Abstract
We trace the history of physics at New York University after its founding in 1831, focusing especially on its relatively recent history, which can be divided into five periods: the Gregory Breit period from 1929 to 1934; the prewar period from 1935 to 1941; the wartime period from 1942 to 1945; the postwar period from around 1961 to 1973 when several semiautonomous physics departments were united into a single all-university department under a single head; and after 1973 when the University Heights campus was sold to New York City and its physics department joined the one at the Washington Square campus. For each of these periods we comment on the careers and work of prominent members of the physics faculty and on some of the outstanding graduate students who later went on to distinguished careers at NYU and elsewhere.
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Notes
Washington Square is a beautiful eight-block-square park in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.
The University Heights campus was sold to the City University of New York (CUNY) in 1973 as a consequence of a near-fatal financial crisis that struck NYU at the time. It now contains the Bronx Community College, a junior college that is part of the CUNY system.
Hering’s unpublished memoirs—a very complete collection—reside in the NYU Archives at Bobst Library.
The Loomis–Wood diagram is a graphical scheme for classifying lines of rotational band spectra.
This was exactly how one of us (BB) ended up at NYU.
References
Quoted in Theodore Francis Jones, ed., New York University 1832:1932 (New York: The New York University Press, London: Humphrey Milford, and Oxford University Press, 1933), pp. 35-36.
Ibid.; also Joan Marans Dim and Mancy Murphy Cricco, The Miracle on Washington Square: New York University (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2001), as well as the article on NYU in Wikipedia and the NYU archives website <http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/arch/>.
George F. Barker, “Memoir of John William Draper 1811-1832,” National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs 2 (1886), 349-388.
George F. Barker, “Memoir of Henry Draper 1837-1882,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. 3 (1895), 81-139.
F.G. Reynolds, “The Viscosity Coefficient of Air, with an Inquiry on the Effect of Röntgen Rays Thereon. II.,” Physical Review 19 (1904), 37-47. Reynolds gives his affiliation as the College of the City of New York.
William J. Fisher, “The Temperature Coefficients of Gas Viscosity,” Phys. Rev. 24 (1907), 385-401. A footnote on page 401 reads: “An excellent and complete résumé of the development and literature of viscosity is to be found in a thesis by F.M. Pederson, submitted to the Faculty of Science, New York University, 1905.”
The Hall of Fame of Famous Americans remains intact. It contains busts of 98 outstanding Americans, including the physicists Michael I. Pupin, Albert A. Michelson, Joseph Henry, and Josiah Willard Gibbs; see Benjamin Bederson, “Physics and New York City,” Physics in Perspective 5 (2003), 87-121, especially 90-92.
Time and its Mysteries. Series I. Four Lectures [1932, 1933, 1934, 1935] James Arthur Foundation New York University (Washington Square, New York: New York University Press, London: Humphrey Milford, and Oxford University Press, 1936); idem, Series II. [Four Lectures 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939], ibid. (1940); idem, Series III. [Four Lectures 1940, 1941, 1946, 1949], ibid. (1949).
H.A. Newton, “Memoir of Elias Loomis. 1811-1889,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. 3 (1895), 213-252. Most of his meteorological work was published in the American Journal of Science and can be accessed at the website <http://ajs.library.cmu.edu/>.
Daniel W. Hering, Foibles and Fallacies of Science: An Account of Celebrated Scientific Vagaries (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1924).
F.W. Loomis, “The Ratio of the Two Elementary Charges,” Phys. Rev. 20 (1922), 15-17.
Frederick Seitz, “Francis Wheeler Loomis August 4, 1889-February 9, 1976,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. 60 (1991), 117-126, on 119-120.
Jennet Conant, Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II (New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Singapore: Simon & Schuster, 2002); see also Luis W. Alvarez, “Alfred Lee Loomis November 4, 1887-August 11, 1975,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. 51 (1980), 309-341. For more on R.W. Wood at Tuxedo Park, see William Seabrook, Doctor Wood: Modern Wizard of the Laboratory (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1941), pp. 210-223.
F.W. Loomis and R.W. Wood, “The Nuclear Spin of Potassium,” Phys. Rev. 38 (1931), 854-856.
F. Loomis and P. Kusch, “The Band Spectrum of Caesium,” Phys. Rev. 46 (1934), 292-301.
Arthur H. Compton and J.C. Hubbard, “The Recoil of Electrons from Scattered X-rays,” Phys. Rev. 23 (1924), 439-449.
Ibid., p. 449.
Robert S. Mullikan, “Spectroscopy, molecular orbitals, and chemical bonding,” in The Nobel Foundation, Nobel Lectures Including Presentation Speeches and Laureates’ Biographies, Chemistry 1963-1970 (Amsterdam, London, New York: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1972), pp. 131-160, on p. 140.
R. Stephen Berry, “Robert Sanderson Mulliken June 7, 1896-October 31, 1986,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. 78 (2000), 147-164.
L.P. Granath, “The Nuclear Spin and Magnetic Moment of Li7,” Phys. Rev. 42 (1932), 44-51; C.M. Van Atta and L.P. Granath, “Nuclear Spin and Magnetic Moment of Sodium from Hyperfine Structure,” ibid. 44 (1933), 60-61; L.P. Granath and C.M. Van Atta, “The Nuclear Spin and Magnetic Moment of Sodium from Hyperfine Structure,” ibid., 935-942; L.P. Granath and R.K. Stranathan, “The Magnetic Moment of Caesium Determined from the Hyperfine Structure of the 6p 2 P ½ State,” ibid. 46 (1934), 317.
Breit, “Derivation of Hyperfine Structure Formulas’ (Appen. II, ref. 7).
R.T. Cox, C.G. McIlwraith and B. Kurrelmeyer, “Apparent Evidence of Polarization in a Beam of β-Rays, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 14 (1928), 544-549, on 545.
Allan Franklin, No Easy Answers: Science and the Pursuit of Knowledge (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), pp. 21-25. We thank Professor Franklin for permission to use this quotation.
Ibid., pp. 30-31.
Richard T. Cox, Time, Space and Atoms. With Frontispiece and Diagrams by Shelby Shackelford (Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company in Cooperation with The Century of Progress Exposition, 1933).
Richard T. Cox, The Algebra of Probable Inference (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1961).
Robert L. Fry, ed., Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods in Science and Engineering [AIP Conference Proceedings 617] (2002). The conference and volume were dedicated to Richard Cox, and includes the poem by his wife Shelby Shackelford.
For example, Cox, McIlwraith and Kurrelmeyer, “Apparent Evidence” (ref. 22); C.G. Shull, C.T. Chase, and F.E. Myers, “Electron Polarization,” Phys. Rev. 63 (1943), 29-37; Gerald Goertzel and R.T. Cox, “The Effect of Oblique Incidence on the Conditions for Single Scattering of Electrons by Thin Foils,” ibid., 37-40; and Edmund Trounson and John A. Simpson Jr., “The Polarization of Electrons,” ibid., 55.
Interview of John Wheeler by Kenneth W. Ford on December 6, 1993, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, USA, website <http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/5908_3.html>, pp. 2-4 of 15. Reproduced by permission of the American Institute of Physics.
Breit and Rabi, “Measurement of Nuclear Spin” (Appen. II, ref. 12).
