Q&A: Kenneth Ford on textbooks, popularizations, and scientific secrecy

Theoretical physicist Kenneth Ford was on hand for some of the most dramatic developments in 20th-century science. In 1950 he took a leave of absence from his graduate studies at Princeton University to join the hydrogen bomb team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the next year moved to Princeton’s new Project Matterhorn, where he worked on calculations for the 1952 Ivy Mike thermonuclear test.

A former director of the American Institute of Physics (which publishes Physics Today), Ford is also a prolific author; his books range from textbooks and popular science titles to a volume on flying light aircraft and gliders. One of his early works was 1968’s Basic Physics, which he recently revised for a new generation of physics teachers (World Scientific, 2016).

Physics Today sat down with Ford to talk about reissuing a classic, writing for a popular audience, and dealing with US Department of Energy censors.

PT: What originally inspired you to write Basic Physics?

FORD: For the original book I blame the bright, literate students of Brandeis University. In 1959 or 1960, I was asked to teach the introductory physics course for nonscience students. Although I had, up to that point, taught only junior/senior and graduate courses, I was open to the new challenge. I plunged in and enjoyed the experience immensely.

At the invitation of a representative from the new Blaisdell Publishing Company, I agreed to try to write a book for a course of the kind I had just taught. I was young and confident and assumed that of course I could produce a book better than anything that existed for that audience at the time. But after looking soberly at what I had signed up for, I took a deep breath and contacted [publisher] Warren Blaisdell, asking permission to try my hand first at something more modest. He was agreeable, and the result was The World of Elementary Particles, which I wrote in six months and published in 1963.

Then it was time to get back to Basic Physics. That book, weighing in at more than 900 pages, appeared five years later. Over the years, it enjoyed only modest success as a textbook. It was long and it was dense, but it was valued by some teachers as a resource.

PT: How did you approach revising Basic Physics for the 21st century?

FORD: I sat down and reread the book in its entirety. To my surprise, most of what was in it is still very relevant to 21st-century physics teaching. So I selected 174 passages in the book, ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages, that I thought many teachers might find helpful. These features, as I call them, address history, relationships, underlying meaning, and some subtleties. The new version highlights these features so that a busy teacher can easily dip in and out of the book.

PT: Can you give an example of a feature that was relevant to physics teaching in 1968 and still is today?

FORD: Here is one: What did Niels Bohr actually do in 1913 to apply quantum principles to the atom? The answer is not that he assumed circular orbits and the quantization of angular momentum. Rather, he postulated stationary states and quantum jumps, and he used the correspondence principle to derive an expression for the Rydberg constant in terms of other known fundamental constants. Most of the other 173 are discussions, not derivations!

PT: You’ve also written two popularizations about quantum mechanics: The Quantum World and 101 Quantum Questions. What did you find most enjoyable about writing for a popular audience? And what was most challenging?

FORD: Writing for a general audience is an extension of teaching. Whether speaking in front of a class or writing in front of a computer, I try to explain what is going on in a way that will be comprehensible, interesting, and accurate. Whether I am addressing a student in a classroom or a reader on a couch, I want to inform and perhaps inspire. But I don’t want to overwhelm or seem to be crying out, “Wow, isn’t that amazing!"—or worse, to seem to be putting my own great knowledge on display to be admired. In both cases, a light touch is in order, with bits of humor scattered here and there. If I confuse a student, I can correct and clarify. If I confuse a reader, there’s no recourse. I like to say that I write by ear. And I do find writing enjoyable. Anything I write I reread several times—with pleasure.

PT: When preparing your memoir, Building the H-Bomb: A Personal History (see the review in Physics Today, July 2015, page 46 ), you ran into some complications with DOE officials who thought some of the material should not be published. What was that experience like?

FORD: I submitted the finished manuscript of the book to the Department of Energy for review, since it dealt with a period of time—the early 1950s—when I was doing secret work. I was sure there were no secrets in the book and regarded this review as a pro forma step. Not so. I was set back on my heels when informed, “There are a ton of problems in your book.” After some months of delay and a face-to-face meeting, I was instructed to remove or drastically alter some 60 passages, adding up to about 10% of the book.

For example, I was told to remove remarks about events at Los Alamos in 1945 and in the USSR in the mid 1950s. The events occurred before and after the time of my security clearance. I knew of them only through reading publicly available sources. I was also told to remove the dimensions of the Ivy Mike device, although there was no objection to a picture of the device with people and a jeep in the picture to give the scale.

I am a stubborn cuss. I declined to follow instructions whose rationale I didn’t accept. I explained in detail for each of the 60 instances why I was not doing as I was told. We then ran aground and communication ceased. The process delayed publication by about six months. Fortunately, the publisher, World Scientific, was willing to go ahead once convinced that only the author, not the publisher, was vulnerable. I am still at large. Advice to other authors: Don’t reveal secrets. Stand your ground.

PT: What are you currently reading?

FORD: I tend toward nonfiction. I recently reread Richard Feynman’s QED for fun. It didn’t take long to get through Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, a thinly veiled effort to bring loop quantum gravity to the masses—the publisher deserves a smiley face for its packaging of this gossamer “international best seller.” I greatly enjoyed Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime and am making a good-faith effort to get through Steve Coll’s Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.

But I keep telling myself I should read more fiction. Last year I devoured most of Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, all on my iPhone. This year I enjoyed Jane Gardam’s Old Filth and Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures, the latter being fact-based fiction. I am now in the middle of Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety. For me fiction offers more insights and is, in the end, more satisfying.

PT: What is your next project?

FORD: At 91 I dare to anticipate a next project. I am beginning work on a shorter book for physics teachers. And I am on the lookout for a “with author” role similar to the one I played for John Wheeler’s 1998 autobiography, which was written “with Kenneth Ford” (see the review in Physics Today, May 1999, page 63 ). Hoping to reprise that role, I am casting about for a notable senior scientist who has a story to tell and needs help to get his or her ideas down on paper.