catherine Westfall and chaired by Gopal Shenoy, started with a brief introduction by Shenoy. As Shenoy explained, starting in the mid-1950s, Rudolf Mössbauer, a German graduate student, conducted experiments that demonstrated in the next three years that an atomic nucleus in a crystal does not recoil when it emits a gamma ray and provides the entire emitted energy to the gamma ray. Mössbauer spectroscopy subsequently became a powerful tool in a variety of fields, including nuclear and condensed matter physics. A current—and exotic – application of Mössbauer spectroscopy is the pair of palm-sized spectrometers on the Mars Explorations Rovers which began analyzing rock samples in Spring, 2004.
John Schiffer then focused on the period right after Mössbauer published his discovery in 1958/59. Although at first few believed his Mössbauer’s result was real, it was confirmed in August 1959 and quickly understood in analogy with the recoil-free scattering of x-rays essential to x-ray diffraction, known since the 1920s. A very favorable case was quickly discovered in 57Fe. The next few months were exciting and eventful as the implications of the discovery were pursued. As many as five Letters were published in a single issued of Physical Review Letters, with a turn around time of 2-3 weeks between submission and publication. In the first few months of 1960 a variety of new physics topics were explored, from hyperfine fields and chemical shifts to relativistic effects. Particularly interesting was the description of the gravitational red shift experiments Ted Cranshaw and Schiffer did with others at Harwell that confirmed the expected effect at the 10% level and story of the competition with Robert Pound and Glen Rebka.
The next part of the story was taken up by Hans Frauenfelder, who organized the first international Mössbauer spectroscopy conference in June 1960 at a conference center, “Allerton House” operated by the University of Illinois. The rush of exciting new data meant that Fraunfelder felt compelled to organize the conference in a mere five weeks and to proceed with a leg broken in a skiing accident. Despite the late notice, everyone came. The 90-member list of participants included three who were – or were to become – Nobel laureates (Madame C. S. Wu and John Bardeen, in addition to Mössbauer himself, who by then was at Caltech.) The sessions went from 8:30 am to past midnight, and controversies raged, for example, on the interpretation of the gravitation red shift experiments. The conference proceedings, which was published in 1962, served as an important reference for work in the field. The early excitement had lasting results: the conference ended up starting a series of conferences that continue in 2004.
Catherine Westfall next gave a historical overview. Focusing in particular on Mössbauer spectroscopy at Argonne, she explored the role played by large multidisciplinary U.S. national laboratories – the so-called “Homes of Big Science” in the production of research. She first examined two smaller-scale efforts: a program led by nuclear physicists in the early 1960s that explored xenon compounds and a program led by condensed matter physicists in the mid-1960s through the 1970s that studied transuranics. She compared this work with research performed since the 1990s at the Mössbauer beamline at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source, the largest operating U.S. accelerator. She judged the APS work to be surprisingly similar to the earlier work, concluding that it represented a different kind of little science rather than Big Science. Further she noted that large laboratories provide “sites of collaboration,” exotic materials, and specialized equipment that facilitate novel research at a variety of scales.
Hollis Wickman finished up the session with a talk that discussed what he sees as the closing chapter for “new physics” inherent in the Mössbauer effect – work from 1964 to 1970 focused on condensed matter phenomena that affect the various spectroscopic parameters measured: isomer shift, recoil free fraction, magnetic hyperfine interaction, and the quadrupole interaction. He noted that wrapping up the dynamic phenomena included essentially all of the earlier static effect physics as well. Wickman also noted that it took about 12 years to “mine” all the new spectroscopic physics from the Mössbauer effect. This was remarkably fast, given the primitive state of computers at the time. As a calibration for the “physics problems,” high temperature superconductivity was discovered in 1987, but is still a mystery in many important respects.
April APS Meeting contributed papers session.
The contributed papers session at the April APS meeting , held on Monday May 3, was a smashing success, taking place before a packed room from beginning to end. Six papers were presented. It was Chaired by Bob Romer.
