Vol. 42, No. 2, April 2013
Printer friendly version of Newsletter
The Past, Present, and Future of a Treasure Trove:
AIP's Niels Bohr Library, Archive, and Center for History of Physics
by Gerald Holton (Harvard University)
[We are grateful to Professor Holton for allowing us to reprint the talk he gave on 24 September 2012 at the American Institute of Physics (AIP) in celebration of the 50th year of the founding of the Niels Bohr Library.]
Quick Links....
Notes from the Inside
------------------------------------
Article:
Medical Traditions: An Emerging Discipline
------------------------------------
Article: The Past, Present, and Future of a Treasure Trove
------------------------------------
Article:
"Grandma got STEM"
------------------------------------
Article: Lessons from Uneasy Careers…
------------------------------------
Member News
------------------------------------
News from the Profession
------------------------------------
Upcoming Conference
------------------------------------
Why Did HSS Conduct A Climate Survey?
Thank you for your kind invitation. I have been asked to share with you some of the joys and agonies during the precarious Founding Period of this constellation, then to remind ourselves of its hidden origins, further to speak about the extraordinary spectrum of achievements of this enterprise—so valuable, especially at this time during the continuing attacks on science—and to conclude with what is now still urgently needed here to conquer the future challenges, even to science in America. So, in attending to the past, the present, and the future here, our mood is one of justified celebration, but also of cautious watchfulness.
Now, first about the Founding Period. The high point came of course with the brilliant and moving Inauguration Lecture by J. Robert Oppenheimer, 50 years ago almost to the day. Choosing him to provide the imprimatur of the visibility and plausibility of our adventure was a masterstroke of the AIP administration. On his side, accepting the task must have involved deeply compelling reasons, overruling his physical vulnerability and his demanding work as Director of the Institute in Princeton. He spoke so eloquently, but was gaunt, in his last years of life, struggling with a fatal cancer.
Let us think about him for a few minutes. He began his inaugural speech at the AIP on 26 September 1962, with two sentences, which by and large apply again today, so long afterwards:
"We meet on an occasion of particular sweetness at the home and center of a constellation of enterprises, in which all of us have deep hope and deep interest. I do not suppose that any of us could keep away from an occasion that is associated with the name of Bohr, and I am also very happy to start by expressing again the gratitude of the whole community for the bequest that the Heineman family has made to the American Institute of Physics."
There may have been compelling reasons for Robert's attendance here. For one thing, we now know—of course from his archives—that unbeknownst to most of us, Robert had intended to write a history of theoretical physics in the 20th century. His deep interest in the history of physics comes through strongly in the rest of Robert's talk, on how the work here would help us to know what the scientists thought and "how they were led to think it."
He called the history of physics a "particularly rich field and rich hope," and especially pointed to the use of the findings here for "the education of young people." I shall expand a bit on this urgent mission later. But Robert rose beyond this to claim rightly that the work being done here is also of enormous value in documenting the proper place for science, fully understood, in our culture as a whole; for, as he said, "the discoveries in the sciences are among the great epics, and they should be available in our tradition," conducing to the understanding of the elements that show an underlying "unity in human life."
And of course the name of Niels Bohr, given to this enterprise, demanded from Robert especial respect. After all, Bohr had met him often, Bohr was with Robert at Los Alamos, where Robert persuaded Bohr to visit Franklin Delano Roosevelt to make the argument for the internationalization of atomic energy. Robert also published later a touching essay on Bohr.
But Robert's hopeful phrase "unity in human life" reminds us that at the time he spoke the world around him was in a state of serious chaos, as in many ways it is again now, 50 years later. In 1962, the Bay of Pigs disaster of the previous year, together with the intransigence of the Soviets, as seen also in the Berlin debacle, was leading to the Missile Crisis, coming to a head a few weeks later. The unraveling in Vietnam was turning serious too. The ardent search for more civil rights was escalating into ugly confrontations in 1962.
