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Interview with Howard G. Smits
Get PDFAn interview in February 1979 with Caltech alumnus Howard G. Smits, former president of the Pacific Iron and Steel Company, who graduated with a BS (1931) and MS (1933) in civil engineering. He discusses the different focus, in Caltech’s early days, of engineers vis-à-vis theoretical scientists. He was a member of the Gnomes, and he reminisces about fraternity life and the disbanding of the fraternities in 1931 in favor of student housing—a move mandated by Caltech’s head, Robert A. Millikan. Comments on Millikan’s motives, the change in atmosphere on campus, and the makeup of the four new student houses. Recalls his part in fostering new traditions and interhouse athletic competitions; extracurricular activities. Economics courses with Horace Gilbert and Philip Fogg; history with William Bennett Munro. Anecdote about Albert Einstein and Beno Gutenberg; bonfires before annual football game with Occidental; visits to Scripps College. Recollections of working with architect Richard Neutra. Course in structural engineering with Romeo Martel. Concludes with comments on his membership in the Caltech Associates
Interview with Henry Victor Neher
Get PDFAn interview in two sessions, April 27 and 28, 1982, with Henry Victor Neher, professor of physics, emeritus, in the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy. Dr. Neher received a BA in physics from Pomona College (1926) and became a graduate student at Caltech in 1928, earning his PhD three years later.
In this interview, he recalls his undergraduate years at Pomona, his growing acquaintance with Caltech, and his work as a graduate student on the scattering of high-energy electrons. Recollections of Robert A. Millikan, Earnest Watson, William H. Pickering. He describes Caltech’s cosmic-ray group—Millikan, Carl Anderson, Seth Neddermeyer, Ira S. Bowen—and the plane trips he made throughout North and South America to measure cosmic rays. Recollections of Richard Chace Tolman. Comments on his PhD orals, on teaching undergraduates, on some of his memorable students (Kip Thorne, Howard Berg, H. Guyford Stever). The 100-to-1 Shot Club; John Anderson and Russell Porter. The effect of the Depression on Caltech. War work at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. Changes at Caltech during presidency of Lee Dubridge. Postwar balloon flights to study cosmic rays. Comments on Frank and J. Robert Oppenheimer and their political difficulties during the McCarthy era. Early campus atmosphere and changes over the years. Donald Glaser and development of the bubble chamber
Interview with James F. Bonner
Get PDFInterview in 1980 with professor of biology James Bonner begins with his recollections of growing up in an academic family. In 1929, his father, a physical chemist at the University of Utah, was a visitor at Caltech, where Bonner enrolled as a junior. Recalls course work with X-ray crystallographer Roscoe G. Dickinson and activities of Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering under Arthur Amos Noyes; humanities courses with William B. Munro; physics with Earnest Watson, William V. Houston, and Carl Anderson; geology with John P. Buwalda; and biology with Thomas Hunt Morgan, Henry Borsook, and Theodosius Dobzhansky. Became Dobzhansky's summer researcher and editor; switched from chemistry to biology. Graduate work with Dobzhansky on Drosophila genetics and Kenneth Thimann on plant hormone auxin. Friendship with Noyes. NRC postdoctoral fellowship to Utrecht, Leiden, and ETH, 1934-35. Joined Caltech's Biology Division in 1936 as an instructor: recalls colleagues Frits Went, Arie J. Haagen-Smit, Johannes van Overbeek; plant labs at Caltech; coining of term phytotron. Recollections of Robert A. Millikan. War work for U.S. Emergency Rubber Project on guayule and Cryptostegia. Work on cell biology with Sam Wildman; discovery of Fraction 1, central enzyme of photosynthesis. Founding of Caltech's Industrial Associates program in 1950. Recalls graduate student Paul Tso, discovery of plant actomycin, isolation of ribosomes. Work of Robert Holley on transfer RNAs. Consultant to Malaysian rubber industry. "Next 100 Years" project, with Harrison Brown. Studies RNA in 1960s with R. C. Huang and histone chemistry with Douglas Fambrough. Visitor at Oxford, 1963. Remarks on underdeveloped countries. Study of population growth with H. Brown. Comments on his recent work on cloning genes, and visits to Singapore and China. His hopes for genetic engineering. Stint as acting chairman of the Biology Division; comments on Robert L. Sinsheimer. [See also 1978 joint interview with Bonner, N. H. Horowitz, D. F. Poulson, and S. H. Emerson.