Breit, “Separation of Angles” (Appen.II, ref 1); idem, “Possible Effects” (Appen. II, ref. 2); idem, “Fine Structure of He” (Appen. II, ref. 3).
Breit and Rabi, “Measurement of Nuclear Spin” (ref. 30).
Korff and Breit, “Optical Dispersion” (Appen. II, ref, 15); Breit, “Quantum Theory of Dispersion” (Appen. II, ref. 16); Breit, “Quantum Theory of Dispersion (continued)” (Appen. II, ref. 19).
Quoted in Jagdish Mehra, ed., The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner. Part B. Historical, Philosophical, and Socio-Political Papers. Vol. VII. Historical and Biographical Reflections and Synthesis (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2001), p. 17.
Breit and Wills, “Hyperfine Structure” (Appen. II, ref. 25).
Interview of William A. Nierenberg by Finn Aaserud on February 6, 1986, Niels Bohr Library and Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD, USA, website <http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4797_1.html>, p. 10 of 25. Reproduced by permission of the American Institute of Physics.
McAllister Hull, “Gregory Breit July 14, 1899-September 11, 1981,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. 74 (1998), 27-56.
Otto Halpern and Hans Thirring, The Elements of the New Quantum Mechanics. Translated from the German by Henry L. Brose (London: Methuen, 1932).
Harvey Hall, “Otto Halpern,” Physics Today 36 (July 1983), 79-80.
Interview of Nierenberg by Aaserud on February 6, 1986 (ref. 36), p. 10 of 25.
O. Halpern and J. Schwinger, “On the Polarization of Electrons by Double Scattering,” Phys. Rev. 48 (1935), 109-110.
O. Halpern and M. H. Johnson, Jr., “On the Theory of Neutron Scattering by Magnetic Substances,” Phys. Rev. 51 (1937), 992.
Hall, “Otto Halpern” (ref. 39).
Bruno Rossi, H. Van Norman Hilberry and J. Barton Hoag, “The Disintegration of Mesotrons,” 56 (1939), 837-838; Bruno Rossi, Norman Hilberry, and J. Barton Hoag, “The Variation of the Hard Component of Cosmic Rays with Height and the Disintegration of Mesotrons,” ibid. 57 (1940), 461-469.
Luisa Bonolis, “Bruno Rossi and the Racial Laws of Fascist Italy,” Phys. in Perspec. 13 (2011), 58-90, especially 82.
Allan G.G. Mitchell and Mark W. Zemansky, Resonance Radiation and Excited Atoms (New York: Macmillan and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934).
“Allan C.G. Mitchell,” Physics Today 17 (January 1964). 124.
Rosenthal and Breit, “Isotope Shift” (Appen. II, ref. 14).
See website <http://www.physics.nyu.edu/alumni/Doctoral/bramley.jenny.html>.
Morton Hamermesh, Group Theory and its Applications to Physical Problems (Reading, Mass., Palo Alto, London: Addison-Wesley, 1962).
L. Landau and E. Lifshitz, The Classical Theory of Fields. Translated from the Russian by Morton Hamermesh (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1951).
University of Minnesota News (November 14, 2003); “Mort Hamermesh Remembered,” University of Minnesota School of Physics and Astronomy Newsletter (Spring 2004), p. 3; Benjamin Bayman, Steven Gasiorowicz, and Allen Goldman, “Morton Hamermesh,” Physics Today 57 (August 2004), 68-69.
Ralph D. Amado and Alfred K. Mann, “Henry Primakoff,” Physics Today 36 (December 1983), 72-73; S.P. Rosen, “Henry Primakoff February 12, 1914-July 25, 1983,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. 66 (1995), 267-286.
M. H. Johnson, Jr. and H. Primakoff, “Relations Between the Second and Higher Order Processes in the Neutrino-Electron Field Theory,” Phys. Rev. 51 (1937), 612-619.
T. Holstein and H. Primakoff, “Field Dependence of the Intrinsic Domain Magnetization of a Ferromagnet,” Phys. Rev. 58 (1940), 1098-1113.
H. Primakoff and T. Holstein, “Many-Body Interactions in Atomic and Nuclear Systems,” Phys. Rev. 55 (1939), 1218-1234.
Holstein and Primakoff, “Field Dependence” (ref. 55).
T. Holstein, “Studies of Polaron Motion. Part I. The Molecular-Crystal Model,” Annals of Physics 8 (1959), 325-342; idem, Part II. “The ‘Small’ Polaron,” ibid., 343-389; L. Friedman and T. Holstein, idem, Part III. “The Hall Mobility of the Small Polaron,” ibid. 21 (1963), 494-549; David Emin and T. Holstein, “Studies of Small-Polaron Motion. IV. Adiabatic Theory of the Hall Effect,” ibid. 53 (1969), 439-520.
“In Memorian,” Calisphere, University of California (1986), p. 1.
Eugene N. Parker, “John Alexander Simpson November 3, 1916-August 31, 2000, Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. 81 (2002), 319-339.
Herbert S. Wilf, “Gerald Goertzel (1920[sic]-2002, As I Knew Him,” website <http://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/Gerald_Goertzel.html>, p. 1. Goertzel was born on August 18, 1919, not in 1920.
Several of Roberts’s best songs can be downloaded at the website <http://www.haverford.edu/physics/songs/roberts/roberts.htm>.
Gösta Ekspong, ed., Nobel Lectures Including Presentation Speeches and Laureates’ Biographies. Physics 1991-1995 (Singapore, New Jersey, London, Hong Kong: World Scientific, 1993), p. 93.
Clifford G. Shull, [Autobiographical Statement], in ibid., pp. 142-143.
For example, Shull, Chase, and Myers, “Electron Polarization” (ref. 28).
Robert D. Shull, “Clifford Glenwood Shull 1915-2001,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. (2010), 3-43, website <http://books.nap.edu//html/biomems/cshull.pdf.>.
Ekspong, Nobel Lectures Physics 1991-1995 (ref. 63), p. 155.
R.D. Present, F. Reines and J.K. Knipp, “The Liquid Drop Model for Nuclear Fission,” Phys. Rev. 70 (1946), 557-558.
Frederick Reines, “The Neutrino from Poltergeist to Particle,” in Ekspong, Nobel Lectures Physics 1991-1995 (ref. 63), pp. 202-221, on pp. 202-203.
William Knopp, Jonas Schultz, and Henry Sobel, ““Frederick Reines 1918-1998,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. (2009), 3-27, website <http://books.nap.edu//html/biomems/freines.pdf.>.
Frances A. Jenkins, Henry A. Barton, and Robert S. Mulliken, “The Beta Bands of Nitric Oxide. I. Measurements and Quantum Analysis,” Phys. Rev. 30 (1927), 150-174; Henry A. Barton, Francis A. Jenkins, and Robert S. Mulliken, idem, “II. Intensity Relations and Their Interpretation,” ibid., 175-188.
Jenny E. Rosenthal and F.A. Jenkins, “Quantum Analysis of the Beryllium Oxide Bands,” Phys. Rev. 33 (1929), 163-168.
Francis A. Jenkins and Harvey E. White, Fundamentals of Optics (New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill, 1937; Third Edition, 1957).
Breit and Salant, “Note on the Frequency Shifts” (Appen. II, ref. 4).
