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Interview with Lew Allen, Jr.
Full text linkAn interview in four sessions, in June and July 1991 and March and April 1994, with Lew Allen, Jr., former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1982-1990) during a period that included the launches of Galileo to Jupiter, Magellan to Venus, and IRAS, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, as well as Voyager 2’s Uranus and Neptune flybys.
He recalls matriculation at West Point in 1943, receiving flight training, graduating in 1946. Four years in the Strategic Air Command studying nuclear weapons projects, then graduate school at the University of Illinois; PhD in nuclear physics, 1954. Assigned to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (1954-1957); participates in bomb tests at Bikini, Eniwetok, and Nevada. Assigned to weapons development at Kirtland Air Force Base. Joins Office of Space Technology (1961-1965) in the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering, under Harold Brown. To Office of Special Projects (again under Brown, now secretary of the air force) in Los Angeles, works on satellites (1965-1973). To CIA as deputy under James Schlesinger; soon appointed director of the National Security Agency. Recalls NSA’s attempts to steer clear of Watergate investigation. Becomes air force chief of staff in 1978. After retiring from the air force in 1982, he becomes director of JPL, retiring in 1990.
In this wide-ranging interview, he discusses his nuclear weapons work, his air force career, his service in Washington, his tenure as JPL director, his chairmanship of a controversial NAS panel on export-control laws, and his assessment of the history and future of the U.S. space program
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello
Full text linkInterview in nine sessions (December 26–December 31, 2010) with Thomas A. Tombrello, the Robert H. Goddard Professor of Physics, Caltech. Each session is organized around a central topic or theme: (1) early years through college, (2) fifty-year career overview, (3) undergraduate students, (4) Kellogg Radiation Laboratory years, (5) work with Schlumberger research laboratory, (6) Caltech people and personalities, (7) work with national weapons laboratories, (8) ten-year tenure (1998–2008) as chair of Caltech’s Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, and (9) graduate students and miscellaneous topics.
Tombrello opens with his family history, youth, early life, and education, primarily in Texas and Alabama, and his undergraduate (BA 1958) and graduate (PhD 1961) years at Rice Institute. He talks at length about his years in Caltech’s Kellogg Radiation Laboratory, including his research into nuclear physics, materials science, and applied physics, and about the science, culture, people, personalities, politics, and economics of Kellogg and the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) over fifty years. There is extensive discussion of his mentoring work with Caltech undergraduate and graduate students, including his innovative undergraduate course Physics 11 and his perspectives on student life at Caltech. Of particular note is the discussion of his relationship with S. E. Koonin, who went from being Tombrello’s undergraduate advisee to his provost. Tombrello provides a wide-ranging, in-depth look at his ten years as division chair of PMA, covering research, recruitment, fundraising, collegial relationships within and beyond the division and with JPL, and the evolution of PMA under his oversight. He talks about his involvement in the design and construction of the Cahill Center for Astrophysics (dedicated in 2009) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project. He describes his interactions with five decades of Caltech presidents and provosts, institute trustees, and various donors.
Tombrello recaps his two years as research director at Schlumberger research and his several decades of consulting work on weapons, national security, energy, and climate change issues at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. He talks about his foray into earthquake prediction research, his research collaborations in China, his years as Caltech’s technology assessment officer, and the emergence of entrepreneurism at Caltech in the 1990s. Anecdotes and recollections of such notable Caltech figures as R. Bacher, J. Benton, H. Brown, L. DuBridge, R. Feynman, W. A. Fowler, M. Gell-Mann, B. Kamb A. Lange, C. Lauritsen, T. Lauritsen, R. Leighton, C. Patterson, R. Sharp, and F. Zwicky are also part of this oral histor
Interview with Harold Brown
Full text linkAn interview in March 1990 with former Defense Secretary Harold Brown, Caltech’s president from 1969 to 1977. He begins by reviewing his pre-Caltech career, his reasons for accepting Caltech presidency, his initial impression of Caltech’s faculty, administration, trustees, and students.
He recalls establishing Environmental Quality Laboratory; 1970 admission of women undergraduates; proposed association with Immaculate Heart College. Comments on fund-raising, restructuring the development office, entertaining in the President’s House, relations with Arnold Beckman and other trustees.
He discusses the roles of the provost, Institute Administrative Council, and division chairmen; his relations with provosts Robert Bacher and Robert Christy. Comments on successes of his presidency, including reducing Caltech’s “insularity” and improving its financial health, its student life, and JPL–campus relations. Views on how Caltech should prepare for coming societal changes.