The first paper was by Harry Lustig, [ APS Treasurer Emeritus] Professor of Physics Emeritus at the City College of New York. The title was “Germany's failure to achieve an atomic bomb in World War II: bad science, good intentions or neither?” Lustig has been exploring this question [intensively] for the past two years. He has traveled to Munich and Berlin, and has examined many archived documents at their original sources. He showed some copies of several of these documents during his talk. While he was not ready to draw a definitive conclusion, he opined that in all likelihood the answer was "neither". There was a remarkable lack of priority attached to the German atomic bomb project by the government. Lustig pointed out the enormously larger effort exerted on rocket and missile research, compared to atomic weapons research-an observation already made by Goudsmit in his ALSOS report. Unlike Paul Lawrence Rose in his book "Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1946 – A Study in German Culture", Lustig did not belittle the scientific progress made by the Germans, including Heisenberg, who, perhaps after some initial fumbling, certainly did understand the difference between a slow neutron "runaway reactor" used as a bomb (which is not possible), and a critical uranium 235 assembly relying on the generation of fast neutrons in a chain reaction. Lustig certainly did not endorse the claim, by Thomas Powers, in his book "Heisenberg's War" that Heisenberg and perhaps other leading German scientists held back on their research because of ethical scruples, but neither did Lustig attribute the German failure to their scientific inadequacy, which did not exist. [On the contrary Heisenberg and others did understand very well the nature of a fast neutron change reaction, as well as the related slow neutron reactions resulting from a reactor pile.) Rather, he believes on the basis of his investigations, that the failure to develop the bomb was attributable, as he states in his Abstract, to "the minuscule resources devoted to the project, the lack of German industrial capacity, the poorly organized and decentralized organization of the research, and the modus operandi of researchers, including Heisenberg, of simultaneously pursuing other interests". By the end of the War, not one gram of U 235 had been separated ]
The second paper was presented by Elisabeth M Sopka, affiliated with FOCAS—Four Corners Analytic Sciences, entitled Bonebrake Theological Seminary—Most Secret A-Bomb Project Site. Dr. Sopka is the daughter of the late Dr. John J. Sopka, whose work on the development of the neutron source for the “Fat Man” implosion bomb she described in vivid detail . At the talk she was accompanied by her mother, Dr. J. Sopka’s widow. A thorough summary of Elisabeth’s talk prepared by her is given in an accompanying article (WHO KNEW I), to which we refer the reader.
The third paper was given by Benjamin Bederson, New York University, Early electron-atom scattering and its influence in the development of quantum mechanics. Bederson discussed the important role played by early experiments in electron-atom collision studies at low electron energies in the development of quantum mechanics. The first such experiment was a cross section absorption study of low energy electrons by several rare gases in 1903 by Philip Lenard. This important experiment, while more qualitative than quantitative, revealed two important phenomena that in hindsight were to reveal, first,. that atoms had internal structure—not hard spheres—whose absorption probability (i.e., “cross sections”) increased with decreasing energy, and second, that rather than increasing without limit as energy decreased, reached a finite value in the limit of zero energy, an indication (also in hindsight) of electron diffraction. This experiment, not as well known as the contemporary Franck-Hertz experiment, which revealed the important fact that static atomic energy levels were also important in understanding dynamic atomic effect, were the earliest direct evidence that stationary states (as Bohr stated) were the very same states that participated in dynamic, as well as static, phenomena in atoms. As an aside, later Lenard, along with Johannes Stark, evolved into Adolph Hitler’s favorite physicists. Both turned into virulent anti-Semites and (in the author’s opinion) helped form the Nazi’s poor opinion of “Jewish physics” and, by extension, nuclear physics, perhaps helping to explain their assignment of low priority to atomic weapons (see the Lustig paper). Bederson went on to discuss the most important experiments of Ramsauer (and Townsend) who discovered that heavy rare gas cross sections went through deep minima at one or two electron volts, a phenomena which could not easily be described by classical scattering theory, if at all. While Bohr and other pioneers in quantum mechanics pondered the matter deeply, it remained for several “bread and butter” physicists, namely Faxen, Hotsmark, Morse, and Allis, to achieve quantitative agreement between calculations and experiment, using the old scattering formalism of Lord Rayleigh, in the 1870s. He had solved the problem of scattering of a plane sound wave from a sphere, using expansions in spherical harmonics and Legendre Polynomials, but applying boundary conditions appropriate to the Schroedinger equation. (See the Miller article in this issue.) Thus, the Ramsauer experiments were the first to show the existence of diffraction and interference, albeit indirectly, even before Davisson and Germer
There followed a paper by Michael Nauenberg, Department of Physics, University of Clifornia, Santa Cruz, Newton's diffraction experiments. He describes his paper here:
This year marks the tercentenary of the publication of Newton's Opticks containing his celebrated theory and experiments on colors, which first appeared in the 1672 Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society. It is still fairly unknown, however, that in this book Newton also reported several beautiful experiments on diffraction fringes obtained from various ''slender'' objects placed in a narrow beam of sunlight. In its preface Newton remarked that ''the Subject of the Third Book [diffraction] I have also left imperfect, not having tried all the Experiments which I intended when I was about these Matters, nor repeated some of those which I did try, until I had satisfied my self about all their Circumstances. To communicate what I have tried, and leave the rest to others for farther Enquiry, is all my Design in publishing these Papers (1).
