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Interview with Margaret Lauritsen Leighton
Get PDFAn interview in three sessions, in May and June 1995, with Margaret Lauritsen Leighton, wife of Thomas Lauritsen (d. 1973) and later of Robert B. Leighton (d. 1997), both professors of physics in the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy.
She begins by discussing Thomas Lauritsen’s friendship with the family of Niels and Margrethe Bohr while he was a postdoc in Copenhagen, 1939-40; his marriage to Else Chievitz; and their flight back to the United States when war broke out. She recalls her WAC service in World War II; her marriage to Tommy two years after Else’s death; the family background in Denmark of her father-in-law, Charles C. Lauritsen; his marriage to Sigrid Henriksen; their eventual immigration to the United States; and his arrival at Caltech in 1926.
Other topics include Lauritsen family lore; Tommy’s early education and working relationship with his father; his mother Sigrid’s medical career and strong personality; sabbatical visits to Denmark with Tommy in 1952-53 and 1963-64; their friendship with Aage and Marietta Bohr; Friday night post-seminar parties at the C. C. Lauritsen home for his group at the W. K. Kellogg Radiation Laboratory; the advent of Caltech president Lee A. and Doris Dubridge; Margaret’s incompatibility with the Caltech Women’s Club; her work for the Democratic Party and SANE (the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy); Tommy Lauritsen’s illness and death; and their friendship with Fay Ajzenberg-Selove
Interview with Philip G. Saffman
Get PDFAn interview in three sessions, December 1997 and April 1999, with Philip Geoffrey Saffman, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Applied Mathematics and Aeronautics, in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. Dr. Saffman received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Cambridge University and moved to Caltech in 1964 as a professor of fluid mechanics, becoming a professor of applied mathematics in 1970 and Von Kármán Professor in 1995. He died on August 17, 2008.
He discusses his Jewish family’s background in the United Kingdom; growing up in Leeds; the family’s experiences in World War II. At Cambridge: studies fluid mechanics with George Batchelor (PhD 1956); postdoctoral work with G. I. Taylor; joins faculty as assistant lecturer, 1958. Moves to King’s College, London, 1960, to work with Hermann Bondi.
Recalls first visit to Caltech, at JPL with Janos Laufer, 1963; impressions after joining faculty in 1964; genesis of applied mathematics at Caltech; collaboration with neighbor Max Delbrück; sabbaticals at MIT (1970-71 and 1982); operations of Caltech’s applied math dept. Comments on two of his children as Caltech undergraduates. Recalls some of his 37 graduate students, particularly Henry Yuen; Yuen’s career and invention of VCR Plus. Discusses his reasons for rejecting Cambridge’s offer of the Taylor chair; his fears that Caltech is losing out on best graduate students and faculty, in part because of tight money.
In a supplemental interview in 1999, he reminisces about his Cambridge supervisors Batchelor and Taylor; describes his research on water waves and vortices; and further remarks on offer of Taylor chair at Cambridg
Interview with David S. Wood
Get PDFAn interview in two sessions in 1994 with David S. Wood, Caltech professor of materials science (1950-1988), associate dean of students (1968-1974), and alumnus (BS, 1941; MS, 1946; PhD, 1949). He recalls growing up in Sierra Madre, California, and attending school in Pasadena; family friendship with Russell Porter leads to application to Caltech; bachelor's in 1941. Recalls engineering program in the late 1930s: professors F. Thomas, D. Clark, R. Knapp, F. Converse, H. Clapp; employment with B. Sage and Knapp; Caltech's Pump Lab. Develops interest in metallurgy; work with D. Clark in Impact Lab to study properties of metals. Wartime work on metals with P. Duwez; towards end of war goes to Los Alamos to work on mechanical design of uranium 235 (atomic) bomb; meets later colleagues R. Christy, R. Walker, R. Bacher, and R. Feynman. Postwar return to Caltech; graduate study and thesis on rapid load testing machine; cutaway drawing by R. Porter. Begins collaboration with Thad Vreeland; theory of dislocations in crystals. Recalls Caltech in postwar period and Lee A. DuBridge's presidency. Becomes associate dean of students (1968, under dean P. Eaton); organizes Freshman Camp; involvement with minority students program. Recalls participation with his wife Connie in campus musicals written by Kent Clark and Elliot Davis. Consulting work; work on stress analysis for industry. Remarks about improvement in pedagogy at Caltech; notes Feynman's lectures in physics as starting point of that trend
Interview with David S. Saxon
Get PDFAn interview in January 1997 with David S. Saxon, president emeritus of the University of California, who initiated plans during his presidency (1975-1983) for what became the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, operated by CARA, the California Association for Research in Astronomy, a joint enterprise of Caltech, the University of California, and NASA.