For example, Salant and Rosenthal, “Theory of Vibrational Isotope Effects” (Appen. II, ref. 18).
Samuel A. Goudsmit, ALSOS (New York: Henry Schuman, 1947); reprinted with a New Introduction by R.V. Jones (Los Angeles and San Francisco: Tomash Publishers, 1983).
George Pake, “Eugene Feenberg October 6, 1906-November 7, 1977,” Nat. Acad. Sci. Bio. Mem. 66 (1995), 115-129.
Korff and Breit, “Optical Dispersion” (Appen. II, ref. 15).
Serge A. Korff, “Physics Research at University Heights, NYU,” Physics Today 4 (November 1951), 16-18.
Guide to Papers of Serge A. Korff, New York University Archives, MC110.
For Korff’s influence on physics, see Rosalind B. Mendell and Allen I. Mincer, ed., Frontiers in Cosmic Physics: Symposium in Memory of Serge Alexander Korff [Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 655] (New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1992), which contains papers by prominent physicists on his life and work in geophysics, cosmic rays, neutrinos, X-rays, astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology.
Benjamin Bederson, “Fritz Reiche and the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars,” Phys. in Perspec. 7 (2005), 453-472.
Grace Marmor Spruch, “Hartmut Kallmann,” Physics Today 31 (October 1978), 76, 78, on 76.
Ibid., p. 78; see also Grace Marmor Spruch, “One Man’s Adventures with a Shiny Suit: Hartmut Kallmann Reversed a Threadbare Story,” Saturday Review 48 (December 4, 1965), 88-90.
Gerald J. Hine, “The inception of Photoelectric Scintillation Detection Commemorated after Three Decades,” Journal of Nuclear Medicine 18 (1977), 867-871, on 867.
J. Wess and B. Zumino, “Supergauge Transformations in Four Dimensions.” Nuclear Physics B 70 (1974), 39-50.
See website <http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/faculty/Zumino.html>.
Edgar C. Murphy, William C. Bright, Martin D. Whitaker, S.A. Korff, and E.T. Clarke, “Comparative Efficiencies of Radioactive Neutron Sources,” Phys. Rev. 58 (1940, 88.
Acknowledgments
We thank Roger H. Stuewer for his invaluable help in organizing the final version of our paper. We thank the NYU archivist Nancy Cricco for her help in providing access to the (sparse) information contained in the university archives. Thanks are also due to Nancy Greenberg, former Director of Sponsored Programs, for supplying us with some useful old records. We thank Peter Levy for a critical reading of the manuscript, and Dan Zwanziger for his help in getting the project started. Finally, we thank the Physics Department and its Chair, David Grier, for financial assistance.
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We have published an extensive and somewhat different version of this article as a book, History of the NYU Physics Department 1831–2000 (Ashland, Ohio: Bookmasters Inc., 2010).
Benjamin Bederson is Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at New York University, and H. Henry Stroke is Professor of Physics at New York University.
Appendices
Appendix 1: The Early Teaching of Physics at New York University. Notes by University Historian Bayrd Still, February 18, 1981
From the lecture notes of a student, W.F. Burroughs, enrolled in Professor E.A. Loomis’s class in “Natural Philosophy” in 1858, it is apparent that subjects now covered in Physics were included in the course in “Natural Philosophy.” Burroughs took notes on lectures by Professor Loomis in pneumatics, the barometer, the suction pump, the siphon, acoustics, reflection of waves, musical sounds, vibrations of thin plates, organ of voice, heat, the steam engine, magnetism, terrestrial magnetism, optics, refraction of light. Elias Loomis was Professor of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Astronomy from 1844 to 1860. He was succeeded by George W. Coakley [1814–1893], who was listed as Professor of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Astronomy from 1860 through at least the academic year 1884–1885.
It is possible that John W. Draper, listed as Professor of Chemistry and Natural History, 1838–1882, included some teaching of natural philosophy in his courses. He wrote A Text-Book on Natural Philosophy (1st edn., 1847; 3rd edn., 1859), which covers topics we would associate today with Physics. His son, Henry Draper, was listed as Professor of Analytical Chemistry from 1862 to 1870 and Professor of Analytical Chemistry and Physiology, 1870–1882. There is no reference to his teaching of Astronomy despite his experimentation in this field. Astronomy presumably was taught by Professor George W. Coakley as late as 1893.
Presumably the academic year 1885–1886 was the first year in which the University had a Professor of Physics, as such. This was Daniel W. Hering, appointed May 4, 1885. In his Memoirs, Hering says that Henry M. MacCracken informed him by letter on March 11, 1885, that “in a reorganization of the Faculty of the University a chair of Physics had been established.” Hering reports that there had not been a chair of physics here separate from chemistry or mathematics nor had there ever been a physics laboratory or laboratory work in physics for undergraduate students. However, he writes that the traditions of physics here in early days were “very creditable, the subject at one time or another having been handled by Elias Loomis, the mathematician and meteorologist, later at Yale; by the professor of Chemistry here, the distinguished Dr. John W. Draper and by the professor of mathematics, Dr. George W. Coakley.”
Hering described the “physics room as being in the southeast corner of the University Building [see figure 3]. Its seats for about forty students, a platform for the lecture table, and a corner sink for water, and several deep and high cases for apparatus left little space for any other purpose, and yet I was expected to install a laboratory here. Next to this room on the north and separated from it by a heavy partition wall was a long, narrow room which became vacant…. I induced the janitor to let me have the use of this room while it was not rented…. Soon afterwards, the partition wall was removed and replaced by a large glazed sash, the lower half of which could be raised and lowered, and the room became permanently an annex to the physics room. The primitive nature of its equipment may be inferred from the ‘egg’ coal stove, the only means available at that time for heating it.” The physics instruments now in the Archives were presumably used for demonstration purposes in the course in Natural Philosophy and later in the course in Physics. The photographs of Hering’s laboratory picture instruments similar to these. We received the instruments without description or inventory. They had been housed somewhere at the Heights. From part of a label on one item (the early telephone receiver) we deduce that it had been in the laboratory of Henry Draper, though we are not clear as to where this was located. We are indebted to Professor Serge Korff and Dr. Rosalind Mendell for the present identification of the instruments. They are of the opinion that all of them date to the 1870s and 1880s. The pictures in the Hering Memoirs support the conclusion that the instruments were kept in the Physics Room until the University moved instruction in the College and in engineering to the Heights in 1894.
Appendix 2: NYU Physics Publications during the Breit Period, 1929–1934
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1.
G. Breit, “Separation of Angles in the Two-Electron Problem,” The Physical Review 35 (1930), 569-578.
-
2.
G. Breit, “Possible Effects of Nuclear Spin on X-ray Terms,” Phys. Rev. 35 (1930), 1447-1451.
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3.
G. Breit, “The Fine Structure of He as a Test of the Spin Interactions of Two Electrons,” Phys. Rev. 36 (1930), 383-397.
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4.
G. Breit and E.O. Salant, “Note on the Frequency Shifts in Dispersive Media,” Phys. Rev. 36 (1930), 871-877.
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5.
G. Breit and F.W. Doerman, “The Magnetic Moment of the Li7 Nucleus,” Phys. Rev. 36 (1930), 1262-1264.
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6.
