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My Life in Nuclear Physics, Photography, and Opera

Abstract

I sketch my life as an experimental nuclear physicist, beginning as a graduate student at Harvard University from 1948 to 1951, then as a postdoctoral fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory from 1951 to 1952, and finally as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota from 1952 until my retirement in 1991. I also carried out research at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Indiana University, and Los Alamos National Laboratory, and I participated in a number of summer schools and international conferences on nuclear physics. I also have worked in photography and opera. Over the years, I met and collaborated with many people in many walks of life who became friends for life.

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Notes

  1. Unless indicated otherwise, the photographs reproduced here are from my personal collection, most of which I took myself on my travels. I started photographing with my mother’s camera at the age of 10, built my own enlarger, and became the official photographer for my high school. I do my own darkroom work. A selection of my photographs is exhibited in Photogenesis, a gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico; see website <http://www.photogenesisgallery.com/photos_all.php?photographerid=27>.

  2. Alfred (Al) Nier died on May 16, 1994, two weeks after being paralyzed in a tragic motor accident. He had been working late, was tired, fell asleep at the wheel, and crashed into a highway bridge pier. Al communicated with me when I visited him in the hospital about a week after the accident by blinking his eyes. I told him how deeply I admired him as a physicist and as a person (he had been department chairman from 1953 to 1965). He smiled. Al had married his long-time secretary Ardis, and they lived happily together until he died. We miss him terribly. He was probably the most accomplished physicist Minnesota ever had. Nier received many honors and awards, but not the Nobel Prize, which he should have received. In 2012 the American Physical Society designated Minnesota’s Tate Laboratory of Physics as a Historic Site specifically recognizing Nier’s work.

  3. Al Nier was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1950, to which Ed Ney also was elected in 1971.

  4. Ben also gave the Van Vleck Lecture in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota in 1992. The Abigail and John Van Vleck Lectures were established through a gift by Abigail Van Vleck after her husband's death in 1980.

References

  1. Max Born, Optik: Ein Lehrbuch der Elektromagnetischen Lichttheorie (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1933).

  2. Norton M. Hintz, “Excitation Functions with an Internal Cyclotron Beam,” Physical Review 83 (1951), 185-186; see also Norton M. Hintz and Norman F. Ramsey, “Excitation Functions to 100 Mev,” ibid. 88 (1952), 19-27.

  3. P.A.M. Dirac, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930; third edition 1947).

  4. Alfred O.C. Nier, “J. William Buchta,” Physics Today 19 (December 1966), 99.

  5. John M Blatt andf Victor F. Weisskopf, Theoretical Nuclear Physics (New York: Wiley & Sons and London: Chapman & Hall, 1952).

  6. Moscow-Pullman Daily News (December 7, 2011), website <http://dnews.com/obituaries/article_638dd0a7-0065-51db-b6ac-08563d7abe78.html>.

  7. Norton M. Hintz, “Proton-Nucleus Elastic Scattering at 9.8 Mev,” Phys. Rev. 106 (1957), 1201-1206.

  8. H. Feshbach, C.E. Porter, and V.F. Weisskopf, “Model for Nuclear Reactions with Neutrons,” Phys. Rev. 96 (1954), 448-464.

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  9. Tannie Stovall, The Doctorate 1957-1962 (Xliris Corporation: Tannie Stovall, 2011).

  10. B.F. Bayman and Norton M. Hintz, “Analysis of Two-Neutron (L = 0) Transfer Cross Sections for Calcium and Nickel,” Phys. Rev. 172 (1968), 1113-1123.

  11. P. Blasi and R.A. Ricci, ed., Proceedings of the International Conference on Nuclear Physics, Florence, August 29-September 3, 1983. 2 Vols. (Bologna: Tipografia Compositori, 1983).

  12. Ernst Bleuler, “Birmingham Comference on Nuclear Physics,” Science 118 (November 6, 1953), 534-536.

  13. Roger H. Stuewer, ed., Nuclear Physics in Retrospect: Proceedings of a Symposium on the 1930s (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979). See also the resulting video, “Age of Innocence: Nuclear Physics in the 1930s,” Introduced and Narrated by Norton M. Hintz, Produced by Roger H. Stuewer, Written by Janet Krober, Directed by Gary Greenberg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1982).

  14. N.M. Hintz, C.D. Kavaloski, L.L. Lee, Jr., and T. Stovall, “Determination of Parity Change from Inelastic Angular Distributions,” in J.B. Birks, ed., Proceedings of the Rutherford Jubilee International Conference Manchester 1961 (London: Heywood & Company, 1961), pp. 509-510.

  15. Richard L. Becker, ed., International Nuclear Physics Conference held at Gatlinburg, Tennessee, September 12-17, 1966 (New York and London: Academic Press, 1967).