Comments on faculty’s role vs. that of administration. His establishment of five-year review of division chairs. Caltech’s process of moving into new research fields. Caltech’s finances in the late 1960s and 1970s; fiscal conservatism of Board of Trustees; “flattening” of government support; establishment of campus master plan and Fairchild Scholars program.
He recalls Caltech’s lack of adverse reaction to his defense department background. Notes matters left incomplete in his tenure: improving engineering division, introducing applied biology, strengthening social sciences. Comments on hostility of science and engineering faculty to social science. His views on “Big Science.” Recalls his involvement outside Caltech presidency (SALT talks) and trustees’ attitude toward it. He concludes by discussing timing of his departure
Interview with Clare Mallory Millikan
Full text linkAn interview in January 1981 with Clare Mallory Millikan, daughter of mountaineer George Mallory and wife of Glenn Millkan (1906-1947), second son of Robert Andrews Millikan, Caltech’s first executive head.
In this interview, Mrs. Millikan recalls meeting her future husband in 1937, while she was a Cambridge university undergraduate reading history and Glenn Millikan, a Cambridge PhD, was a tutorial supervisor at Trinity College and working under E. D. Adrian in the university’s Physiology Department. She discusses their mutual love of hiking and climbing. A year later, they were married, and when World War II broke out they were in the United States, where Glenn soon went to work for Detlev Bronk, at the Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics of the University of Pennsylvania, and later at Cornell Medical College in New York City. She describes their lives during the war years and something of his work with John Pappenheimer on the Millikan oximeter, with which the U.S. Army Air Force equipped its fighter pilots to keep them from blacking out at high altitudes.
She recalls their move to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1946, where Glenn Millikan headed the Physiology Department, and his fatal accident in May 1947 while they were climbing in the Cumberland Mountains. She remarks on her impressions of and relations with her in-laws: Robert and Greta Millikan and Glenn’s two brothers, Clark and Max Millikan
Interview with Earnest C. Watson
Full text linkAn interview in January 1969 with Earnest C. Watson, retired dean of the faculty emeritus and emeritus professor of physics. Dr. Watson arrived at Caltech in 1919 after graduate work with R. A. Millikan at the University of Chicago and two years of military service in World War I. He immediately supervised the design and construction of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics and thereafter became chief assistant to Dr. Millikan when the latter arrived as Caltech’s first head (chairman of the Executive Council) in 1921.
Watson became dean of the faculty in 1946 and held that position through 1959, when he retired. In January 1960 he left Caltech for India, as scientific attaché to the U.S. Embassy there.
In this interview, he reminisces about his relationship with Millikan and with Arthur Amos Noyes, the development of Caltech in the institute’s early years, and Millikan’s carte-blanche from the Board of Trustees. He comments on the campus mood during the Depression era; the rise of Communist-leaning discussion groups; and the persecution of aeronautical engineer Hsue-shen Tsien in the McCarthy era. He recalls Einstein’s visits to Caltech in the 1930s and the Millikans’ careful supervision of his contacts. He comments on industrial funding for Caltech, on the collapse of the Arthur H. Fleming trust at the outset of the Depression, and on his close relationship with trustees William C. McDuffie and James R. Page. He concludes by discussing his own role in developing and running the institute
Interview with Charles A. Barnes on cold fusion
Full text linkAn interview in two sessions in June 1989 with Charles Andrew Barnes, professor of physics (now emeritus) in the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy.
Dr. Barnes discusses the March announcement of Drs. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann of having produced “cold” nuclear fusion in a tabletop experiment at the University of Utah. Recalls his reaction and that of his Caltech colleagues; the paucity of information; coverage by the L.A. Times. Details his collaboration with Nathan Lewis, T. R. Wang, Stephen Kellogg, and Steven Koonin in vain attempts to replicate Pons–Fleischmann experiment. Growing skepticism in the scientific community; Steven Jones’s paper in Nature reporting neutron flux; claims of cold fusion by Texas A&M and Georgia Tech; Caltech’s Kellogg Radiation Laboratory colloquium in Beckman Auditorium.
Discusses efforts by Pons, Fleischmann, and University of Utah officials to get money from Congress to establish cold fusion institute. Recalls May American Physical Society meeting in Baltimore and presentation of Caltech data; Koonin’s accusation of Pons and Fleischmann’s “incompetence and perhaps delusion;” Caltech president Thomas Everhart’s embargo of the word “fraud.”
