Goudsmit collection online.

Occupying nearly 12 meters of shelf space, including 69 000 images, the papers of Samuel Goudsmit made their digital debut in July. It is one of perhaps a dozen complete archival collections online, and the first in physics, says Melanie Mueller, who led the project at the Niels Bohr Library and Archives of the American Institute of Physics. The collection is a mix of research papers and personal reflections from the 1920s through the mid 1970s.

Goudsmit’s most significant contribution to physics was the 1925 discovery, with fellow student George Uhlenbeck, of electron spin. Two years later Goudsmit moved from the Netherlands to the US. During World War II, he participated in the US Alsos mission to investigate Germany’s atomic bomb project. In 1958, during his nearly quarter-century tenure as editor of Physical Review, he founded Physical Review Letters.

The collection contains sources on the development of quantum physics, Germany’s failed atomic bomb project, postwar physics research, and scientific publishing.

On the more personal side, in letters to Goudsmit a student who preceded him to the US described the preeminent East Coast physics departments as “sleepy affairs,” and told about chaotic railroad schedules and poison oak. Later a convicted murderer sought Goudsmit’s help in publishing his life story.

The digitization is part of the Niels Bohr Library and Archive’s ongoing effort to put its most popular resources online. The collection is accessible free of charge at http://www.aip.org/history/nbl/collections/goudsmit .