How the Jefferson Physical Laboratory came to be

DEC 01, 1984

The first building in America dedicated to physics opened its doors 100 years ago: “furnished in the plainest possible manner, but provided with everything which intelligent forethought could plan.”

DOI: 10.1063/1.2915986

Gerald Holton

A hundred years ago, the first building in the western hemisphere designed for research and teaching in physics opened its doors. The consequences of such an event are of very different interest to different groups. The physicist will ask about the advances made in Jefferson Lab, and in nearby structures added later, by its faculty, students and collaborators: Lyman lines and broken symmetries; dimensional analysis and nuclear magnetic resonance; the muon and the 21‐cm line; tests of the equivalence principle and of quantum electrodynamics; the acoustics of buildings and of violins; precise mass spectra, and the phase diagrams of hundreds of substances; the theory of magnetism and quadrupole moments; medical uses of particle beams and determinations of the structure of the ionosphere; the Duane–Hunt law of x‐ray emission, and Russell–Saunders coupling; the research and teaching of Edwin C. Kemble, America’s first quantum theorist; and the latest in mathematical physics, condensed‐matter theory or elementary‐particle interactions

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References

1. C. W. Eliot, Annual Report of the President of Harvard University, 1883–84, p. 43.
2. C. W. Eliot, in The Development of Harvard University, S. E. Morison, ed., Harvard U.P., Cambridge, Mass. (1930), p. 378.
3. C. W. Eliot, Inaugural Address as President of Harvard College; reprinted in A Turning Point in Higher Education, N. M. Pusey, ed., Harvard U.P., Cambridge, Mass. (1969), p. 21.
4. E. H. Hall, in The Development of Harvard University, S. E. Morison, ed., Harvard U.P., Cambridge, Mass. (1930), p. 277.
In addition to Hall’s essay, there are several other useful sources on the Department’s history: L. I. Aronovitch, “Towards a New Knowledge of Nature: Physics at Harvard University, 1870–1910” AB Honors Thesis in History and Science (1983);
S. Goldberg, “History of Physics at Harvard University, 1907–1912,” Cambridge, Mass., 1962 (unpublished manuscript);
[T. Lyman] The Physical Laboratories of Harvard University, printed at Harvard U.P., Cambridge, Mass. (1932);
K. R. Sopka, “Physics at Harvard during the Past Half Century: A Brief Departmental History” (unpublished manuscript).
The literature on American science in the 1880s is large and the scholarship very strong. A good bibliography for a first look can be found in D. J. Kevles, J. L. Sturchio, P. Carroll, Science 209, 27 (1980).https://doi.org/SCIEAS
5. J. Trowbridge, The Popular Science Monthly November 1884, p. 76;
address before Section B, AAAS, at the “Electrical Conference,” Philadelphia, 4 September 1884.
6. J. Trowbridge, Science 5, 230 (1885).https://doi.org/SCIEAS
7. H. A. Rowland, Address of 8 September 1884, in The Physical Papers of Henry Augustus Rowland, Johns Hopkins U.P., Baltimore, Md. (1902), p. 619.
8. H. A. Rowland, Science 2, 242 (1883); https://doi.org/SCIEAS
delivered at the AAAS meeting, 15 August 1883.

More about the Authors

Gerald Holton. Harvard University.