209 research outputs found
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Interview with Richard H. MacNeal
Full text linkAn interview on January 23, 2002, with Richard H. MacNeal, former chairman and CEO of the computer software firm MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation (MSC). Dr. MacNeal received his BA from Harvard (1943) and his MS (1947) and PhD (1949) from Caltech in electrical engineering, studying methods of stress and vibration analysis using the analog computer in Gilbert McCann’s Analysis Laboratory. After receiving his PhD, he became an instructor and then an assistant professor at Caltech in what was then known as the Division of Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics (now the Division of Engineering and Applied Science). In the early fifties, he helped found Computer Engineering Associates (CEA), a Caltech spinoff; in 1955, he left Caltech to work there. After six months, he went to work for a year at Lockheed. He then returned to CEA, where he was a director until 1963, when he founded MSC, participating in the NASA-sponsored project on computerized structural analysis that became known as NASTRAN (NAsa STRuctural ANalysis program).
In this brief interview, Dr. MacNeal recalls the early days of analog computing at Caltech and the consulting work that the Analysis Laboratory, and later CEA, did for aircraft companies. Concludes with comments on Caltech’s initial failure to go into digital computing, the death of analog computing, and the important contributions made by analog computers
Interview with Zus Haagen-Smit
Full text linkThis interview in 2000 with Zus (Maria) Haagen-Smit, widow of Caltech biologist Arie Jan Haagen-Smit (1900-1977), describes their early education at the University of Utrecht, his work on terpenes with Leopold Ruzicka, and the cooperation between Caltech and Utrecht in studies of plant hormones. In 1936, as war loomed in Europe, Arie Haagen-Smit was invited for a year to Harvard by Kenneth Thimann; in 1937, he was invited by T. H. Morgan to join the faculty of Caltech's Biology Division, where he continued his work on terpenes and plant hormones. Recollections of Dutch group at Caltech: Frits Went, Herman Dolk, Johannes van Overbeek, and Anthonie van Harreveld. Advent of World War II; opening of butadiene plant in Los Angeles, 1943, and consequent smog problems in Los Angeles. She recalls her husband's pioneering work in analysis of smog and measures to reduce it; and his consultancies with L.A. County Air Pollution Control District, Southern California Edison Co., auto industry, and California Air Resources Board. She reads extensively from Arnold Beckman's tribute to him and the history of Los Angeles County's battle to reduce air pollution. Summarizes the awards and honors he received toward the end of his life
Interview with William H. Pickering (II)
Full text linkThis 2003 interview with William H. Pickering, in two sessions, contains his further recollections of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's early involvement with the US Army and missile development, followed by JPL's transformation into a NASA laboratory with a focus on exploration of the solar system. The interview begins with an account of his return to the small town in New Zealand where he grew up, to attend dedication of a memorial to himself and Ernest Rutherford, who attended the same primary school; he is also honored at Christchurch and Auckland. Additional recollections of JPL's collaboration with Wernher von Braun; of the first flight of Sputnik; Caltech's early work in rocketry; development and production of the Corporal missile. Awarded the National Medal of Science in 1975. Trip to Japan in 1994 to receive the Japan Prize. Further discussion of his work establishing an applied research institute in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s; his later relationship with it. Establishment of Pickering Research, a consulting business, after retiring as director of JPL in 1976; consulting for the Electrical Power Research Institute after Three-Mile Island incident in 1979; contract in 1980s to help mainland China set up computer systems for its satellite program. The interview concludes with an account of his recent involvement in the sawdust-pellet (alternative fuels) business
Interview with John D. Baldeschwieler
Full text linkInterview in six sessions in January and February 2001 with John D. Baldeschwieler, J. Stanley Johnson Professor and professor of chemistry, emeritus, in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Dr. Baldeschwieler received his bachelor's in chemical engineering from Cornell in 1956 and his PhD in 1959 from UC Berkeley.