In this brief interview, Dr. Saxon recalls his intention to bolster UC’s eminence in astronomy; his early discussions with Donald Osterbrock and Charles Townes; discussion with Jerry Nelson of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory who wanted to build a new-generation telescope with a ten-meter segmented mirror; Luis Alvarez’s support of the idea; financial support from the UC Regents; committee chaired by Harold Ticho of UCLA to initiate design study. He recalls his disagreement with the UC astronomers, who wanted a ten-meter mirror but not a segmented one and were reluctant to collaborate with another institution. He discusses the initial interest of Caltech president Marvin L. [Murph] Goldberger, the fund-raising efforts of Eugene Trefethen, and the abortive $36-million gift to UC from the Hoffman Foundation. He also comments on other achievements of his presidency: revision of UC’s library system and the development of computational information systems
Interview with Allan J. Acosta
Get PDFAn interview in four sessions, in April and May 1994, with Allan James Acosta, Richard L. and Dorothy M. Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering, emeritus, in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. Acosta received his undergraduate and graduate education at Caltech (BS, 1945; MS, 1949; PhD, 1952). He joined the Caltech faculty in 1954 and became a full professor in 1966 and Hayman Professor in 1990. In this interview, he discusses growing up in Southern California during the depression and his early interest in science and engineering; his war service in the U.S. navy, including the navy's V-12 program at Caltech, and his observation of the first A-bomb blasts at Bikini Atoll. After his discharge from the service in September 1946, Acosta returned to Caltech and was hired as an engineer by R.T. Knapp, head of Caltech's Hydraulic Machinery Laboratory, which was then testing pumps developed by the Byron Jackson Co. of Los Angeles for Washington State's Grand Coulee Irrigation District. After a year, he became a graduate student. He discusses the Hydraulic Machinery Laboratory, established by Knapp in the early 1930s, the establishment of the related Hydrodynamics Laboratory during the war, its evolution under Milton Plesset, and its connections with the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (GALCIT). He discusses his work in fluid mechanics and heat transfer and his association with mechanical engineering colleagues Rolf Sabersky, Duncan Rannie, Frank Marble, and Edward Zukoski, and later with Christopher E. Brennen. He discusses the history of GALCIT, and his work for the Fluids Engineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers [ASME]. He comments on the evolution of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech. The interview closes with reminiscences of some of his PhD students
Interview with Robert A. Huttenback
Get PDFInterview in two sessions, September and November 1995, with Robert A. Huttenback, chairman of the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences from 1972 until 1977, when he was appointed chancellor of UC Santa Barbara.
He begins by recalling his childhood; born in Mainz, Germany, in 1928. Since the family was Jewish, they were anxious to leave Germany when Hitler became chancellor; they emigrated in 1933, first to Italy, then to England. In 1939, they came to San Francisco, thence to Los Angeles.
Matriculates at UCLA 1947, BA in history, 1951. Drafted during the Korean War, posted to Fort Bliss, Texas. After two years' service, returns to UCLA for graduate work in history (PhD, 1959). Fulbright Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London for a year, then a year of research in India. Comes to Caltech as Master of Student Houses (MOSH) and acting lecturer in history.
Recalls his activities as MOSH (1960-1969) and early teaching; his opposition to invitation to Gov. Ronald Reagan to speak at Caltech's fund-rasing kickoff. Becomes dean of students, 1969. Recalls his deanship and the unfortunate involvement of psychotherapist Carl Rogers, of the Center for Studies of the Person in La Jolla. General dissatisfaction with division chairmanship of Hallett Smith and search committee for a new chairman; Huttenback becomes acting chair. Establishment of graduate program in the social sciences. Discusses his efforts to professionalize the division; recalls battle over tenure for literature professor Jenijoy La Belle. 1972, becomes division chairman. Recalls anti-Vietnam War demonstration on campus.