G. Breit and F.W. Doerman, “The Hyperfine Structure of S and P Terms of Two Electron Atoms with Special Reference to Li+,” Phys. Rev. 36 (1930), 1732-1751.
-
7.
G. Breit, “Derivation of Hyperfine Structure Formulas for One Electron Spectra,” Phys. Rev. 37 (1931), 51-52.
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8.
G. Breit, “Mean Value Theories in Quantum Mechanics,” Phys. Rev. 37 (1931), 90-91.
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9.
Otto Halpern, “On the change of the spectral composition of quasi-monochromatic radiation caused by scattering” [Abstract], Phys. Rev. 37 (1931), 111.
-
10.
Newton M. Gray and Lawrence A. Wills, “Note on the Calculation of Zero Order Eigenfunctions,” Phys. Rev. 38 (1931), 248-254.
-
11.
G. Breit, “On the Hyperfine Structure of Heavy Elements,” Phys. Rev. 38 (1931), 463-472.
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12.
G. Breit and I.I. Rabi, “Measurement of Nuclear Spin,” Phys. Rev. 38 (1931), 2082-2083.
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13.
G. Breit, “Dirac’s Equation and the Spin–Spin Interactions of Two Electrons,” Phys. Rev. 39 (1932), 616-624.
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14.
Jenny E. Rosenthal and G. Breit, “The Isotope Shift in Hyperfine Structure,” Phys. Rev. 41 (1932), 459-470.
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15.
S.A. Korff and G. Breit, “Optical Dispersion,” Reviews of Modern Physics 4 (1932), 471-503.
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16.
G. Breit, “Quantum Theory of Dispersion,” Rev. Mod. Phys. 4 (1932), 504-576.
-
17.
G. Breit, “The Isotope Displacement in Hyperfine Structure,” Phys. Rev. 42 (1932), 348-354.
-
18.
E.O. Salant and Jenny E. Rosenthal, “Theory of Vibrational Isotope Effects in Polyatomic Molecules,” Phys. Rev. 42 (1932), 812-822.
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19.
G. Breit, “Quantum Theory of Dispersion (Continued). Parts VI and VII,” Rev. Mod. Phys. 5 (1933), 91-140.
-
20.
M.H. Johnson, Jr., “The Vector Model and the Pauli Principle,” Phys. Rev. 43 (1933), 627-631.
-
21.
M.H. Johnson, Jr., “Note on Almost Closed Shells,” Phys. Rev. 43 (1933), 632-635.
-
22.
Allan C.G. Mitchell, “Hyperfine Structure and the Polarization of Resonance Radiation. II. Magnetic Depolarization and the Determination of Mean Lives,” Phys. Rev. 43 (1933), 887-893.
-
23.
M.H. Johnson, Jr., and G. Breit, “The Magnetic Interaction of a Valence Electron with Inner Shells,” Phys. Rev. 44 (1933), 77-83.
-
24.
G. Breit, “The Isotope Shift of Tl,” Phys. Rev. 44 (1933), 418-419.
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25.
G. Breit and Lawrence A. Wills, “Hyperfine Structure in Intermediate Coupling,” Phys. Rev. 44 (1933), 470-490.
-
26.
Newton M. Gray, “The Nuclear Spin of Li7 from Hyperfine Structure Data,” Phys. Rev. 44 (1933), 570-574.
-
27.
O. Halpern, “Scattering Processes Produced by Electrons in Negative Energy States,” Phys. Rev. 44 (1933), 855-856.
-
28.
John A. Wheeler and G. Breit, “Li+ Fine Structure and Wave Functions near the Nucleus,” Phys. Rev. 44 (1933), 948.
-
29.
Irving S. Lowen and G. Breit, “Polarization of Fluorescence Radiation,” Phys. Rev. 45 (1934), 120.
-
30.
G. Breit and I.I. Rabi, “On the Interpretation of Present Values of Nuclear Moments,” Phys. Rev. 46 (1934), 230-231.
-
31.
G. Breit, “Nuclear Stability and Isotope Shift,” Phys. Rev. 46 (1934), 319.
-
32.
G. Breit and I.S. Lowen, “Radiation Damping and Polarization of Fluorescence Radiation,” Phys. Rev. 46 (1934), 590-597.
-
33.
J.A. Wheeler and J.A. Bearden, “The Variation of the K Resonating Strength with Atomic Number,” Phys. Rev. 46 (1934), 755-758.
-
34.
G. Breit and John A. Wheeler, “Collision of Two Light Quanta,” Phys. Rev. 46 (1934), 1087-1091.
Appendix 3: Serge A. Korff, “The Physics Department of University College during the Decades from 1930 to 1970, at University Heights” [Edited]
In the years 1936–1938 the Chairman of the University College Physics Department was Allan C. G. Mitchell. Mitchell was born in Houston, Texas, in 1902, and received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1927. He then went to the Bartol Research Foundation of the Franklin Institute, in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 1928–1931, and came to the Physics Department as an Assistant Professor in 1931. He became Associate Professor and Department Chairman in 1934. He left us to go to Indiana University in 1938. During most of this time Richard T. Cox was the only Full Professor in the Department. Associate Professors were William H. Crew and Otto Halpern, with Assistant Professors Carl T. Chase, Fritz Doerman, Norman H. Hilberry, Montgomery H. Johnson, Jr., and Frank Meyers. Martin D. Whitaker was an Instructor. [Robert N. Varney also was on the Heights faculty, 1937–1938.]
Mitchell was succeeded as Department Chairman by William H. Crew. Crew was the son of Henry Crew, a distinguished physicist and one of the early Presidents of the American Physical Society. William Crew was born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1899, received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1926, and came to New York University as Assistant Professor in 1929. He became Associate Professor in 1931. In 1941 he left to accept a post with the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), which later became part of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). This organization was the principal supervisor of defense research during World War II, and its history has been outlined by its Chairman, Vannevar Bush, in several reports and books. Crew remained with this organization until after World War II, and then moved to Los Alamos. He was nonetheless listed in our catalog as Administrative Chairman until 1942 and as a member of the Department on leave until 1943. His research interests were in the photoelectric effect and spectroscopy.
During these years, the University had what amounted to three Physics Departments. One was the Undergraduate Department at Washington Square, the other Undergraduate Department being at University Heights, and the Graduate Department which was centered at Washington Square. However, most of the members of the faculty at the two Undergraduate Departments also were members of the Graduate Department and taught graduate courses at their respective centers. We had been giving Ph.D. courses for decades before I came here in 1941. Courses were alternated between the Heights and the Square so that a student could take a given course at either center by waiting for the year it was there. If he wanted to take it out-of-phase, he commuted, the courses of either Department being recognized by the other.
The principal research interests of the Department during the late 1930s were in electron scattering and nuclear physics. The Department had two high-voltage accelerators at the time, a horizontal Van de Graaff generator on the back porch, and a Cockcroft–Walton voltage quadrupler. Both machines were in Butler Hall. Each had been built largely with ingenuity, and with very little direct financial aid. Both worked well and were used in active research programs. In the basement was also an experimental arrangement for generating and studying slow electrons. This one was operated by Cox and Chase. As the U.S. involvement in World War II drew away more and more of our staff, the machines were left idle, and after it became apparent that they would not be reactivated, they were dismantled. Indeed, the entire Butler Hall back porch was removed, after the fire some ten years later (see below).
