Chronicling corporate physics

A new endowment at the American Institute of Physics (AIP) will support the preservation of the history of physicists in industry. The Marc H. Brodsky Fund for Oral History of Physicists in Industry honors Brodsky’s 13-year role as the institute’s executive director and CEO (see Physics Today, July 2006, page 22 ) and his career as a corporate physicist.

The endowment will pay for the continuation of a program begun in 2002. More than 100 scientists have been interviewed thus far under the History of Physicists in Industry project (see Physics Today, April 2007, page 28 ), but the original funding runs out this December. Among the endowment’s lead donors is Brodsky’s brother Julian, cofounder and vice chairman of Comcast Corp. A champion of libraries and history, Julian Brodsky had seen a Comcast fire destroy valuable archives, and he wanted to support the AIP History Center project while commemorating his brother’s career.

Marc Brodsky, who called the endowment “very gratifying,” said it is critical to continue the oral history program—the only one of its kind in the US, according to project director Joe Anderson—because records of corporate physicists’ lives and work are spotty and scarce. AIP, which publishes Physics Today, hopes to raise the endowment, now at $90 700, to $2 million.