Interview with Rodman Paul
Get PDFInterview in 1982 with Rodman W. Paul, Edward S. Harkness Professor of History, emeritus. A historian specializing in the American West, particularly western mining, Paul joined Caltech's Humanities Division in 1947 and was instrumental in building up its history department. He comments in this interview on the state of the Humanities Division under its longtime chairman Hallett Smith in the 1950s and 1960s; on his efforts to build the history department; on the division's evolution in the 1970s under Robert Huttenback (see addendum) into the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences; on the eclipse of the behavioral sciences and the weakness of the division's literature department; on his relationship with the Huntington Library and the unsuccessful attempt by the Bancroft Library to recruit him; on the upheavals of the 1960s in the academic world; and on his service on various faculty committees, particularly the institute's Aims and Goals Committee. The interview includes recollections of Robert A. and Greta Millikan, Lee DuBridge, Alan Sweezy, Earnest Watson, Richard Chace Tolman, and the political controversies of the 1950s (Linus Pauling, H. S. Tsien, J. Robert Oppenheimer), as well as his analysis of later campus and divisional trends
Interview with Philip S. Fogg
Get PDFAn interview February 19, 1980, with Philip S. Fogg, who was an assistant professor of business economics at Caltech from 1930 to 1938 and associate professor from 1938 to 1941. He also served as resident associate in Fleming House from 1931 to 1935 and as Caltech’s registrar from 1935 to 1941.
He recalls meeting W. B. Munro, professor of history and government and member of Caltech’s Executive Council, in 1930, who hired him to teach business skills to Caltech’s engineering students. Became first resident of the newly opened Athenaeum, where he encountered visitor Albert Einstein. Recollections of R. A. Millikan, Fritz Zwicky, A. A. Noyes. Reminisces about his years as resident associate of Fleming House, and about replacing Harry Van Buskirk as registrar. Initiated visits to prospective students as part of Caltech’s admissions process.
He took what turned out to be a permanent leave of absence in 1941—after helping former classmate Herbert Hoover, Jr., found Consolidated Engineering—when the company received a wartime Air Force contract. He later became its president, and name was changed to Consolidated Electrodynamics. His civic activism in Pasadena. Long friendship with Robert F. Bacher. Became advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission after WW II. Comments on his early days as a teacher at Caltech. Interest in astronomy. Recalls building, in summer 1930, a 6-inch mirror reflecting telescope whose mirror was aluminized by Caltech physicist John Strong; first reflecting mirror to have such a surface
Interview with Franco Rasetti
Get PDFAlong with Enrico Fermi, Franco Rasetti played a key role in the rebirth of Italian physics in the 1920s and 1930s. In this interview he talks about experiments at Caltech on the Raman effect in 1928-1929, mountain climbing, his passion for bugs, fossils and flowers, and doing physics in Florence, Rome, Berlin-Dahlem and Quebec. Rasetti also reminisces about the Rome school of mathematics and other scientists he has known and worked with in Europe and in North America, including Robert and Glenn Millikan, Lise Meitner, and O. M. Corbino
Interview with Harvey W. House
Get PDFAn interview with Harvey W. House, graduate of Throop College of Technology, which in 1920 became the California Institute of Technology. Mr. House entered Throop in the fall of 1915 and graduated with a BS in chemical engineering in 1920.
Born in Tientsin, China, to missionary parents; Christian-oriented upbringing. Move to Los Angeles. High school interest in chemistry and physics leads him to choose Throop; student loan from Olive Cleveland Loan Fund. Rooms in East Pasadena (Lamanda Park); commutes by bicycle.
Recollections of President James A. B. Scherer; electrical engineering professor Royal W. Sorenson; dean of engineering George Damon; mathematics professor H. C. Van Buskirk; Throop curriculum. Church activities. Humanities under Clinton Judy; fellow student Frank Capra; chemistry professor Howard Lucas. Summer job at Baker Iron Works. Caltech football; pole rush; Big T; 1916 establishment of ROTC and YMCA; Pasadena ambulance corps. 1917-18, half year at Maryville College, Tennessee; Camp Kearny, San Diego; sickness. Returns to Caltech; Student Army Training program. Armistice. Arrival of R. A. Millikan to head Caltech. 1920 commencement; teaches chemistry in Canton, China; master’s degree from Caltech in 1926
Interview with John Robinson Pierce
Get PDFAn interview in three sessions in April 1979 with John R. Pierce, often referred to as the father of the communications satellite. A leading applied physicist, Pierce went to work for Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1936 after receiving his PhD in electrical engineering from Caltech. He spent the next thirty-five years there, where he made important contributions to the development of the traveling-wave tube and the reflex klystron, rising to become executive director of Bell's Research-Communications Principles Division. Pierce was also a pioneer in communications satellites, playing a key role in the development of two of the earliest, Echo and Telstar. In this interview he recalls his undergraduate education at Caltech in the late twenties and early thirties, the early years at Bell, radar work during the war, and the beginnings of America's satellite program.