The Administrative Chairman at Washington Square, Carel M. Van der Merwe, was also the Department’s representative in the Graduate School. He came to us from South Africa, having his A.B. from Stellenbosch in 1911, his M.S. from Capetown in 1921, and his Ph.D. from Göttingen (Germany). At that time, in the early 1920s, Göttingen was among the top physics departments in the world. Van der Merwe was a Full Professor by 1933, and Chairman of the Department at Washington Square, as well as Chairman of the physical science group of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He remained Chairman until his retirement in 1956, and then continued as Professor Emeritus for a couple of years. Later he returned to South Africa.
The undergraduate course offering at University College was not very large, and consisted of the background courses necessary for a Major in the subject, but little beyond that. For example, in 1944–1945 the undergraduate offering was seven courses, plus three bracketed, to be given hopefully in some other year. This offering was greatly expanded after World War II. After Crew left to go into government service, Martin Whitaker became Acting Administrative Chairman. He was in this post for about a year, when he too left. Carl T. Chase was made Executive Secretary and served as such from 1942 through 1944. Next, John Knedler served as Acting Executive Secretary for a year, after which Joseph C. Boyce was brought in as Chairman. Chase was born in Lewiston, Maine, in 1902. He received his Ph.D. from NYU in 1930, became an Instructor at Dartmouth, and returned to NYU as an Instructor in 1931. The following year he was made Assistant Professor, which title he held for the next decade. His research interest was in electron scattering.
Other persons at the Heights Department when I came included William C. Bright, Frank Myers, Edgar J. Murphy, Victor J. Young, and John L. Rose. Most of these were in the rank of Assistant Professor or Instructor. Bright was born in Youngwood, Pennsylvania, in 1915, and received his Ph.D. from NYU in 1941. He worked in nuclear physics, especially with neutrons. Frank Myers was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1906, received his Ph.D. from NYU in 1934, and was one of the excellent people sent to us from Reed College. He was an Instructor from 1930 to 1937, and then an Assistant Professor. He left us during World War II to go to the Frankford Arsenal [in northeast Philadelphia], and later became a Professor and Department Chairman at Lehigh [University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania]. His research interests were in electron scattering, nuclear physics, and ballistics. Edgar Murphy was born in Luthersville, Georgia, in 1904, received his Ph.D. in 1934 from NYU, became Assistant Professor at Alabama Polytechnic and then returned to us as Assistant Professor from 1930 to 1940. He left us to accept a post at CCNY to work on war-related problems. His interest was in neutron scattering. Victor J. Young was born in Albion, Michigan, in 1913, received his Ph.D. from Iowa in 1940, and was an Instructor with us.
Also teaching at University College was Fritz Doerman. He was an Assistant Professor when I arrived. He had developed a disease in which his joints became stiff. In 1942 he joined the Sperry Gyroscope Company, his interests having been in electronics as well as nuclear physics. John L. Rose was born at Washington Court House, Ohio, in 1897, got his Ph.D. from NYU in 1937, went to Furman College [in Greenville, South Carolina] and returned as Instructor in 1928. He was made Supervisor of the Physics Laboratories in 1941. His interests were in spectroscopy and in radioactive geochronology. He remained with us until his death in the middle 1940s; he taught classes at his home. As his disease worsened, he later moved to Florida where he died.
Others with Assistant Professor rank were Montgomery H. Johnson, who had a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1932, had come here as National Research Fellow in 1932–1934, Instructor 1934–1938, Assistant Professor 1938–1941. He left to join a government program. Beryl H. Dickinson, who had a Ph.D. from Chicago in 1935, was Assistant Professor and left us in 1942. Richard D. Present was an Instructor in the Department in 1943–1944. He and I collaborated on a paper about Geiger Counters. He left the next year to join the faculty at Vanderbilt University.
In 1940 and 1941, the Physics Department at the Heights included a number of persons whom today we would describe as “colorful.” One of these was Professor Richard T. Cox. He had worked on polarization and electron scattering, but his principal interest at the time was in electric eels. He and Charles Breder of the Aquarium, which was at that time located at the Battery, and Robert Matthews had gone to Brazil, to the Island of Marajo at the mouth of the Amazon, and there collected half a dozen specimens. These had been successfully brought back alive and were swimming around in tanks at the Aquarium. The largest was close to six feet long and several four-foot specimens were included. Cox set up the electrical system to measure the voltage, current, and time characteristics of the discharges. He found among other things that the eels developed approximately a hundred volts per foot of length, so that the large ones could administer a very unpleasant shock, which indeed in the proper circumstances of contact might be fatal to men. He set up a system by which the fish could flash a neon light, and gave a most excellent account before a meeting of the Explorers Club. The detailed measurements have since then been published in the scientific literature. When it was determined to raze the old Aquarium building and move the Aquarium contents to the Bronx Zoological Gardens to make room for the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, Cox came to me and asked me to allow the use of my station wagon to transport the eels from the Battery to the Bronx. The transfer took place in due course and the work continued in the new environment, which was much more accessible to the Heights Physics Department.
A year later, the Physics Department was transferred for administrative purposes to the College of Engineering. The reason was that the Physics Department was servicing many more Engineering than Arts students. Thorndike Saville, Dean of the College of Engineering, was a thoroughly practical, forthright and rather peppery engineer, and could not understand the basic motivation of a physicist studying electric eels. Cox was unhappy in the new administrative environment, and shortly thereafter accepted an appointment at Johns Hopkins, where he had a good friend and colleague in the Medical School. He could do the physics of eels and his colleague the biology. Together they did a job on the eels that thirty years later is regarded as a first-rate piece of science. Cox was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1898. He received his Ph.D. from John Hopkins University in 1924. He remained there as an Instructor, and came to NYU as Assistant Professor in 1926. In 1930 he became Associate Professor, and Full Professor in 1933, remaining with us until 1943.
Martin D. Whitaker was Administrative Chairman at the time of my appointment in September 1941. His research interest was in neutrons, in particular that neutrons scattered as if they were waves, in regular patterns from crystal faces. It was indeed in precisely this connection that I had known him before I came to New York, since we had discussed many aspects of neutron physics at meetings of the American Physical Society as well as on the occasion of my visits to the Heights Campus. Since 1936 I had been at the Bartol Research Foundation of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, which has its laboratory on the grounds of Swarthmore College. I had been interested in neutrons, in particular those produced by the cosmic radiation. In order to calibrate the detectors we used, we needed known numbers of neutrons emerging from artificial and controllable sources. In this connection I had met, talked to, and gotten to know Whitaker. In due course, after some visits to New York, we collaborated on a paper entitled “Comparative Efficiencies of Radioactive Neutron Sources,” which was authored by Edgar C. Murphy, William C. Bright, Martin D. Whitaker, S.A. Korff, and E.T. Clarke.88 Eric Thatcher Clarke was at that time attached to the Bartol Research Foundation. He later went to MIT, and is now [1970] at the Operations Research Corporation. The acknowledgements in that paper refer to a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Science to Whitaker, several hospitals that helped by supplying some of the radon we used, and the Radium Chemical Company of New York, which is a predecessor of the Canadian Radium and Uranium Company, in turn Canrad Precision Industries, today a public corporation.
