Legends in Their Own Time: A Century of American Physical Scientists PDF
Preview Legends in Their Own Time: A Century of American Physical Scientists
Legends in Their Own Titne A Century of American Physical Scientists Legends in Their Own Time A Century oE American Physical Scientists Anthony Serafini Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Seraf,n" Anthony Legends In theIr own tIme a century of Amer,can phys,cal SCIentistS! Anthony SerafInI. p. cm. Includes b,bl,ograph,cal references and 'ndex. 1. Phys,c,sts--Un'ted States--B,ography. 2. Astronomers--Un'ted States--B,ography. 3. Chem,sts--Un'ted States--B,ography. l. T't Ie. OC15.S437 1993 500.2·092·2--dc20 [Bl 92-43949 CIP ISBN 978-0-306-44460-9 ISBN 978-1-4899-6090-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-6090-0 © 1993 Anthony Serafini Originally published by Plenum Press in 1993. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher Preface America is a society that encompasses and reflects the accomplish ments of science. As civilized people, we can argue that to understand America is to und erstand the scientific genius of the men and women who built the foundations of modern science and technology. However, science is not merely a co11ection of the results of scientific research or inte11ectual wizardry. It is also a social phenomenon with real human beings with a11 their foibles. As George Sarton said, "The best way to explain American achievements is to focus the reader's attention upon a few of the leading scientists." That I have tried to do. While there are other valid approaches to the history of science, certainly the biographi cal approach brings to ligh t the fact that science is not a mere congerie of facts and theories. It is a very human activity with biases, personal rivalries, censorship, and even thievery, as the case of Rosalind Franklin shows. A note is in order on the point in time I've chosen for the beginning of this book. I begin roughly in the late 1830s, in the Bond era in astronomy. It was in this period that American science education was beginning to come into its own-a sound educa tional system in science being a sine qua non for continual, syste matic progress in scientific research. Before this period, science professors appeared on faculties only occasiona11y; often teaching v vi Preface several other subjects as well. By the 1830s, however, the professor of physics or chemistry appeared in college catalogues as often as did professors in the humanities. Also, specific courses and spe cialists were appearing in the 1830s, inc1uding even such "arcane" fields as geology. Wesleyan University, for example, could boast of three scientists on a faculty of only seven. By the 1850s, Amherst College had more faculty in science than in any other field. The period between 1875 and 1910 is crucially important as well. As historian Stanley Guralnick has pointed out: The period during which the sciences became fully established in academe, 1875-1910, witnessed the rise of multipurpose universities, development of the graduate school, and the division of the faculty into separate departments-changes that have given the essential intellectual and administrative character to our present university. It was during these periods that an in~reased awareness devel oped of the need for stressing the theoretical underpinnings of applied science. "Backyard tinkerers" had produced many ad vances, but the scientific community had now begun to fully appreciate the fact that real scientific advance could not be made without systematic study of scientific theory. In short, science was becoming a profession. Later, the lone Byronic heroes of American science began to receive institutional backing of various kinds. An important for ward step came with the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862. Recognizing the need for trained scientists rather than "tinkerers," this act led to the founding of Cornell University in 1865 as well as to the founding of several other institutions. Two decades later, after the Morrill Act of 1882, the American Association for the Advancement of Science appeared. For some of the sciences, such as physics, however, there was really no professional society until the founding of the American Physical Society in 1899. By the early decades of the 20th century, science was develop ing in three arenas: the growth of corporate laboratories, univer sities, and governmental institutions. As the public grew more comfortable with science, this confidence soon led to increased Preface vii funding. In the early decades of the century, govemment aid to science was minimal. During the First World War, however, orga nizations like the National Research Council and the Camegie Foundation began to appear, ready to infuse money into scientific research. It was becoming evident that science had an obvious relevance to the war effort-the development of chemical wea pons being one such example. Over the course of the next few decades, other organizations such as the Russell Sage Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation added their resources. Keeping in mind the principle that no selection can be com pletely "objective," I have followed Sarton's advice in selecting, as he says, "a few of the leading scientists." The problem then, of course, is to decide who should be covered and by what criteria they should be selected. Although men like Michelson and Row land are rather obvious choices for this book, there are many others. I would have liked to have been able to devote more space to scientists such as Simon Newcomb, Wilhelmina Fleming, Theo dore Richards, Richard Chace Tolman, and John Trowbridge, among many others. The problem of selection compounded itself exponentially with the explosion of scientific research after the embarrassment of Sputnik in 1957. I might have covered, for example, Comell physicist Ken Wilson's work in phase transitions, for which he captured the 1982 Nobel Prize. And in astronomy, there is Jocelyn Bell's discovery of the first pulsar, CP 1919, in 1967, which led to speculations that extraterrestrials were sending messages to Earth-a speculation refuted only when astronomer Thomas Gold proved that the "message" was merely a quickly rotating neutron star. Then there is the wonderful story of the development of the laser, dating arguably from Charles Townes's work in the 1960s on the principle of the laser. And by 1981, Arthur Schawlow along with Kai Siegbahn of Sweden would capture the Nobel Prize for applying the laser to studies of the structure of solid-state sub stances. In this respect, this book makes no claim to being compre- viii Preface