But for Robert personally, there were also ominous concerns. Perhaps I may briefly speak about that because we knew each other well, and often met and talked. A few years earlier, Einstein had died (without having be interviewed by oral historians), and then Erwin Schrödinger died in 1961. Niels Bohr was quite weak, and would be dead a few weeks after that inaugural meeting in 1962. Perhaps most shaking to Robert was the news that the physicist-philosopher, P.W. Bridgman, had killed himself, having suffered unbearably from cancer and almost complete disability.
Robert had been very close to Bridgman. He had selected Bridgman as the best scientist to work with during Robert's years as undergraduate at Harvard in the early 1920s, and he did his BA thesis in Bridgman's Lab (on the experimental effects of high pressures on crystals). Robert later returned often to Harvard's Physics Department, and spoke movingly at Bridgman's Retirement Conference.
But it is significant to note that young Oppenheimer at College saw himself still as an experimental, not theoretical, physicist. And evidently he was not very good at it. Bridgman told me later that at Robert's lab bench he had to keep two boxes: one to put in the equipment Robert had ruined, the other for money that Robert had to pay for the replacement.
There must have been a vast chasm between these two men, emotionally. Young Robert was in a way a romantic; but Bridgman was an operationalist, down to his toe nails. Permit me a brief story to illustrate that. One day, early, I was in the machine shop next to Bridgman's lab, working on some high pressure cylinder for my doctorate dissertation work under Bridgman. The telephone there kept ringing, and I finally picked it up. The person on it reported the Physics Chairman had told him this phone was the nearest to Bridgman (who did not tolerate a phone in his lab), and would I please bring Bridgman quickly to the phone. Oh no, you must call him at his home, in the evening; he never takes it while he works. Well, tell him this time he must, because our paper just heard he got the Nobel Prize.
I ran into Bridgman's lab with the news in great excitement. He was just pumping up pressure by hand on the fore-pump. He did not change the up-and down rhythm, and said quietly: "Tell them—I'll believe it—when I see it." (Which I did. I still think it was perhaps carrying operationalism too far.)
As to young Robert, things did not get much better for him after College, when he moved to do experimental work at the Cavendish Lab—where he was rescued to become a theoretician, thanks to a chance encounter with Max Born, visiting from Germany. (America did not yet have its John Wheelers or Eugene Wigner, Schwinger, Weinberg, Feynman, etc.)
But having said this, as if by the way, it should becomes clear why I have focused on him now: Robert's career embodied the way Physics in America came of age, the whole trajectory—preparation on home soil, but having to go to Europe to mature, returning to help bring science in the U.S. to global eminence, and lastly the influx of scientists from all over the world, coming to the U.S. to study here. That was the big arc for Robert and the many others of our best in the 20th century. And where can you find the impressive evidence for this whole astonishing development, one of huge importance not only for science but to also for the world position of our nation? The evidence is of course right here, in this institution, in its archive, letters, drafts, visuals, books, and on and on. More on this later.
Now let me turn, in this story of the Founding Years, to what happened behind the scenes at AIP, for several years before Robert's Inaugural Lecture. And there the key person was the Director of the AIP, who served from 1957 to 1964: Elmer Hutchisson.
He was a deeply cultured man, married to Rose Valasek who had got her advanced degree in History, and he himself was devoted to the history of science. In the late 1950s he heard that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. was planning a new building there to exhibit progress in science and technology; but it was going to relegate Physics to a corner in the Hall for Electrical and Nuclear Engineering. Elmer thought this must change.
I really don't know why Elmer sent me to try to talk the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Lenard Carmichael, into a more sensible design. Carmichael was a biologist whose specialty was experimental psychology with primates, himself a big and imposing fellow. He essentially told me not to teach him how to design a museum, and to get out.
On my return to AIP, and hearing of my dismal failure, Elmer simply said: "We have a job of education." He asked me to initiate an AIP Committee on the History and Philosophy of Physics. It began as a one-man operation, with W. King drawing up a list of potential interviewees. There had been for this no push from the physics community, no external funds—it was a small experiment, so if it failed we could bury it in a quiet family ceremony. In short, the enterprise really started on a shoestring.