Fig. 1
Newton carried out a series of very careful measurements of the spacing of diffraction fringes as a function of the distance of the screen from the diffracting object. In his Opticks, he reported diffraction data from a strand of his hair, and from an ingenious slit with variable thickness made by the edges of two knives inclined relative to each other at a small angle (see Fig. 1). But these diffraction experiments posed insurmountable difficulties to his corpuscular theory of light. To explain the occurrence of color fringes in thin plates, which were originally described by Robert Hooke in his Micrographia, Newton assumed that light corpuscules traversing a medium, like air or glass, initiated oscillatory vibrations in this medium setting ''fits of easy transmission and reflection'' at the interface between two different media. But such a theory could not account for the diffraction fringes which are observed when light passes through a narrow slit or past a sharp edge.
I believe that it was this failure, rather than to avoid further disputes with Hooke, who died in 1703, that explains Newton's long delay in publishing his book, which he had begun to write already in 1687, shortly after completing his Principia. Newton's reservations about his attempts of a theory of diffraction are also revealed by the deletion of his name from the frontispiece of the first edition (1704) of the Opticks (2).
Recently I compared Newton's experimental results on diffraction with the predictions of the Fresnel wave theory of light, and I found that his measurements were remarkable accurate (3) These experiments paved the way to Young's correct explanation of the diffraction fringes as a wave interference phenomenon. Young aptly concluded that ''the optical observations of Newton are yet unrivalled, and excepting some casual inaccuracies they only rise in our estimation as we compare them with later attempts to improve on them''.
References
1. Isaac Newton, Opticks (Dover reprint 1979) p. cxxi
2. I. Bernard Cohen, The case of the missing author: the title page of Newton's Opticks 1704, with notes on the title page of Huygen's Trait\'e de la Lumiere}, in "Isaac Newton's Natural Philosophy", edited by J.Z. Buchwald and I.B. Cohen (MIT Press 2001) pp. 15-45
3. Michael Nauenberg, Comparison of Newton's Diffraction Measurements with the theory of Fresnel}, in "The Foundations of Newtonian Scholarship", edited by R.H. Dalitz and M. Nauenberg (World Scientific 2000) pp. 59-69
The next paper was by Virginia Trimble, on Other Worlds. Here, in her words, is a summary of the talk:
Some 2300 years ago, Epicurus taught that there are an infinite number of worlds like (and unlike) ours, and Aristotle taught that there is only one. Neither hypothesis can currently be falsified, though the past decade has seen remarkable success in the detection of planets orbiting other sun-like stars, one possible meaning of the phrase "other worlds."
In fact the concept of aperoi cosmoi, multiplicity or plenitude of worlds, has had at least four separate meanings over the intervening centuries, each of which has a modern analogy. What Epicurus had in mind, and Aquinas later rejected for the Church, were completely separate (earth-centered) non- communicating universes. The 21st century analog is the multi-verses of self- reproducting inflationary cosmology.
Multiple worlds in temporal succession were suggested by Origen and, much later, Oresme. A cyclic universe (ruled out by general relativity if all the stuff around has non-negative energy density) is one modern version. The 3-d universes formed when higher-dimension branes collide and bounce off each other are also of this sort.