hensive. Some "decision procedure" on what and whom to cover was therefore necessary. Where choices were balanced, I tended to side with "pure" science rather than technology, with a few exceptions-hence, the omission of the development of the laser. I've also covered those scientists whose work best illustrates the "pioneering spirit" -the urge to explore new and uncharted terri tory and the great sense of practicality associated with that spirit. Nineteenth century scientists like Michelson and Gibbs had, for example, fewer of the normal "support systems" we take for granted today. There were few academic journals, and communi cation with other scientists was more difficult and slower than it is today. Furthermore, large grants and salaried positions were few. Irving Langmuir of the General Electric Laboratories in New York could hardly be omitted from a work like this. Beyond his brilliant work in both experimental and theoretical science, he represented a new breed in this country-the scientist working in an industriallaboratory. In the end, I selected scientists as much for what their lives tell us about how science is done as for what they actually did. Of course, none of the individual profiles in this book pretends to completeness or thoroughness. A really thorough account of the scientific work of scientists like Pauling, Annie Cannon, and Irving Langmuir remains to be written. A final note on the book: where possible, I have tried to include phases of a scientist's career that are perhaps a bit less weIl known. For example, in the case of Irving Langmuir, while his work on, say, the structure of the atom is weH known, his coura geous support of biochemist Dorothy Wrinch is mentioned only rarely in the literature. Also, Lawrence's pioneering work in medi cine is perhaps less known than his work on the cyclotron, so his medical research is discussed here as weH. Then, too, I have tried to bring out some recent research that argues persuasively that E. W. Morley's contributions to American science have often been overshadowed by his more famous collaborator, A. A. Michelson. The reader will note too that I have devoted considerable space to solid-state physics-a branch of that science that is, I think, too Preface ix often overlooked in favor of the more "exciting" fields like particle physics and astrophysics. The history of American science is the story of how all of these accomplishments came about since the nation-building and difficult decades of the 19th century, the period during which American science began to evolve into a profession. I would like to thank the following peopie for Iooking over various portions of the manuscript and making suggestions: Spencer Weart, Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics, Robert Olby of the University of Leeds, Robert Kargon of Johns Hopkins, Argonne National Labo ratory, Katherine Olesko of Georgetown University, and Professor Paul Joss of the Department of Physics at MIT. I would also like to thank Professor Joss for many helpful conversations and for keep ing me up to date on the Iatest work in particle physics and astrophysics. Additionally, I am indebted to John Archibald Wheeler, P. W. Anderson, and Verner Schomaker for offering their thoughts on Pauling's career. I am grateful also to Lee R. Hiltzik, Archivist of the Rocke feller Archive Center in North Tarrytown, New York, for providing me with correspondence from Karl Darrow to Dr. Duncan Mac Innes, and Professor David Miller of the University of California, Berkeley for his heipful comments and research material on Henry Rowland and for a copy of his doctoral thesis, "Henry Augustus Rowland and His Electromagnetic Researches," submitted to Ore gon State University in 1970. (Interestingly, Professor Miller could speak with unusual authority on Rowland, as Rowland's daughter once took hirn to lunch for some "Baltimore Chicken," which Miller describes as "wonderful.") The plan I followed in writing this book was approximately as follows. For the framework of the book, Irelied heavily on schol arly articles by noted authors in the field, such as Robert Kargon, Spencer Weart, Daniel Kevles of Caltech, and many others. From these articles I was able to Iocate what appeared to be the most critical primary sourees. For exampIe, I consulted Millikan's auto biography, the biography of Micheison written by his daughter, as x Preface weil as the book, Light Waves and Their Uses, by A. A. Michelson, University of Chicago Press, 1902. For the chapter on Arthur Compton, I drew heavily upon his own writings in The Cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton as weil as his other writings. I would also like to thank Margorie Graham, Associate Librarian at the Alp, for providing me with a copy of Compton's writings and notes on cosmic rays, particularly those entries from June 1932, from the Compton notebooks. Because this book is aimed at an educated lay audience rather than a group of specialists, I have tried to keep footnotes to a minimum and have adopted the admittedly unusual procedure of weaving some of the endnotes into the main text of the book. I have done this where it seemed that I could do so without unduly disrupting the flow. For the chapters on astronomy (which, incidentally, I decided to break up into two in that quite different issues were involved), I wish to thank the Department of Space History of the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Because of their assistance, I was able to acquire the "Report on the History of the Discovery of Neptune," by Benjamin Gould (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.c., 1850), "On the Law of Vege table Growth and the Periods of the Planets," by Benjamin Peirce, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1852, 2:241, and '~Photographic Search for Planet 0," Annals of the Astronomi cal Observatory of Harvard College, 1911. I also examined some of William Pickering's writings on fiIe at Harvard. For this I am indebted to Patrice Donoghue, Curatorial Associate of the Har yard University Archives in the Pusey Library, who kindly sent me several articles from William Pickering's '~ Search for a Planet Beyond Neptune" (Vol. LXI, Part 11, Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College). Also helpful were various British science museums and archives, which provided me with articles like '~ccount of some circumstances historically connected with the discovery of the planet exterior to Uranus," by George Biddell Airy, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1846, and "On an ultra-Neptunian planet," by George Forbes,
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