Center for History of Physics: A crown jewel of the field
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0005
Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
—Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis
Bell Labs was a crown jewel of the US. It should have been preserved.
The Center for History of Physics (CHP) at the American Institute of Physics is a crown jewel of the field. It must be preserved.
At the beginning of her book Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and His Astonishing Exploratorium (University of Chicago Press, 2009), K. C. Cole acknowledges that she had “taken the usual dull courses” and had “no interest in science.” Dull courses . . . no interest: What a sad commentary.
Why sad? Because when Cole discovered Oppenheimer’s Exploratorium, she found science fascinating. Just as the Exploratorium can bring science to life in its way, the CHP is a treasure trove of resources that can bring physics to life in its way. And visitors don’t have to go to College Park, Maryland, to make use of its resources because most of them are available online.
Physics courses are often “dull” in part because they have been sterilized; that is, virtually all evidence of human contact with the subject has been scrubbed away. Consider, for example, the concept of magnetic induction. It is not exactly a scintillating topic. Most textbooks identify Joseph Henry as one of its discoverers, but that’s about all they include about him.
Both textbook writers and classroom teachers could say much more. Students and faculty would be surprised to learn that Henry was a high school teacher when he discovered self-induction. He was spending his days teaching at the Albany Academy and could conduct his research only in August when students vacated the school. Henry described his situation as follows:
My duties at the Academy are not well suited to my taste. I am engaged on an average seven hours in a day, one half of the time in teaching the higher classes in Mathematics, and the other half in the drudgery of instructing a class of sixty boys in the elements of Arithmetic.
Despite Henry’s difficult circumstances, his name lives on because the unit of induction is the henry. He later joined the faculty of Princeton University.
A trip through history
All that information and much, much more is on the CHP website: Under “Resources,” go to “Online Exhibits,” then click on Papers of Great American Physicists. There are links to the writings of Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Michelson, Henry Rowland, Josiah Gibbs, Robert Millikan, and Arthur Compton. Also on the “Online Exhibits” page is an array of interesting resources that can enrich physics for both students and members of the general public, including the following:
Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity . This fascinating trip through Curie’s life includes her early years when she went to an illegal night school, her physical discoveries, the death of her husband, her affair with physicist Paul Langevin, and the formation of the Radium Institute. She belonged to a Polish youth group that believed
that the hope of their country lay in a great effort to develop the intellectual and moral strength of the nation. ... We agreed among ourselves to give evening courses, each one teaching what he knew best.
Albert Einstein: Image and Impact . This exhibit ranges from Einstein’s youth, to his miracle year in 1905, to his problems with quantum mechanics, and to some of his provocative ideas.
Cosmic Journey: A History of Scientific Cosmology . This beautiful adventure takes visitors from the Greek worldview, to the standard model, to the anthropic principle, and beyond.
Heisenberg/Uncertainty . This biographical sketch takes Werner Heisenberg from his youth, through his doctoral studies with Arnold Sommerfeld (including an account of Heisenberg’s poor performance on his final oral exam), to his creation of quantum mechanics. In a 1936 letter to Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg describes his reaction to the Schrödinger version of quantum mechanics:
The more I think about the physical portion of Schrödinger’s theory, the more repulsive I find it. . . . What Schrödinger writes about the visualizability of his theory “is probably not quite right,” in other words it’s crap.
The Discovery of Global Warming . This exhibit provides a detailed outline of the research, with 30 hyperlinks to sources on the subject.
The other exhibits are Bright Idea: The First Lasers; Transistorized!—History of the Transistor; Lawrence and the Cyclotron; Sakharov: Soviet Physics, Nuclear Weapons, and Human Rights; The Discovery of the Electron; and Moments of Discovery: Fission, Pulsar, Superconductivity.
Oral histories and photographs
Another link under “Resources” is “Array of Contemporary American Physicists .” The brief biographical profiles provide details about the personal and professional lives of Luis Alvarez, Hans Bethe, Steven Chu, Freeman Dyson, and on through George Zweig, with more than 850 other physicists in between.
In addition to individual physicists, there is information about various university physics departments and nonacademic institutions that employ physicists. It is a useful resource for students who are planning to go to graduate school and for those seeking employment.
To put a face on physics, visit CHP’s Emilio Segrè Visual Archives , which has more than 30 000 photographs of physicists alone, in groups, in serious poses, and having fun. Once in the archives, click on “Werner Heisenberg ” to not only find scores of Heisenberg images but also be treated to a bit of his philosophy:
Natural Science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.
Click on “Richard Feynman ” to explore the many photos available and to read his response to someone who commented on his interest in bongo drums:
Dear Sir,
The fact that I beat a drum has nothing to do with the fact that I do theoretical physics. Theoretical physics is a human endeavor, one of the higher developments of human beings, and the perpetual desire to prove that people who do it are human by showing that they do other things that a few other humans do (like playing bongo drums) is insulting to me.
I am human enough to tell you to go to hell.
Yours,
RPF
At Paul Dirac ‘s photo gallery is an excerpt of his thoughts about beauty, mathematical beauty:
It is quite clear that beauty does depend on one’s culture and upbringing for certain kinds of beauty, pictures, literature, poetry and so on. … But mathematical beauty is of a rather different kind. I should say perhaps it is of a completely different kind and transcends these personal factors. It is the same in all countries and all periods of time.
In addition to the photos of Heisenberg, Feynman, and Dirac, the archives contain thousands of images of both generally known and often unknown physicists.
One of the widely used resources of the CHP is the oral histories. It is a joy to learn about physicists as they describe their backgrounds, the influences that brought them into physics, their successes and failures, the roles of key individuals who helped shape their career path, and what, in their judgment, is their most important work. The CHP has more than 800 of its 1500 interviews online. Each in its own way provides insights into the particular physicist.
How to help
The CHP serves physicists in several ways and can be a worthy asset. It has wonderful materials that facilitate and enhance the efforts of the physics community to bring physics to wide audiences. Stories like the one about high school teacher Joseph Henry can pique the interests of middle school, high school, college, and university students.
Physicists recognize that public support is the sine qua non for ongoing scientific research. As I. I. Rabi once said, “Science exists at the pleasure of the larger public.”
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) is in the publishing business. In the online digital age, the publishing business faces certain change and some uncertainty. AIP provides the financial wherewithal that allows the CHP to serve the community of physicists and the general public. A group of supporters (like me) has set an important goal to raise an endowment sufficient to make the CHP independent of AIP’s financial support and thereby to ensure its life far into the future. We cannot allow the CHP to follow the path of Bell Labs.
There are many worthy causes and charities that individuals support with contributions. For physicists, the CHP provides the opportunity to support not only a class operation but also one that directly benefits physics. There are two ways to contribute: as an individual or as a physics department by becoming an academic partner.
A physics department makes the commitment to contribute $250 annually for five years. There are already 40-some departments that have become academic partners. Both individual contributors and member departments are listed in the AIP History Newsletter and on the CHP website.
I invite you to join me and support the CHP .
John Rigden served as AIP’s director of physics programs from 1987 to 1997. He is currently an adjunct professor of physics at Washington University in Saint Louis and the coeditor of the journal Physics in Perspective.