Martin D. Whitaker was born in Ellensboro, North Carolina, in 1902. His M.A. was from the University of North Carolina in 1930, and his Ph.D. from NYU in 1935. He remained as Instructor at NYU, becoming Assistant Professor in 1941, and Acting Administrative Chairman in the same year. He became Director of the Clinton Laboratories in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, from 1942–1945, and President of Lehigh University in 1946, which post he occupied until his untimely death about a decade later. He received several honorary degrees. There had been some quite turbulent years in the Department previously. The Department had imported from Austria an Instructor named Otto Halpern, and shortly thereafter had jumped him in rank to Associate Professor. There had developed a feud between Halpern and other members of the Department, which had been the principal cause of the turbulence. Whatever the merits of the feud may have been, and it was before my time, Halpern was a good physicist and contributed to the Department’s reputation by good publications. He was born in Vienna, in 1899, and his Ph.D. was from the University of Vienna in 1922. He was Associate Professor at NYU, 1931–1941.
During the 1930s, one of the leading lights, in fact perhaps the most prominent, was Gregory Breit. He was a theoretical physicist of national stature. He did not occupy an administrative post but was the best-known research man. [He actually was Chairman during his entire tenure at NYU.] He left NYU for the University of Wisconsin, later went to Yale, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and is today retired. I had contacts with him as early as 1932, at which time we collaborated on a joint paper reviewing the subject of Optical Dispersion. Breit had earlier been associated with Merle Tuve at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Together they had performed the classic experiment on the ionosphere, by sending a radio signal up to it, obtaining an echo back, and from the time delay of the echo computing the height of the “Kennelly-Heaviside Layer.” This experiment was the foundation of modern ionospheric physics. As might be imagined, two strong personalities, Breit and Tuve, soon became impatient with one another, but after Breit moved to NYU the cooperation continued very well and several important publications resulted. Breit was born in Russia, in 1899 and received his Ph.D. from Hopkins in 1921. He was at NYU from 1929–1934, Wisconsin 1934–1947, and Donner Professor at Yale until his retirement in 1968.
Another member of the Physics Department when I came in 1941 was Norman Hilberry. He had been at the Washington Square Department from 1925 to 1928, and then at the Heights. He had been late in getting his Ph.D., having had the bad luck to complete a good piece of work just as someone else published the same findings. In the late 1930s he was given leave, went to Chicago, and got his Ph.D. in 1941. His work was in the field of cosmic radiation, a study of extensive air showers. He returned to NYU and was at once promoted to Associate Professor. He left in 1942 to join the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, and later became Director of the Argonne National Laboratory. He received several honorary degrees during a distinguished career.
The Department, being shorthanded, needed to recruit competent teachers and “adopted” two Heights faculty members from other departments, both of whom had had physics as undergraduates and were excellent teachers. These were Harmon Chapman, later to become Chairman of the Philosophy Department at the Heights, and John W. Knedler, Jr., from the English Department. Knedler later became Dean at University College. During 1944–1945 he was also Acting Executive Secretary of the Physics Department.
At the end of World War II, the Physics Department started an active search for a person to become Chairman. After many interviews the person decided upon was Joseph Boyce of MIT. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1903 and received his Ph.D. in 1926 at Princeton, where he was a Research Assistant to Karl T. Compton. When Compton went to MIT as President, he took Boyce with him, where he remained from 1930 to 1944, doing research in ultraviolet spectroscopy. He came to NYU in 1945 and brought a vigorous outlook and a good new direction to the Physics program, which had been disorganized during the war. Many temporary courses had been instituted, some at the request of governmental agencies, which became obsolete with the advent of peace. The Graduate curriculum, which had been strong before the war, had also felt the impact, with few graduate students attending classes and most of the faculty away or occupied on war-related problems. The curricula were overhauled and the graduate-study procedures reviewed. Since both he and I had been at Princeton, we modeled the Graduate program on the procedures at that Institution, and in due course I was given charge of that part of the academic program and the title of Graduate Advisor.
Many new faculty appointments had to be made to fill the vacancies left by the previous years. Personally, I had been recruited to NYU by Martin Whitaker as an Assistant Professor. I became Associate Professor in 1944 and Professor in 1946. Joe Boyce brought in Yardley Beers and Leon Fisher as Assistant Professors and arranged for the transfer to the Heights of George Hudson who had Full Professor rank at Washington Square. In 1950 Boyce was offered the Associate Directorship of the Argonne National Laboratory, which he accepted, and from there went on to the Illinois Institute of Technology where he became Vice President and Director of Research.
Again the process of searching for a Chairman became the rule of the day. Many candidates were interviewed. During this time, Yardley Beers was Executive Secretary of the Department. Beers was born in Philadelphia in 1913 and had a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1941. He had served a year as Instructor at NYU, 1940–1941, then went to Smith College, 1941–1942, and to MIT in the Radiation Laboratory from 1942 until he came to us. He left in 1959 to go to the National Bureau of Standards Laboratory at Boulder, Colorado, as Division Chief in his research field, radiofrequency physics.
Leon Fisher came from California, having received his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1943. He came as an Assistant Professor and became Associate Professor in 1951 and Full Professor in 1958. His interest was in electrical discharges in gases. He worked in this field for many years, and in later years obtained important grants and contracts and published considerably. He left in 1960 to return to California to an industrial firm in Palo Alto.
Another person brought in at this time was Fritz Reiche, who had received his Ph.D. in Berlin in 1907 and had worked with all of the original figures, Einstein, Planck, and others, in the development of the quantum theory in the early days of the century. He knew classical physics thoroughly and was better informed on the development of quantum theory than any person I have ever met. He was appointed as Adjunct Professor, thereby bypassing the age and retirement rules, and remained for many years as a person whom everyone respected and who brought prestige to the Department.
Under Boyce, the course offerings started to climb, and we were by 1952 presenting 23 courses. This new level has been more or less maintained since then, the level fluctuating by one or two per year, as circumstances warranted. Boyce brought in Yale K. Roots with the rank of Associate Professor to supervise the laboratories and undergraduate teaching. Roots stayed with us in that capacity until 1959 when he left to go to the University of Maryland. A graduate student named Morris Shamos received his Ph.D. from us in 1948. He remained on the faculty, and later became Professor and Chairman of the Washington Square Department. His research interest was in cosmic radiation [he later became interested in biophysics and physics education], and I was one of his thesis commission. Morton Hamermesh also was at one time an Assistant Professor at the Heights but was most of the time connected with the Washington Square Department. He left in due course to go to the Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Minnesota. He was an Assistant [and Associate] Professor in 1946–1948.
As the Physics Department was most of this time under the College of Engineering, until it was transferred back to University College in 1968, the various faculty members served on various College of Engineering committees. For example, Boyce, while Chairman of the Physics Department, was also Chairman of the Graduate and Research Advisory Committee of the College of Engineering.