It did become more of a reality when the NSF gave us a five-year grant from 1961, and of course with the Gala Inauguration of the NBL and Archive in 1962. By 1965 the Board of Governors of AIP allowed the establishment of the Center for History of Physics, housing the NBL and Archive, and pioneering also in the history of modern geophysics and astronomy. So the initially questionable beginner had grown up to be a promising young adult.
There was also an unexpected benefit. Seeing the operation on the history of physics taking place under the wing of the AIP, other professions began to copy and follow on their own. There are now similar centers in other professional societies, on the history of chemistry, IEE, IT and others, thereby filling out the picture of the profession of physical science, technology and engineering.
The growing success at AIP has depended of course on the work and devotion of some remarkable people: Bill Kelly, Charles Weiner, Joan Warnow, Spencer Weart, Directors of the AIP itself, and now Gregory Good and his team. Early, crucial supporters included Fred Seitz and Manny Piori, helping in fights during Board meetings, when occasional fiscal problems endangered the existence of the whole Center.
Above all, the growing success depended on the quiet passion of Elmer Hutchisson. Some reminder about him deserves indeed to be part of our celebration today. Elmer had done his Ph.D. work in physics at the University of Minnesota in the mid-1920s, under a young professor there, none other than John H. VanVleck, well before Van came to the faculty at Harvard. No doubt Elmer did not always have an easy time of it—I still shudder on remembering Van's Group Theory course during my grad school days at Harvard.
Elmer became physics professor at the University of Pittsburg, but took a year off in 1929 to work in Berlin with Erwin Schrödinger. In 1957 Fred Seitz called Elmer up and persuaded him to become the second Director of AIP. There Elmer started a section on education, being deeply disturbed by the widespread illiteracy about science in America. You can find out much more about Elmer and his time, yes, in a detailed, archived oral history interview of him, conducted by Charles Weiner, and available, together with well over 1200 other lengthy, transcribed interviews, at this very NBL archive, but also, as with many of them, free on the Internet.
In his interview, Elmer looked back on his whole career, and singled out as his proudest accomplishment the establishment of the NBL, Archive and Center. What he of course did not mention was that his Will included a most generous donation to the AIP for an Endowment Fund for NBL.
Recollecting him makes me think of the challenging talk the psychologist William James once gave, on "What Makes a Life Worth Living." James' answer was that such a life involved nothing that comes easily, but rather "a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for science," where one had "the courage to stake one's life on a possibility." This message comes also through again and again from many of the documents on scientists kept in this Archive, in the retrospective accounts of their work.
And perhaps James' formula helps explain why the name of Niels Bohr was chosen for this enterprise at AIP. Bohr's life and work are icons and ideals for a life in science at its best. His integrity was so detailed that it could even verge on the comical. Allow me to tell you a little story to illustrate what I mean. Bohr came to Cambridge for the Centennial celebration of MIT, but also gave a talk at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences there, with the title of nothing less than "On Atoms and Human Knowledge." His commentators were chosen to be Philipp Frank and Robert Oppenheimer, with me sitting between them—I was then the Editor of the Academy, and was expected to get Bohr's manuscript and publish it.
Well, Bohr's talk was so complex, and he delivered it in his very quiet and somewhat mumbling way, that his two commentators became more and more agitated during his delivery. When finally I got hold of Bohr's manuscript, I asked him if he would mind if I tried to "edit it a bit," with the help of some of my colleagues at the Department. Yes, he said, this had often been suggested to him in past occasions of this sort, and I might try and show him our suggestions.
A couple of days later I visited him. He carefully read the revised manuscript, gave me his wonderful smile, and said: "This is (long pause) very interesting. I have only a small request: Publish it just as I gave it to you." (Which I did later.) But somehow I had the nerve to ask: "Professor Bohr, why do you so often speak and write in such a complex way?" His answer illustrates my point. He said: "I do not choose to speak or write more clearly than I think." (This may be carrying integrity too far.)
Let me turn from the Founding period to summarize the remarkable resources that have been built up here over these five decades. The web page gives details on these: Online international catalogs, book catalogs, visual archives; finding aids; thousands of photographs; well over a thousand oral histories, transcribed and on the Internet; collections of books, serials, still and moving images; grants awarded to scholars to come here for their research; exhibits at meetings, online, and at request; person-to-person advice on research questions, to scholars, teacher, students, also by mail, telephone, etc.; interaction with the group identified as Friends of the History of Physics; and of course publications by members of the staff, in articles and books.