He begins by recalling his childhood and early education in Cranford, N.J. His father, an analytical chemist, emigrated from Switzerland and his mother from Manitoba. He matriculated at Cornell in 1951 and enrolled in ROTC during the Korean War. Recalls summer work at Los Alamos and graduate school at Berkeley 1956-1959; his thesis on infrared spectroscopy, with George Pimentel; interest in instrument building. After six months' active duty at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., joins the Harvard faculty; becomes a consultant for Aberdeen. Early work with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Invited to Stanford as associate professor in 1965, where he works on electron cyclotron resonance, in connection with Varian Associates.
Joins Army Scientific Advisory Panel; works on "people sensors" during the Vietnam War. Appointed to PSAC (President's Science Advisory Committee); discussion of defoliant Agent Orange. Becomes deputy director of the Office of Science and Technology in 1970, during first Nixon administration; takes a leave from Stanford and moves to Washington, D.C. Recalls the debates on biological warfare and on whether or not to build the SST (supersonic transport). Recollections of various figures in the Nixon administration. Resigns from government in December 1972 and goes to work at the National Cancer Institute for six months.
Invited to become chairman of Caltech's Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Arrives in 1973, during Harold Brown's presidency; discusses his close relationship with Brown and his reorganizing of chemistry division, of which he remains chairman until 1978. Meanwhile, consults for Monsanto and Merck and becomes involved in the US-Soviet joint scientific program. Visits the USSR in the early 1970s. Travels with Glenn Seaborg on the first chemistry delegation to China in 1978. Work on binding liposomes to cancer cells in the late '70s; forms company called Vestar to commercialize the technique as a diagnostic tool. Collaboration with the City of Hope. Discussion of patenting and licensing of discoveries made at Caltech and of proposed high-tech corridor for Pasadena.
He concludes the interview by remarking on his children and stepchildren and their work, and he lists the various technology companies he has helped to establish
Interview with Rainer Weiss
Full text linkInterview, May 10, 2000, with Rainer Weiss, professor of physics at MIT.
Family background, Germany, Czechoslovakia; arrives U.S. 1939. Attends Columbia Grammar School. Interest in engineering. Flunks out of MIT; returns as technician with Jerrold Zacharias; cesium clock. Resumes undergraduate career at MIT; graduate student there. Princeton postdoc with Robert Dicke. Builds experiment to find scalar gravitational waves based on work by Frank Press and Hugo Benioff, Caltech. 1964 Alaskan earthquake; effects on his machine. 1965, returns to MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics at Zacharias' behest. Military joint services support. Looks for scalar changes in Newtonian constant; work on photon redshift. Teaches relativity course. Works on spectrum of cosmic microwave background; interest in gravity waves.
LIGO's origins. RLE support for interferometric detector. 1971 funding for 1.5-meter prototype. Changes at RLE. Interest of Max Planck Inst. for Grav. Physics. Gravity-wave work in early 1970s: Kip Thorne and William Press at Caltech. Chairs NASA committee on space applications of gravitational work; meets Thorne in Washington; discusses MIT/Caltech collaboration; recommends Ronald Drever. Meets Thorne and Drever, Perugia; misgivings about Drever. 1983, joint LIGO presentation to NSF. Drever wants his own LIGO project, threatens to undercut MIT-Caltech project. Difficulties with MIT administration. Troika (Weiss, Drever, Thorne) unworkable. Comments on Caltech project mgr. Frank Schutz. Site-selection process. Drever's troubles building 40-meter prototype. Richard Garwin, IBM, pressures NSF to conduct LIGO study; Weiss organizes it in Cambridge, 1986, chaired by Andrew Sessler. Thorne and Weiss want director to replace troika. Selection of Rochus (Robbie) Vogt, 1987. Vogt's management style. Attempt to site LIGO at NRAO in Green Bank, W. Va.; selection of Livingston, La., and Hanford, Wash. Livingston's drawbacks. Misgivings about Vogt's directorship. Vogt's conflicts with Drever; Drever removed from project. Caltech faculty critics of Drever removal. NSF dismisses Vogt
Interview with Seymour Benzer
