Abstract
This paper is based upon five interviews I conducted with Robert Vivian Pound in 2006–2007 and covers his childhood interest in radios, his time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory during the Second World War, his work on the discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance in condensed matter, his travels as a professor at Harvard University, and his social interactions with other physicists.
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Notes
Interview 3, page 3; I use this notation throughout.
This was a microwave cavity of about a liter in volume.
References
Robert V. Pound, an oral history conducted in 1991 by John H. Bryant, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. USA, p. 3.
Ibid., p. 5.
Robert V. Pound, Microwave Mixers. With a chapter by Eric Durand. Edited by C.G. Montgomery and D.D. Montgomery [Radiation Laboratory Series, No. 16] (New York and London: McGraw-Hill, 1948).
E.M. Purcell, H.C. Torrey, and R.V. Pound, “Resonance Absorption by Nuclear Magnetic Moments in a Solid,” Physical Review 69 (1946), 37–38.
N. Bloembergen, E.M. Purcell, and R.V. Pound, “Relaxation Effects in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Absorption,” Phys. Rev. 73 (1948), 679–712.
F. Bloch, W.W. Hansen, and Martin Packard, “Nuclear Induction,” Phys. Rev. 69 (1946), 127.
Felix Bloch, “The principle of nuclear induction” [Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1952], in Nobel Foundation, Nobel Lectures Including Presentation Speeches and Laureates Biographies. Physics 1942–1962 (Amsterdam, London, New York: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1964), pp. 203–216; Edward M. Purcell, “Research in nuclear magnetism” [Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1952], in ibid., pp. 219–231.
Luis W. Alvarez and F. Bloch, “A Quantitativbe Determination of the Neutron Moment in Absolute Nuclear Magnetons,” Phys. Rev. 57 (1940), 111–122.
R.V. Pound and G.A. Rebka, Jr., “Apparent Weight of Photons,” Physical Review Letters 4 (1960), 337–341; Robert V. Pound, “Weighing Photons, I,” Physics in Perspective 2 (2000), 224–268; idem, “II,” ibid. 3 (2001), 4–51.
E.M. Purcell and R.V. Pound, “A Nuclear Spin System at Negative Temperature,” Phys. Rev. 81 (1951), 279–280.
James L. Lawson and George E. Uhlenbeck, ed., Threshold signals [Radiation Laboratory Series, No. 24] (New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill, 1950); George E. Valley, Jr., and Henry Wallman, ed., Vacuum Tube Amplifiers [Radiation Laboratory Series, No. 18] (New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill, 1948).
Acknowledgment
I thank Roger H. Stuewer for his thoughtful and careful editorial work on my article.
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Ursula Pavlish lives in Pécs, Hungary. She graduated with a degree in physics from Princeton University in 2005 and then studied history of science at Harvard University for one year. She has conducted interviews with more than twenty-five physicists and astronomers.
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Pavlish, U. Robert Vivian Pound and the Discovery of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Condensed Matter. Phys. Perspect. 12, 180–189 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-009-0011-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-009-0011-z
Keywords
- Nicolaas Bloembergen
- Felix Bloch
- William W. Hansen
- Martin Packard
- Robert V. Pound
- Edward M. Purcell
- I. I. Rabi
- John T. Tate
- Henry C. Torrey
- John H. Van Vleck
- Harvard University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- MIT Radiation Laboratory
- Stanford University
- University of Buffalo
- Nobel Prize in Physics
- molecular beams
- nuclear magnetic resonance
- history of physics