Now to the last segment of my talk: Someone might still ask why all this was and continues to be so necessary. In answer one might begin with a thing we all know: that most non-scientists, and even some scientists, have a dangerously false image of science, knowing of only one of its two complementary sides:
The popular view is only from the public part of science, as from text books, narrowly focused courses, and published papers that for good reasons follow Louis Pasteur's advice to his research students: Make it look inevitable. But all these can give the wider public a sterile, forbidding picture of how these results were produced by real people. That is why science, out there, is often called "merely mechanistic." This view perhaps makes it easier for some policy makers to turn against scientific evidence.
Meanwhile the other, complementary side is largely kept off stage. It is the art, the science in the making, the human adventure, the baring of soul or of teeth, the euphoria and despair, the long, long wait, the use of intuition, of good or bad luck, of metaphors, visualization, the private skills, and the big bet on a thematic idea that has gripped you despite all evidence to the contrary. And then, again and again, there is glory in the acceptance of one's findings by the scientific community at large, spread over continents.
That second aspect of science is just what comes out in an archive like the pioneering one here, in its letters, lab books, drafts, interviews. And that is then made available, here, by the staff, to direct inspection. That in turn percolates to the wider public, also in textbooks of the more humanistic sort, and of course in the work of the large community of science history scholars.
I have no illusion that all this alone can turn the tide, which in much of academia is still being pushed forward by the believers in Nietzsche's saying that there are no Facts, only Interpretations. But ours is an essential component of a long fight to keep science acknowledged as a central part of culture, as Oppenheimer said five decades ago.
You may have to forgive me for what I am about to say. But I deeply believe that the adherence to the search for veracity and reality which characterizes science is vital to the persistence of democracy itself. It was not an accident that Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues—who had read Newton's Principia in school—wrote in the very first sentence of the Declaration of Independence that the whole plausibility of this new idea of Democracy rested in good part on belief in the "Laws of Nature."
As some of you might recall, I have also expressed the hope that the better understanding of the way physics has developed can firm up the Sense of Self, of the intellectual identity of the members of our own profession. A physicist is not only a pioneer at a frontier facing the future. He or she is also the inheritor of a long history of efforts of their often unacknowledged predecessors. It bears saying again that we are standing on the shoulders of a few giants, but also on the grave of thousands of others. Or to change the metaphor, the advance made by everyone of us is like a new fruit on a large, old family tree.
So, finally, what about the future of the enterprise here? Gregory Good will of course give the best answers. I see two sets of pressures, internal and external, for the continuation of the work here on a yet larger scale.
Internal to physics and related sciences is the increase in the community of scientists, the greater role of interdisciplinarity, of megateams, megadata, globalization and internationalization of the community and its work. Ever new advances in technology will open new windows to amazing facets of nature, as has always happened, and in turn will bring to life new technologies. We are facing immense problems and opportunities within physics itself, from the darkness of matter and energy to the new insights physics can give to biology and other sciences. And this is the place for the documentation and wider distribution of how research will have accomplished such advances.
The external pressures coming to this Center will include the ever greater interaction between science and the polity; the heavy reliance of the country's GDP on advances in science, engineering, and technology; the repairs so badly needed in science education. And last but not least, I see the need to spread, ever more effectively, throughout the country, the central values in doing science, as they are revealed in the Niels Bohr Library, Archive, and Center: It is simply that the holdings here are witness to the fact that, despite all our limitations as mere humans, our tribe is dedicated to a habit of truthfulness, and to the search for an ever deeper understanding of this glorious universe.
In his lecture fifty years ago, Oppenheimer presciently asked a question about our institution, then being launched: "This is not just a five or ten year plan; what do you think things will be like, fifty years from now?"
Well, here we are. I think he would be very proud of what has been achieved in that span. The proven record also allows us to be confident that splendid work will continue here, on an expanding scale, for many decades to come.