Comments on presidency of Harold Brown and on the admission of women to Caltech in the early 1970s. Discusses his academic research on British imperialism in India; his work on consortium advising on development of technology institutes in India; 1962, consults at Kanpur. Six months' research in South Africa on Gandhi. Research on racism and imperialism worldwide. Comments on his love of teaching; his work with Lance Davis on Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire, both at Caltech and after his move to UC Santa Barbara; recaps the establishment of the social sciences in the division. Discusses his part in setting up the Baxter Art Gallery at Caltech. Concludes by voicing disappointment in general quality of Caltech's English and philosophy faculty during his chairmanship
Interview with Vladimir B. Braginsky
Get PDFInterview, January 15, 1997, with Vladimir B. Braginsky, experimental physicist, Moscow State University.
Recalls family background and childhood in the USSR during World War II. Matriculates at Moscow State University 1955, PhD 1959, joins faculty 1969. Work with Y. B. Zel'dovich on search for quarks and detection of gravitational radiation; work with Vitaly Ginzburg on detecting time dependence of gravitational constant. Comments on Andrei Sakharov. Joins Communist Party in Khrushchev era. Science hierarchy in the USSR. Constraints on foreign travel. Meets John A. Wheeler in 1968 at international conference; gives a talk on quantum measurement; invited to visit Princeton, Harvard, University of Maryland, and Caltech, 1970. Discusses Joseph Weber's gravitational-wave experiment. Admiration for Kip S. Thorne. Early impressions of LIGO project on visits to Caltech in 1981 and 1984. His group at Moscow State University becomes LIGO collaborator. Comments on 1962 work of M. E. Gerzenstein and V. I. Pustovoit in gravitational-wave detection. Visit from Thorne in Moscow, 1977, with invitation to join LIGO. Comments on R. W. P. Drever and Rainer Weiss; on disagreements between Drever and Rochus (Robbie) Vogt, LIGO director 1987-1994. Fairchild Scholar at Caltech, 1990; LIGO's technical difficulties; project's disarray. Expresses optimism re LIGO directorship of Barry Barish and potential improvements in LIGO sensitivity. His laboratory's work on mirror suspension
Interview with Robert F. Christy
Get PDFRobert F. Christy was born in Vancouver in 1916, received his undergraduate education at the University of British Columbia, and took his Ph.D. degree with J. Robert Oppenheimer at Berkeley in 1941. He was an early participant on the Manhattan Project, working with Enrico Fermi at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago on the first atomic pile. In 1943 he went to Los Alamos as a member of the Theoretical Division under Hans Bethe, where he devised what came to be known as the Christy bomb, or the Christy gadget--the plutonium implosion device tested at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945.
After the war he returned briefly to the University of Chicago, where he and his wife shared living quarters for a time with Edward Teller and his wife. Caltech was then seeking to build up its theoretical physics faculty, and Oppenheimer, who was teaching there part time, recommended that the institute hire Christy. In 1946 Christy accepted Caltech's offer of an associate professorship. He worked chiefly on the application of theory to cosmic-ray experiments in particle physics, later moving into nuclear physics and astrophysics, including important work in the 1960s on the pulsations of RR Lyrae stars, which are similar to but smaller than the Cepheid variables used as cosmic yardsticks. In 1967 this work earned Christy the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In 1970, Christy became Caltech's provost, a post he held for the next ten years. After Caltech president Harold Brown left to join the Carter Administration as Secretary of Defense in 1977, Christy was also acting president of the institute, until the advent of Marvin L. (Murph) Goldberger a year later. In the mid-1980s he became a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Dosimetry, which investigated the radiation effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
In the interview Christy recalls his childhood in British Columbia; his undergraduate years at the University of British Columbia; his graduate work with J. Robert Oppenheimer at Berkeley; and his work on the Manhattan Project, first with Enrico Fermi at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago and then as a member of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos. He recounts his wartime work on the critical assembly for the plutonium bomb ("the Christy bomb"); the Alamogordo test, July 16, 1945; the postwar concerns of ALAS (Association of Los Alamos Scientists); his brief return to the University of Chicago and move to Caltech; friendship with and later alienation from Edward Teller; work with Charles and Tommy Lauritsen and William A. Fowler in Caltech's Kellogg Radiation Laboratory; Freeman Dyson's Orion Project; work on the meson and RR Lyrae stars; fellowship at Cambridge University; 1950s Vista Project at Caltech; his opposition to the Strategic Defense Initiative; and his post-retirement work for the National Research Council's Committee on Dosimetry and on inertial-confinement fusion
Interview with Herbert B. Keller
Get PDFInterview in two sessions, May and June 1996, with Herbert B. Keller, professor of applied mathematics with a joint appointment in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science and the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy. Dr. Keller received his BEE at Georgia Tech in 1945 and his PhD from New York University (Institute for Mathematics and Mechanics, later the Courant Institute) in 1954. At Caltech as a visiting professor in 1965; joined the faculty as full professor in 1967. Executive officer for applied mathematics, 1980-1985.