Third is the possibility that the moon, other planets, and even the sun might be inhabited. This dates largely from the post-telescopic era. Mars with the canals of Schiaparelli and Lowell and the moon with the forests sketched by Herschel belong to this tradition, as does the illustration of Cyrano de Bergerac (no, he wasn't just a character in someone else's play) rising up to the moon at dawn in a very large dewdrop. The world he expected to find there was rather better than ours, and he was lucky to be living in a relatively permissive society, for the concept of better worlds, not just other worlds, appears to have been what got Giordano Bruno into trouble. The current version of other worlds within the solar system focussed on the possibility of liquid water on Mars in the past and under the dirty ice surfaces of large moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Fourth and finally, one might think of other potentially detectable systems like ours, whether earth-centered (supporters including Bradwardine around 1330, Occam, who had a razor, and Buridan, who had an ass) or sun-centered, like Thomas Digges and Bruno had in mind.
This fourth idea leads directly, via a number of false alarms, to modern methods of detecting planets in orbit around other stars, of which there are at least two dozen, yielding so far more than 100 planets. All but a few of these have been found by a single method, period residuals in radial velocities of their host stars. Nearly all exoplanets so far are at least as massive as Saturn, orbit stars that are relatively rich in heavy elements, and have periods less than about a decade. The first and third are observational selection effect, and ways of overcoming these limits are on the horizon.
There were lots of pictures, and, in the post-talk discussion, our new fellow, Frieda Stahl suggested that the moon might be of greater importance to life on earth than the speaker had indicated, because of its role in stabilizing the terrestrial rotation axis. Just how important this is probably depends on how well you like unexpected major changes in your environment
The last paper was by William Shields, of Virginia Tech, on Karl Popper’s Quantum Ghosts. Shields submitted the following resume:
Karl Popper, though not trained as a physicist and embarrassed early in his career by a physics error pointed out by Einstein and Bohr, ultimately made substantial contributions to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. As was often the case, Popper initially formulated his position by criticizing the views of others*in this case Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Underlying Popper's criticism was his belief that, first, the "standard interpretation" of quantum mechanics, sometimes called the Copenhagen interpretation, abandoned scientific realism and second, the assertion that quantum theory was "complete" (an assertion rejected by Einstein among others) amounted to an unfalsifiable claim. Popper insisted that the most basic predictions of quantum mechanics should continue to be tested, with an eye towards falsification rather than mere adding of decimal places to confirmatory experiments. His persistent attacks on the Copenhagen interpretation were aimed not at the uncertainty principle itself and the formalism from which it was derived, but at the acceptance by physicists of an unclear epistemology and ontology that left critical questions unanswered. Though Popper died in 1994, his influence in this field of physics has continued.
In early 2000, University of Maryland physicists Yanhua Shih and Yoon-Ho Kim reported the results of a "realization of Popper's experiment." Their experimental setup did not use Popper's point particle source (such as a decay of positronium) it used entangled photons produced by a laser and refracted by lenses through slits. Their results, taken at face value, appeared to show a violation of the uncertainty principle. This would mean, from Popper's point of view, that the Copenhagen interpretation is in error. But Shih and Kim argued that it is impermissible to apply the uncertainty relations to each of the entangled-state photons separately. These photons are, in their view, represented by a "nonfactorizeable two-dimensional wave packet" such that "*y*py ** is not applicable to either photon 1 or photon 2 individually." They concluded: "Our experimental demonstration of Popper's thought experiment call (sic) our attention to the important message: the physics of an entangled two-particle system is inherently different from that of two individual particles."
Shih and Kim's papers (see below) has generated a flurry of responses, comments, criticisms, and suggestions for further work. A number of papers published since 1999 have explored the implications and practicality of "Popper's Experiment," and it is likely that more experiments will pursue the issue that virtually obsessed Popper: does human knowledge alone have physical effects?
Shih, Yanhua, Kim, Yoon-Ho, "Experimental Realization of Popper's Experiment. Violation of the Uncertainty Principle?" Fortschr. Phys. Vol. 48, 463-471 (2000); Shih, Yanhua, Kim, Yoon-Ho, "Quantum Entanglement: From Popper's Eraser to Quantum Eraser," Optics Communications Vol. 179, 357-369 (25 May 2000).
Bonebrake Theological Seminary—Most Secret A-Bomb Project Site by Katherine and Elisabeth Sopka FOCAS—Four Corners Analytic Sciences , see separate article.