During World War II, the overwhelming sentiment was that classified contracts be accepted, and that graduate student theses in such [classified] fields be allowed. Our point of view at that time was that all classified work would ultimately be declassified and therefore publishable as additions to knowledge. Further, we would rely on the good sense of the faculty member as to whether the subject matter was of sufficient academic quality to make an acceptable Ph.D. thesis. We sometimes had one or more additional persons in the Department who had been cleared as thesis readers, and sometimes we used outside readers. It turned out that our expectations were fulfilled, and that the work has indeed been declassified. Further, it can be stated that our faith in the integrity of faculty members was well founded, for no case has come to my attention of any thesis assignment that was clearly below Ph.D. quality. After the end of World War II, as the classified contracts expired, they were not renewed. By the late 1940s, we had no classified work in progress. As Graduate Advisor, when a classified contract was proposed, I followed a policy of advising the proposer that classified work in peacetime should be done in government laboratories, where (a) the facilities for safeguarding classified work are more readily available, and (b) the fundamental purpose of a university in generating and disseminating new knowledge is not infringed.
We have gathered together the reprints, representing work done in the Physics Department, in two volumes. These were bound and entitled “Contributions from the New York University Physics Department, 1942–1950” and “1950–1956.” The volumes hold 55 and 54 papers, respectively, and form an impressive commentary on the quality of the work done in the Department. Bound volumes are at present in the office of the Chairman of the Department at University College. Copies also were sent to the Deans of the undergraduate colleges and the Graduate School. The overwhelming majority of the papers are in refereed journals so that the quality is guaranteed by professionals from outside organizations.
Another interesting commentary on the work done at University Heights comes from an international source. The work that was done on radiation detection devices, including Geiger, proportional, and neutron counters, some of it during World War II, but mostly both before and after, was adjudged to have contributed materially to radiation cancer therapy, so that the Curie Medal was awarded to me by the Union International Contre le Cancer, in 1957. Later, the French Société d’Encouragement au Progrès sponsored by the French Government, awarded me their Medaille d’Honneur in 1965 for this work.
In 1954, Lyle Borst was appointed Chairman. He was born in Chicago in 1912, received his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1941, and came to us from the University of Utah. He remained Chairman until 1961, when he moved to the State University Physics Department at Buffalo, New York. In 1955–1956, Bruno Zumino and Sidney Borowitz were members of the Physics Department. Zumino, an Italian, had the degree of Dott.M.Sci. from Rome in 1945, and was an Assistant Professor in 1954–1955. He left to go to the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1957, and returned in 1959 as an Associate Professor. In 1961 he became Head of the All University Physics Department. He left this post in 1969 to resume research at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
Another member of the faculty at University Heights is Benjamin Bederson. Born in 1921, his undergraduate degree was from CCNY, and his Ph.D. from NYU in 1950. Following his Ph.D., he was at MIT for two years, and came to the Heights with the rank of Assistant Professor in 1952, becoming an Associate Professor in 1957 and a Full Professor in 1959. His research interest has been in ionization phenomena in gases, and in particular in the scattering of slow electrons. After the departure of Leon Fisher, Bederson has operated the electron-scattering research group, one of the strong major research programs in the Department.
Sidney Borowitz received his Ph.D. from NYU in 1948. After teaching at Harvard, he returned in 1952 as Assistant Professor, became Associate Professor in 1955 and Full Professor in 1960, taking the Chairmanship of the Heights Physics Department in 1961 when the All University Department concept was activated. He relinquished this post to become Dean of University College in 1969.
In 1956, Professor of Chemistry Austin Taylor succeeded C.W. Van der Merwe as Chairman of Physical Sciences of the Graduate School. Van der Merwe returned to his native South Africa and taught at Stellenbosch University. Gottfried Falk was brought in from Germany as Associate Professor. Joseph Lamarsh, Ph.D. MIT 1952, was made Assistant Professor, left in 1958 to go to Cornell, but returned to become Chairman of the newly formed Department of Nuclear Engineering in the School of Engineering and Science, the new name for the College of Engineering. Arthur Beiser, a former Heights graduate student, was made Assistant Professor, became Associate Professor in 1960, and left the following year to write books about physics. His books had been notably successful financially, and he had undoubtedly at the time the largest income of any of our former Ph.Ds. Among his books were Concepts and Principles of Physics by Borowitz and Beiser.
Chairman Borst brought into the Department several other foreign members, including Are Mann and Gottfried. Falk from Germany and T. Arase and S. Tani from Japan, all as Assistant Professors. In 1958–1959 the Assistant Professors also included Kurt Haller, Robert Haymes, Harry Nickle, and Kenneth Rubin. All left after a few years.
Chairman Borowitz brought in a number of new people, including Joseph Birman and Henry Stroke as Associate Professors. Thus, a rather complete change in personnel took place, with Beers, Borst, Fisher, and Hudson leaving from the Full Professor ranks, and several from the lower grades. These were replaced by Alfred Glassgold, who became Head of the All University Department succeeding Zumino, Henry Stroke who came in 1963 as Associate Professor, and Assistant Professors Brown, Josephson, Kohler, Rubin, and Salop. In 1966, Richardson and Robinson were added as Assistant Professors and Glassgold was promoted to Full Professor.
During the 1950s, a new building was under construction, known as Gould Hall of Technology. It was ready for occupancy in the fall of 1962 and the Physics Department moved into it. The Physics Department had previously occupied Butler Hall, a converted former residence, on the University Heights campus, for some thirty or more years. There had been a fire in Butler Hall around 1950, after which the interior had been rebuilt, but the entire building design was not too well suited to the needs of the fast-growing Physics Department. In the new building, which was much larger than Butler Hall, the space was shared with the Departments of Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, each having one of the floors. In 1959–1960, the University administration gave consideration to implementing the recommendations of a Self-Study report, issued in 1956, with specific reference to the establishment of an All University Head. The Undergraduate Department Chairmen were Sidney Borowitz for the Heights and Morris Shamos for the Square. Some of the important features of this new organization were (a) the operation of a coordinated single budget for the Department, and (b) a review of Department appointment policies consolidating them in the hands of the Head. Thus, the Head could make such new appointments as would implement the research and administrative policies, which he might determine.
Two other developments came shortly thereafter. The first was the decision to seek a “Center-of-Excellence” grant from the National Science Foundation, and the second to seek funds for a new Physics Building at Washington Square. Each required lengthy preparation and much negotiation. The award of the Center-of-Excellence grant was received in September 1969, and construction of the André and Bella Meyer Physics Building was begun about the same time. Another administrative change took place. In 1961, the Physics Department at the Heights was transferred back from the School of Engineering and Science to University College. As the administrative load of the All-University Department increased, the Heights Chairman, Sidney Borowitz, found he was spending more and more time at Washington Square. Hence he was appointed Assistant Head, with his office at Washington Square. In his place, Bernard Lippmann was appointed Chairman at University Heights. Lippmann was born in New York in 1914, got his Ph.D. Harvard 1948, and came to us from industry, having been Director of Research at General Research Corporation, Santa Barbara, California. Part of the thinking behind his appointment was that in due course he would encourage the department to develop some Applied Physics curricula, which the School of Engineering was anxious to have instituted.