Pierce was also a prolific author of science fiction, sometimes under the pen name J. J. Coupling. In the mid-1960s, he served on the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). He retired from Bell Labs in 1971 and returned to Caltech as a professor in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, and he comments on the changes (and the similarities) he found in undergraduate education at Caltech. While at Bell, Pierce developed a lifelong interest in computer-generated music and psychoacoustics, the science of consonance and dissonance; in the latter part of the interview, he discusses his work with Max Mathews on music synthesis. A year after this interview was conducted, he became professor emeritus at Caltech, and in 1983 he joined Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) as a visiting professor. Pierce died on April 2, 2002, in Mountain View, California
Interview with Pol Duwez
Get PDFAn interview in seven sessions, April 1979, with Pol Duwez, professor emeritus of applied physics in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. Recollections of his childhood in Mons, Belgium, during the German occupation in World War I. Educated at the School of Mines in Mons and the University of Brussels, where Auguste Piccard was one of his professors. Comes to Caltech in 1933 as a research fellow, working with Theodore von Kármán and Fritz Zwicky on the plasticity of metallic crystals. Comments on interest of R. A. Millikan and Piccard on cosmic rays.
Returns to Belgium, 1935, to become director of its National Laboratory for Silicates; efforts to improve quality of Belgian ceramics. Birth of his daughter; he and his family escape wartime Europe, 1940. Back to Caltech; experiments on high-speed deformation of solids for National Defense Research Council. Discusses war work, German V-2 rocket, GALCIT’s rocket research, beginnings of JPL, director Frank Malina. To England in 1945 to investigate materials for use in rocket propulsion.
Discusses his work on various postwar advisory boards; his interest in “new” metals (titanium, molybdenum) and their alloys and properties. Recalls Air Force summer study groups on Cape Cod and changes in wake of Sputnik. His X-ray diffraction laboratory. Work on rare-earth oxides. Comments on Von Kármán. Explains the evolution of the applied-physics option at Caltech.
He describes the technique of “quenching” from the liquid state; extreme cooling with new alloys leads to new field of metallic glasses. Magnetism and superconductivity. Recalls attempts to make nuclear-powered airplanes and ramjets. He concludes with remarks on his style of teaching, the evolution of materials science, and the responsibilities and rewards of consulting for government, the armed services, and corporations
Interview with Henry Borsook
Get PDFInterview in 1978 with biochemist Henry Borsook, who joined Caltech's newly created Biology Division in 1929 and retired from Caltech in 1968, moving his laboratory to U.C. Berkeley. Professor Borsook's major contributions were made in the areas of protein synthesis and nutrition. He recalls Robert A. Millikan's interest in establishing biology at Caltech and the early days of the Biology Division under Thomas Hunt Morgan; Caltech's intellectual life in the 1930s; the establishment of a Health Center at the Institute; his relations with Linus Pauling. In the 1930s, Borsook began applying thermodynamics to the study of biological phenomena, working with bacteria and studying the production of urine and creatine. He discusses his later work on vitamins and his wartime service on the Food and Nutrition Board, including the formation of the Recommended Daily Allowances and the Dept. of Agriculture's opposition to the RDAs in favor of Minimum Daily Requirements. In the 1940s he developed a soybean-based Multipurpose Food (MPF) and in 1946, with restaurateur Clifford Clinton, founded Meals for Millions, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating world hunger with MPF. Recalls advent of George Beadle as division chairman in 1946 and subsequent changes in the Biology Division. Recalls his postwar work on protein synthesis with isotopes from the Atomic Energy Commission, and his work on hemoglobin and erythropoietin. Discusses his difficulties during the McCarthy era and his work on heart disease