  16. Madame P. Gugenberger, ed., International Congress on Nuclear Physics, Comptes rendus du Congrès international de physique nucléaire, 30 e anniversaire de la découverte de la radioactivité artificielle, Paris-Palais de l’UNESCO, 2-8 Julliet 1964. 2 Vols. (Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1964).

  17. E. Clementel and C. Villi, ed., Proceedings of the Conference on Direct Interactions and Nuclear Reaction Mechanisms held at the Institute of Physics of the University of Padua, September 3-8, 1962. Under the auspices of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (New York and London: Gordon and Breach, 1963).

  18. J. de Boer and H.J. Mang, ed., Proceedings of the International Conference on Nuclear Physics, Munich, August 27-September 1, 1973. 2 Vols. (Amsterdam and London: North Holland Publishing Company and New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, 1973).

  19. G.E. Brown and M. Bolsterli, “Dipole State in Nuclei,” Physical Review Letters 3 (1959), 472-476.

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  20. G.E. Brown, A. Sethi and N.M. Hintz, “Proton-nucleus scattering and density dependent meson masses in the nucleus,” Physical Review C 44 (1991), 2653-2662.

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  21. J.E. Spencer and H.A. Enge, “Split-Pole Magnetic Spectrograph for Precision Nuclear Spectroscopy,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods 49 (1967), 181-193.

  22. Dimitris N. Mihailidis, Norton M. Hintz, and Anil Sethi, “High spin two-neutron-hole states via the 208Pb(p.t) 206Pb reaction at 120 MeV,” Phys. Rev. C 64 (2001), 054608-1-054608-12.

  23. Van Vleck maintained his interest in the Minnesota Rouser; see Chun C. Lin, Roger H. Stuewer, and J.H. Van Vleck, “‘On, Minnesota’ gave Wisconsin its popular fight song,” [Minnesota] Alumni News (December 1976/January 1977), 1, 4-5; abridged version in On Wisconsin 2, No. 2 (Summer 1980), 4.

  24. Victor F. Weisskopf, The Privilege of Being a Physicist (New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1989).

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Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge my deep debt to Roger H. Stuewer, Professor Emeritus of the History of Science and Technology and of Physics at the University of Minnesota. Without Roger this would never have been written. He contributed so much that he could justifiably be listed as coauthor. Roger knew many of the physicists mentioned in this article, so he could correct or add to my copy. Roger corrected my English, punctuation, and grammar, and suggested items to include such as my opera activities. He also was crucial in selecting the photographs reproduced here out of the many I took over the years. Roger has done brilliant work over his years as a professor at Minnesota. One of his crowning achievements was to organize a four-day Symposium on the History of Nuclear Physics in the 1930s at Minnesota in May 1977. And just in time. Many of those who delivered lectures and contributed to the discussions are no longer living. Bravo, Roger.

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Correspondence to Norton M. Hintz.

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Address requests for reprints to Norton M. Hintz, 1666 Coffman Street, Apt. 134, St. Paul, MN 55108 USA, e-mail: norton@physics.umn.edu.

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Hintz, N.M. My Life in Nuclear Physics, Photography, and Opera. Phys. Perspect. 14, 196–238 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-012-0086-9

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Keywords

  • Akito Arima
  • Luis W. Alvarez
  • Heinz Barschall
  • Giancarlo Bassani
  • Benjamin Bayman
  • Dymitry Belyaev
  • Nicolaas Bloembergen
  • Jorrit de Boer
  • Aage Bohr
  • Niels Bohr
  • Mark Bolsterli
  • William Lawrence Bragg
  • Gerald E. Brown
  • Jay Buchta
  • Warren Cheston
  • Paul A.M. Dirac
  • Harold Enge
  • Michael Franey
  • Phillip Frank
  • Martin Friedman
  • Otto Robert Frisch
  • Wendell Furry
  • Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber
  • Maurice Goldhaber
  • Morton Hamermesh
  • Lawrence Johnston
  • Charles Kavaloski
  • Ykaterina Maximova
  • Ben Mottelson
  • Edward P. Ney
  • Alfred O.C. Nier
  • Otto Oldenburg
  • Rudolf Peierls
  • Edward Purcell
  • Norman Ramsey
  • Julian Schwinger
  • E.S. Shire
  • Tannie Stovall
  • Georges Temmer
  • Barry Tuckwell
  • John Hasbrouck Van Vleck
  • Victor F. Weisskopf
  • Denys Wilkinson
  • John H. Williams
  • Aage Winther
  • Chen Shau Wu
  • University of California at Los Angeles
  • Harvard University
  • University of Minnesota
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • Cavendish Laboratory
  • Niels Bohr Institute
  • Bolshoi Ballet
  • Stuttgart Ballet
  • English Royal Ballet
  • Tyrone Guthrie Theater
  • Center Opera Company
  • Minnesota Opera
  • Boston Symphony Orchestra
  • photography
  • opera
  • nuclear physics
  • (p, t) reactions
  • history of nuclear physics