Pons and Fleischmann’s censoring of DOE’s visiting committee; committee’s June visit to Caltech. Possible motives of Pons, Fleischmann, and the University of Utah. Pons and Fleischmann’s paper in J. Electroanal. Chem., involvement of Cheves Walling and claim of production of helium-4; work of Harwell lab, Italians at Frascati, and group at Los Alamos. He concludes by noting that Kellogg lab continues to pursue aspects of the phenomenon while doubting it will prove a useful power source. Notes difficulties with a peer reviewer of Lewis et al.’s Nature paper on Caltech findings
Interview with Ronald L. and Mary L. Richmond
Full text linkOn Seminar Day—Caltech’s annual reunion event—May 19, 2012, for the first time the Caltech Archives and Library offered alumni/ae the opportunity to record mini-interviews with Archives’ staff. Nine people participated, including one alumni spouse and one daughter. These alums held bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees across several divisions, with engineering marginally in the lead. One former student who transferred out of Caltech came back to relate how well his Caltech years had served him in his later studies and career in psychology. Ranging from 10 to 15 minutes in length, the interviews typically relate stories or episodes from student years. Favorite topics include pranks and traditions, some of which have died out. Alumni also reflect on professors and classes which were memorable and on the unique intellectual stimulus that a Caltech education provides. Readers will find that the transcripts of the short interviews reflect the personal and colloquial tone at which the event aimed
Interview with Lance Edwin Davis
Full text linkAn interview in October 1998 with economic historian Lance Edwin Davis, Harkness Professor of Social Science in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences. Dr. Davis received a BA in economics from the University of Washington in 1950 and his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1956. He joined the economics faculty of Purdue in 1955 and came to Caltech in 1968 as a professor of economics in 1968. He became Harkness Professor in 1980 and Harkness Professor emeritus in 2005.
In this interview, he recalls his undergraduate education and his naval service at the end of World War II and during the Korean War; graduate school at Johns Hopkins; and the excellence of the Purdue economics faculty. He comments on the state of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences when he arrived. Recollections of colleagues: Alan Sweezy, Robert W. Oliver, Roger Noll. He describes the growth of Caltech’s social sciences program; contributions of James Woodward, David Grether, Colin Camerer, John Ledyard. Discusses his own work on the long-term growth of financial institutions; discusses the books he wrote in collaboration with Robert Huttenback, Robert Gallman, Douglass C. North, and Peter L. Payne.
The interview concludes with his views on the presidencies of Harold Brown and Marvin L. (Murph) Goldberger; on the Baxter Art Gallery; and on the state of the humanities at Caltech
Interview with Anthony Leonard
Full text linkAn interview in four sessions, November 2012, with Anthony Leonard, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics, emeritus, in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, Division of Engineering and Applied Science.
Dr. Leonard grew up in the Midwest and later moved to Ventura, California, with his family. He discusses his undergraduate years at Caltech, where he was active in athletics and majored in mechanical engineering, graduating in 1959. As a graduate student at Stanford (PhD 1963), he specialized in nuclear engineering, working with Joel Ferziger. In 1966, after three years at the RAND Corporation working on propulsion systems and fusion power, he returned to Stanford to teach nuclear engineering. He moved to NASA’s Ames Research Center in 1973, working on computational fluid dynamics. In 1985, he joined Caltech’s GALCIT as a professor of aeronautics, after a year there as a visiting professor. He became von Kármán Professor in 2000 and Professor emeritus in 2005.
In this interview, in addition to discussing his research, particularly on turbulence and vortices, and offering recollections of his GALCIT colleagues and students, he recalls his work on the Freshman Admissions Committee, the Administrative Committee on Supercomputers, the Academic Policies Committee, the Caltech Alumni Association, and the Caltech Y
Interview with Seth H. Neddermeyer
Full text linkAn interview in May 1984 with Seth Neddermeyer, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Washington, in Seattle. After receiving a BA from Stanford in 1929, Dr. Neddermeyer took his PhD at Caltech in 1935 with Carl D. Anderson. With Anderson, he discovered the muon, an unstable negatively charged elementary particle, in 1936. During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, where he proposed using implosion to compress radioactive material to a critical mass in order to make a workable bomb. For these two accomplishments, he would receive the 1982 Enrico Fermi Award.
After the war, he went to the University of Washington, where this interview took place four years before his death. In the interview, he describes his early education in his hometown of Richmond, Michigan; his first two years of undergraduate education at Olivet College and his interest in chemistry; his two years at Stanford; and his years at Caltech (1930-1941) as a graduate student, then a research fellow, working with Anderson. He offers recollections of Robert Andrews Millikan, whose interest in cosmic rays was closely bound to the work he and Anderson were doing; of Fritz Zwicky, Richard C. Tolman, and Harry Bateman; and of J. Robert Oppenheimer, both at Los Alamos and at Caltech, where he was a visiting professor in the spring term in the 1930s. He recalls receiving the Fermi award and discusses his negative feelings about his work on the atomic bomb