In the following year, Bruno Zumino went to Europe on sabbatical leave and Sidney Borowitz became Acting Head. Later that same year, Zumino resigned and Borowitz was made Head. In 1969, Borowitz was designated Dean of University College and Glassgold succeeded him as Head. Lawrence Bornstein was made Chairman of the Heights Department. He had received his Ph.D. at the Heights and had been a member of the faculty since then. This brings the listing of the personnel and such comments as are appropriate on Department policies up to the present date, 1970. For the record, and for the guidance of future writers, the personnel listing of the Department as of October 1970 are: Head, Alfred E. Glassgold; Chairman, University Heights Department, Lawrence Bornstein; Chairman, Washington Square (Undergraduate) Department, Robert W. Richardson, with the title of Associate Head in charge of Undergraduate Department. Professors with offices principally at University Heights: Joseph Birman, Benjamin Bederson, Serge A. Korff, Henry Stroke, Bernard A. Lippmann, Leonard Rosenberg. Associate Professors: Howard Brown, Helen Hartmann, Peter M. Levy, Robert W. Richardson, Edward J. Robinson. Assistant Professor: Burton Budick. Professors with offices principally at Washington Square: Leonard Yarmus, Werner Brandt, Jerome K. Percus, Engelbert L. Schucking, Morris H. Shamos, Alberto Sirlin, Larry Spruch, Wolfhart Zimmerman. Associate Professors: Richard Brandt, Daniel Zwanziger. Assistant Professor: Julius H. Rannigcr.
At present it is planned to move most of the Heights Physics research to Washington Square, when the new Meyer Physics building becomes available. Hence, we may anticipate that several of those listed above as Heights personnel will move to the Square during the next few years. Adjunct and visiting staff are not listed here.
Appendix 4: Principal Appointments and Their Specialties after World War II until 2000
Yardley Beers (1913–2005) |
microwave spectroscopy |
Leon Fisher (b. 1918) |
gaseous electronics |
George E. Hudson (b. 1916) |
fluid mechanics, shock waves |
John Lamarsh (1928–1981) |
nuclear reactor physicist; Chair of Department of Nuclear Engineering |
Leonard Yarmus |
electron paramagnetic resonance; |
undergraduate laboratory director |
Lawrence Bornstein (1923–2004) |
noted teacher; undergraduate chair |
Martin Pope (b. 1918) |
Director of Radiation and Solid State Laboratory; |
later in Chemistry Dept |
Fritz Reiche (1883–1969) |
distinguished emigré quantum theorist |
Benjamin Bederson (b. 1921) |
experimental atomic physics, |
electronic collisions, atomic structure |
H. Henry Stroke (b. 1927) |
optical spectroscopy as probe of nuclear properties; |
low-temperature calorimetry |
Herman Cummins (1934–2010) |
laser physics, |
condensed-matter physics |
Harry Swinney (b. 1939) |
laser physics, dynamical physics |
Joseph L. Birman (b. 1927) |
theoretical condensed-matter physics; |
human rights activist |
Alfred E. Glassgold (b. 1929) |
astrophysics, |
atomic and nuclear physics |
Kurt Haller (1928–2004) |
field theory |
Edward A. Spiegel (b. 1931) |
Astrophysics |
Bruno Zumino (b. 1923) |
quantum field theory, supergravity |
Kurt W. Symanzi (1923–1983) |
quantum field theory |
Wolfhart Zimmerman (b. 1928) |
quantum field theory |
Morris Shamos (1917–2002) |
biological physics, cosmic rays; |
educator |
Larry Spruch (1923–2006) |
atomic and nuclear theorist |
Sidney Borowitz (b. 1918) |
theoretical physics; |
educator and administrator |
Lyle Borst (1912–2002) |
nuclear reactor physics |
Bernard A. Lippmann (b. 1914) |
collision and general theory |
Leona Marshall Libby (1919–1986) |
experimental particle physics |
Malvin Ruderman (b. 1927) |
astrophysics |
Alberto Sirlin (b. 1930) |
particle theory, standard model |
Leonard Rosenberg (b. 1932) |
collision theory |
Edward J. Robinson (b. 1936) |
atomic theory, laser physics |
Robert W. Richardson (b. 1935) |
theoretical nuclear physics, |
statistical physics, energy efficiency |
Richard A. Brandt (b. 1941) |
quantum field and particle theory; |
sports physics |
Jerome Percus (b. 1926) |
mathematical physics |
Werner Brandt (1925–1983) |
experimental condensed-matter physics |
Daniel Zwanziger (b. 1935) |
QED, QCD, quantum field theory |
Peter Levy (b. 1936) |
theoretical condensed-matter physics |
Howard H. Brown |
plasma physics; educator |
Ivan A. Sellin (b. 1937) |
condensed-matter physics; |
high-energy probes |
Samuel J. Williamson (1940–2005) |
biological and condensed-matter physics |
Thomas Miller (b. 1940) |
atmospheric, atomic and molecular |
physics |
Charles Swenberg (1940–1988) |
radiation physics, biophysics |
Leposava Vuškovič |
atomic, molecular and plasma physics |
Boris Sinkovič |
condensed-matter physics |
Tycho Sleator (b. 1955) |
atomic and optical physics |
Andrew Kent (b. 1960) |
condensed-matter physics |
Engelbert Schucking (b. 1926) |
astrophysics, astronomy |
Peter G. Bergmann (1915–2002) |
relativity |
Alan Sokal (b. 1955) |
mathematical, statistical physics; |
sociology of science |
Martin Hoffert (b. 1938) |
atmospheric, environmental science; |
geophysics |
George Zaslavsky (1935–2008) |
statistical physics, nonlinear science |
Patrick Huggins (b. 1938) |
astronomy, astrophysics |
John Lowenstein (b. 1941) |
field theory, nonlinear systems |
John Sculli |
experimental particle physics |
Allen Mincer (b. 1957) |
experimental particle physics |
Peter Nemethy (b. 1939) |
experimental particle physics |
James H. Christenson |
experimental particle physics |
Olav Redi (b. 1938) |
optical, nuclear physics |
Siegfried Horn |
condensed-matter physics |
Massimo Porrati (b. 1961) |
quantum field theory, gravitational physics, astrophysics, particle physics |
Glennis Farrar (b. 1946) |
astrophysics, particle physics |
Georgi Dvali (b. 1964) |
quantum field theory, quantum gravity |
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Bederson, B., Henry Stroke, H. History of the New York University Physics Department. Phys. Perspect. 13, 260–328 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-011-0056-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-011-0056-7
Keywords
- Allen V. Astin
- Jenny Rosenthal Bramley
- Gregory Breit
- David B. Douglass
- Henry Draper
- John C. Draper
- John William Draper
- Richard T. Cox
- Eugene Feenberg
- Gerald Goertzel
- Louis P. Granath
- Otto Halpern
- Morton Hamermesh
- Daniel Webster Hering
- Norman Hilberry
- Theodore Holstein
- John C. Hubbard
- Francis A. Jenkins
- Hartmut Kallmann
- Serge Korff
- Alfred Lee Loomis
- Elias Loomis
- Francis Wheeler Loomis
- James M. Mathews
- Allan C.G. Mitchell
- Samuel F.B. Morse
- Robert S. Mulliken
- Henry Primakoff
- Frederick Reines
- Arthur Roberts
- Edward O. Salant
- Clifford G. Shull
- John A. Simpson
- Henry Vethade
- John H. Van Vleck
- John A. Wheeler
- Robert W. Wood
- Bruno Zumino
- New York University
- University Heights campus
- Washington Square campus
- James Arthur Lectures
- Stanley H. Klosk Lectures
- history of physics