Full text linkInterview conducted in eleven sessions between September 1990 and February 1991 with Seymour Benzer, James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience in the Division of Biology. Benzer received his PhD in physics from Purdue in 1947. His interests had already turned to biophysics, after he read Erwin Schrödinger's What is Life? In this lengthy interview he recounts his peripatetic life visiting Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1948-49); Max Delbrück at Caltech (1949-51); the Pasteur Institute with André Lwoff, François Jacob, and Jacques Monod (1951-52); the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, with Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner (1957-1958); Roger Sperry's lab at Caltech (1965-67); and intermittently Woods Hole and Cold Spring Harbor--all while he was also a member first of the physics and then the biology faculty at Purdue (1945-1967). In the early 1960s, he participated for a while in the establishment of the Salk Institute. In 1967 he became a professor of biology at Caltech, meanwhile spending summers in the early 1970s at the Salk Institute; recollections of the Biology Division and of Salk during that time. He discusses the early years and flourishing of molecular biology, including recollections of such pioneers as Salvador Luria, Renato Dulbecco, Francis Crick, James Watson, Gunther Stent, and Delbrück's phage group. He discusses his own work on r mutants of bacteriophage, genetic fine structure, behavioral mutants of Drosophila, and monoclonal antibodies
Interview with Ruth J. Hughes
Full text linkBorn and educated in Germany, Ruth Hughes emigrated to England in 1939, just prior to the outbreak of World War II. Having been denied access to university training in medicine because she was Jewish, she had decided to study nursing and was hired as a student nurse in Birmingham, England, where she spent the war years. In her three-session interview in 1998-1999, she recalls her decision to leave England for the US (1946) and her chance meeting with Barbara Low, a crystallographer and student at Oxford under Dorothy Hodgkin; and through Low her introduction to Edward Wesley Hughes, a Caltech research associate in chemistry and a crystallographer. Ruth Hughes works in the US as a nurse in New York and Boston; she marries Edward ("Eddie") in England during his sabbatical at Leeds (1951); his interest in car tours and motion picture photography helps in the formation of a social group. Recalls her husband's assignment to represent Linus Pauling at the Royal Society in London, early 1952; her meeting then with Pauling's colleague Robert Corey and his wife. The Hugheses return to Pasadena by way of South Africa and South America. Account of Caltech in the early 1950s: her early involvement with the Women's Club and introduction to Doris DuBridge (wife of Caltech president Lee A. DuBridge); the Hugheses' close connection with the Paulings; Mrs. Pauling (Ava Helen) and her political and social ambitions; social expectations on Caltech wives at that time; her husband's loyalty to Pauling and the various tasks imposed on both of them as a result, especially the entertaining of visitors; the nature of the Pauling circle. Her involvement with Pauling's petition to the UN on a nuclear test ban; her husband's and other's opposition to Pauling's political work. Her interest in meeting and assisting Chinese and Japanese visitors; the Caltech Service League and Chem Wives. Circumstances of the Paulings' departure from Caltech. Current recognition of Caltech widows by Alice Huang
Interview with John H. Schwarz
Full text linkAn interview in two sessions, July 2000, with John H. Schwarz, Harold Brown Professor of Theoretical Physics in the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy. Dr. Schwarz majored in mathematics at Harvard (BA, 1962) and then went to UC Berkeley for graduate work in theoretical physics. He offers recollections of his advisor, Geoffrey Chew; working on S-matrix theory; sharing an office with another future string theorist, David J. Gross. After receiving his PhD in 1966, he became an instructor at Princeton, where in 1969 he began work on string theory, prompted by 1968 paper by Gabriele Veneziano.
He comments on early years of string theory, his collaboration with André Neveu and Joël Scherk, Murray Gell-Mann's interest in the work, being denied tenure at Princeton and invited to come to Caltech as a research associate. General lack of interest in string theory in 1970s. Scherk and Schwarz continue working on it and note that the graviton shows up in the theory, suggesting a way to reconcile quantum theory and general relativity; they publish in 1974 and 1975, but papers are largely ignored. In August 1979, he begins collaboration with Michael Green at CERN and later at Caltech and the Aspen Center for Physics. By now there are several string theories, but all are plagued with anomalies; he describes their breakthrough elimination of anomalies in 1984 at Aspen and his announcement of it at the Aspen physics cabaret. Comments on sudden burst of interest in string theory, especially at Princeton, and the involvement of Edward Witten. Shortly thereafter, Schwarz is made a full professor at Caltech.