He discusses growing up in Paterson, N.J., with his older brother, mathematician Joseph Keller, and education in mathematics at Eastside High School. Matriculates at Georgia Tech and joins NROTC; in World War II, serves as a fire-control officer on the USS Mississippi.
After the war, he takes graduate courses in electrical engineering at Georgia Tech; soon follows his brother to NYU and the institute established there by Richard Courant. Recollections of Courant and Charles De Prima; fellow students: Peter Lax, Louis Nirenberg, Cathleen Morawetz, and Harold Grad. Bicycling trip in Europe, 1948, with his brother; meeting up with Courant in Switzerland. Thesis work with Bernard Friedman. From 1951-1953, he taught mathematics at Sarah Lawrence.
Recalls working with Robert Richtmyer at Courant on the Atomic Energy Commission's UNIVAC computer; becomes associate director of the AEC Computation and Applied Mathematics Center; Edward Teller and Hans Bethe as consultants; visits Los Alamos and Livermore. Initial invitation to Caltech in 1960 from Gilbert McCann, head of what was then called information science (now computer science). Happy at Courant and unimpressed with Caltech's offer, he declines, but visits Caltech in 1965 at invitation of Gerald Whitham, joining new applied mathematics program. Returns to NYU for a year, then back to Caltech to stay. Recalls applied math group--Donald Cohen, Philip Saffman, Julian Cole, later Joel Franklin. Recalls Jack Todd. Helps establish and for many years teaches one of Caltech's most popular courses: Applied Mathematics 95 (AMA 95).
Discusses early development of computer science at Caltech: Donald Knuth, Carver Mead, Charles L. Seitz., Ivan Sutherland, Mani Chandy. Discusses his relations with Caltech's pure mathematicians and aerodynamicists. Recalls sabbatical at INRIA [Institut National de Recherche en d'Informatique et en Automatique] and visiting professorship at Paris-Orsay. Visiting fellow at Christ College, Cambridge, and DAMTP (Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics) in 1993. Concludes by recalling his impressions of K.O. Friedrichs and Fritz John at Courant and his work with his brother
Interview with Verner F. H. Schomaker
Get PDFAn interview in four sessions in February 1993 with the physical chemist Verner F. H. Schomaker, professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Schomaker received his BS (1934) and MS (1935) from the University of Nebraska and his PhD (1938) from Caltech. He remained at Caltech, in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, as a George Ellery Hale Fellow (1938-40), senior research fellow (1940-45), assistant professor (1945-46), associate professor (1946-50), and professor (1950-58), before leaving to join Union Carbide’s research division. In 1965, he moved to the University of Washington, where he chaired the Department of Chemistry for five years. He died in Pasadena, on March 30, 1997.
In this interview, he describes the Caltech milieu in the 1930s; his graduate work with Donald Yost; and the operation of the chemistry division under Linus Pauling (1937-1957). Discusses his own work in electron diffraction and collaboration with such colleagues as Jürg Waser, William Lipscomb, David Shoemaker, Roy Glauber, Kenneth Trueblood, and Richard Marsh; his work for Union Carbide; and his eventual move to the University of Washington. Comments on Pauling’s career at Caltech, his deep insight, his wide-ranging interests, his political activism, and his eventual departure from Caltech