Edward Uhler Condon, 1902–1974

Abstract

The middle third of the twentieth century was the era of hegemony of physics in American science. During that whole period Edward Uhler Condon was a leader in physics, in research of his own, in stimulating research in others, in applying physics, and in calling attention to the effects on all of us of its indiscriminate and irrational application. When he made his first contribution to theoretical physics in 1926, the word physics was not in the vocabularies of most Americans and the revolutionary concepts of quantum mechanics and relativity were just being worked out in Europe; by 1960 the applications of electronics and solid state physics had begun to change our lives irreversibly, and the implications of nuclear physics were manifest to everyone. Ed Condon contributed to each part of this explosive evolution.