Comments on the antipathy of Sheldon Glashow toward string theory and on his own dislike of the phrase "theory of everything;" on the latter-day history of string theory; problem of existence of five consistent superstring theories; talk by Witten at strings conference, USC, 1995, when it was recognized that the five are part of one underlying theory; discussion of "M" theory and membranes. Comments on annual string conferences, on Witten's visit to Caltech, on joint Caltech-USC physics institute, on prospects for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the development of a Supersymmetric Standard Model, on his receipt of the Dirac Medal from the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste in 1989 and his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1997
Interview with Harold Zirin
Full text linkAn interview in three sessions, in February 1998, by Shirley K. Cohen with Harold Zirin, Professor of Astrophysics, emeritus, in the Division of Physics, Math and Astronomy at Caltech. Dr. Zirin received his undergraduate and graduate education at Harvard (AB, 1950; AM, 1951; PhD, 1953). He joined the Caltech faculty in 1964, became Chief Astronomer at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in 1970 and Director in 1980.
The interview briefly covers Zirin's youth and early education in New York City and Bridgeport, Connecticut, and notes his youthful interest in astronomy and success in school. Recalls Harvard astronomers Bart Bok, Harlow Shapley, Armin Deutsch, Donald Menzel. PhD work on stellar opacities under Philip Morse at MIT with Harvard's approval; leads to first job at RAND Corporation and first move to California, 1952-1953. Denial of security clearance based on father's membership in Communist party sends him back to Harvard for postdoc position. Move to Colorado to High Altitude Observatory and beginning of solar observing; reminiscences of S. Chandrasekhar, G. Munch. Recruitment to Caltech by J. Greenstein, R. Leighton, 1964. Discusses history of solar observing at Mt. Wilson Observatory. Site survey for new Caltech solar observatory; role of astronomer Sue Kiefer; selection of Big Bear Lake site in San Bernardino Mountains (1967). Story of construction and operation of Big Bear Solar Observatory, concluding with its transfer to New Jersey Institute of Technology (1997). Relates episode of grievances by Sara Martin and other women against him for discrimination (mid-1990s). Discusses decline of solar astronomy at Caltech and elsewhere in favor of other directions in astronomy and cosmology.
The interview concludes with observations concerning Caltech's presidents and other administrators; Zirin's activities on committees and involvement with institute governance and finance. Wife Mary quits as Russian teacher at Caltech. His international connections; 6-month period in Russia's Crimea
Interview with Richard E. Marsh
Full text linkAn interview on November 7, 1997, with crystallographer Richard E. Marsh, senior research associate, emeritus, in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Dr. Marsh received his BS in chemistry from Caltech in 1943 and his PhD from UCLA in 1950. He came to Caltech that year as a research fellow, to work under Linus Pauling. He continued in crystallographic research at Caltech for the remainder of his career.
In this interview he discusses his father’s stint as a speechwriter for Franklin D. Roosevelt; the family’s move to Redlands, California; his undergraduate years at Caltech; and his subsequent naval service (1943-1946). He recalls his year of postwar graduate work at Tulane, where he studied crystallography with Rose C. L. Mooney, and his transfer to UCLA for his PhD with James McCullough. Recollections of postdoc with Linus Pauling, working with David Shoemaker, Edward W. Hughes, Jerry Donohue, Verner Schomaker, Robert B. Corey. Pauling and Corey’s paper on possible DNA structure; “overblown” competition with James Watson and Francis Crick. His work with Corey on small-molecule biological crystallography. Lavish government funding of sciences after the war. Pauling’s profligate hiring. Remarks on his work, which continued in his emeritus status. Remarks on undergraduate life at Caltech in the early forties: Officer “Fig” Newton; intramural tackle football