On Advising Congress and the President , John H. Gibbons
Annual American Physical Society Meeting
Denver, Colorado
May 3, 2004
Abstract:
I devoted two decades trying to enable elected policymakers improved access to science and technology issues, and to bringing trained scientists and engineers into government. After two years of establishing and directing the Office of Energy Conservation (under President Nixon), 13 years as Director of the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), and more than five years serving the President as Science and Technology Advisor, I can confirm Victor Hugo’s observation that “Science says the first word on everything and the last word on nothing.” There are strong similarities, but also major differences in the functions of advisor to the Congress vs. advisor to the President. These differences are discussed by examples; lessons learned will be drawn. One conclusion is that, given today’s S&T-laden governance issues, it is imperative to continue to try to bridge the communication “gap” between natural science and politics so aptly defined long ago by C.P. Snow. That gap shows up not only in the different “languages” used but also, for example, in different sensitivities to near-term vs. long-term issues.
I conclude that while great progress is being made despite serious setbacks, the potential contribution from S&T analysis/advice to all branches of government is much greater than currently exists. Our community can be more helpful by heeding lessons learned, participating in and reinforcing first-rate analyses, and countering the efforts of those who attempt to make political gains out of purposeful distortions of scientific consensus. Mark Twain once observed that “a lie can travel halfway around the world before truth can put on its shoes.” In matters of S&T policy our community needs to learn how to put on our shoes more promptly…and keep them on!.
After nearly two decades “playing hard” at the bench of experimental physics, I had the honor and (oft-times) pleasure of drifting into the twilight zone between government and the science, engineering, and technology communities. On many occasions over the past thirty-odd years of “science advising,” my wife has probed me about why it was that I left the relatively calm waters of research for such a turbulent second career.
The explanation is easy. Challenging and rewarding as research is, I felt a need to forge closer links between the perspectives and activities of scientists and those of politicians It is not a new idea. Our earliest (U.S.) founders, especially Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, recognized the essential value of knowledge in the new nation’s future and consequently the imperative for public and private interests to be joined in sustained support of scientific research as well as wise governance of technology.
That theme appears and reappears in our nation’s history, replete with spectacular successes in areas such as agriculture, biotechnology, communications, energy, health, transportation, environment, space, and fundamental sciences. But the explosive emergence of S&T since WWII in both the civil and military sectors soon made it clear that the cornucopia of S&T inescapably requires both support and societal governance. Virtually every powerful discovery presents opportunities both for good and ill. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, “Nature never gives anything to anyone: everything is sold. It is only in the abstractions of ideas that choice comes without consequences.”
Despite the fact that the priorities and processes of governance involve S&T, those who seek leadership in politics seldom are technically literate. The two professions do not tend to attract the same types of personalities. Fortunately such socially concerned men as Einstein, Szilard, W. Golden, V. Bush, H. Brooks, J. Wiesner, G. Brown helped to establish the institutions and procedures of S&T governance and support we enjoy today.
I’m a relatively late-comer, but I also have had a full measure of experience in S&T advising to both Congress and the White House. This short essay draws on the realities of those experiences and lessons learned along the way.
S&T “Advice” to the Congress
In the face of mounting controversy about how to resolve issues such as the proposed civilian supersonic transport (SST), nuclear power plant siting, and oil tanker safety, and with the able assistance of the National Academy of Sciences, Congress established its Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in the early 1970’s
OTA’s addressed Congressional committees’ concerns about how to treat oft-conflicting technical claims about technology.. The challenge for OTA was to accurately, fairly, and authoritatively provide the Congress (and the public) with an accurate but understandable description of the chosen issue, explanation of the controversy or confusion surrounding it, and alternative ways to treat the public policy aspects of the issue.
The bottom line description of the job of science and technology advisor to Congress was to be aware and sensitive to the political process and to provide authoritative, timely and helpful advice but not to take sides beyond presenting findings. Thus the “advisor” best served his job not by advising in the traditional sense, but by presenting thoughtful, authoritative findings and options. Since OTA’s was a completely open process (except for classified work), an important aspect was its two-way accessibility to all comers. I see that function as highly responsive to James Madison’s admonition in a letter he wrote in 1822, “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” [1]
