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Oral History Oral History Frank Oppenheinler When he died on February 3 of this year, Frank Oppenheimer was director of San Francisco's Exploratorium, which he also founded (in 1969) and which many have called the best sci­ ence museum in the world. For his achievements Oppenheimer received, among many other honors, Caltech's Distinguished Alumni Award in 1979. Oppenheimer was a graduate stu­ dent at Caltech for four years (in the early days of Kellogg Laboratory), earning his PhD in 1939. Before that he had graduated from fohns Hopkins and spent two years doing research at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cam­ bridge, England, and the Instituto di Arcetri in Florence, Italy. After receiv­ ing his PhD, he worked with E. O. Lawrence at UC Berkeley and in 1945 joined his brother Robert at Los Frank Oppenheimer: I met Charlie and the photoelectric effect to develop Alamos. In 1949 he was forced to [Charles C. Lauritsen] before I came to energy level systems for those heavy resign from the University of Min­ Caltech, because he used to come to nuclei, which was ridiculous and too nesota and banished from academic the place that my brother and my fam­ complicated. So I sort of knew what I physics as a result of harassment by ily rented in New Mexico, Perro wanted to go on with, which was a the House Un-American Activities Caliente. So, when I got to Caltech wonderful thing for a graduate student, Committee. He spent the next ten that fall [1935], he recognized me as I because most graduates just take years as a cattle rancher in Colorado. walked into the building. He hap­ courses, and then somewhere along the He was eventually drawn back into pened to be right at the door. And he way somebody tells them what to do teaching at Pagosa Springs High said, "Frank, do you want to smell a or they get interested in something. School and from there returned to vacuum?" [laughter] He had just So, almost immediately, I told Charlie mainstream academia at the Univer­ taken the x-ray tube apart. Of course, that I would like to make a beta ray sity of Colorado at Boulder, where he in those days, you used shellac to stop spectograph, since they didn't have directed research in high energy parti­ leaks, and that sort of decomposed. one. cle physics. And it had a real foul smell, even The late 1930s was an exciting though it was full of air at the time. fG: Had you made one? time in physics at Caltech. Politically this was also an interesting time, and fudith Goodstein: You knew when FO: No, but I'd used one. I used the it was Oppenheimer's political activity you came to Caltech that your subject one developed by [C.D.] Ellis. That in Pasadena that was to have such was going to be nuclear physics? seemed a good thing because it was a bitter consequences later on. Caltech hole in Charlie's nuclear physics Archivist fudith Goodstein talked to FO: Yes. I had worked in Cam­ facility. Oppenheimer last November about his bridge on beta and gamma ray spec­ years at Caltech. troscopy, using internal conversion fG: How long did it take to build it? 23 FO: Well, I didn't get it put together seminars took place - at his house? JG: Was it used for a long time after­ until about halfway through my wards? second year, I think. I had to build FO: There were other seminars, but the amplifiers and design the magnet. on Friday nights there was always a FO: I think for a while. I don't There was a local place where we discussion of the work that was being remember when it got to be disused. could get crescent-shaped magnets, done. They would talk about that, It probably wasn't used much during because they gave us a much better and then it would gradually develop the war. field. They were made in a forging into a party of some sort. They just JG: No, I think they essentially shut place down south of Pasadena. said what they were doing, or talked and argued about things. I remember down the lab. I noticed you told JG: Did you actually go into the one time, Jackie, my wife, listening to Charlie that you weren't really learning foundry? this, asked a question. It was a ques­ much about nuclei from the experi­ tion of something about nuclei, and mental approach at the Cavendish. FO: Yes. That's why I know it was everybody just stopped talking and What was different about it? in my second year, because my wife stared at her for a moment, and then and I went and watched him, and they without answering just went back to FO: Well, I think what I was doing had lots of ovens all along with a little talking. [laughter] They were just so was different, because [John D.] cart that went along, and a man with a astonished that some stranger would Cockcroft and [Ernest T.S.l Walton fork would go over and open the door interrupt them. In addition to this, I were learning a lot about deuterium and take out the forging as he would a saw them an awful lot - Willy Fowler and whatnot. But I had done a cake or something, look at it, and see and [Lewis A.] Delsasso also. It was a nuclear level system for radium C, and if it was ready. If not, he'd put it very nice group. Tom Bonner was it broke up, for some reason, into two back. [laughter] It was beautiful to see working mostly with neutrons, almost groups, each with about 12 levels, and that. The research I did was not terri­ exclusively with neutrons. And Char­ I couldn't give assigned quantum bly good. lie and Willy were looking at energy numbers to these levels from the tran­ levels of light nuclei. sition rates. But it was like looking at JG: Why do you say that? the iron atomic spectrum rather than JG: Did you ever find yourself at the hydrogen spectrum. FO: Well, because I thought I had licked the problem of scattered elec­ attracted to that? To going into work­ JG: So your comment was more trons in this by various veins. I was ing with the nuclei of the light ele­ about your own work. looking for a gamma ray from nitro­ ments? gen 13 that somebody had found, and FO: Well, in a way I was, but doing FO: Yes. We did learn - and corro­ didn't find it, but I found a peak in the it indirectly through the gamma rays. electron energy spectrum, which said borated by making the level system - that my apparatus was scattering elec­ JG: Do you remember any interest in that the radium C has two branches. trons. The spectra were good at the nuclear astrophysics on the part of the One is an alpha emitter and then goes higher energies. I looked at the shape Kellogg group before World War II? to radium D. And the other's a beta at higher energies, and it agreed with Bethe's paper would have come out in emitter, and then it goes with an alpha other people's conclusions that the '38 or '39. And, of course, then the emission. And so there's these two neutrino had very little mass. war intervened. But I was wondering ways around that end up with the if they made the connection. same product, and one has to find out JG: Did you have much contact with whether the energy emitted is equal for the other graduate students? I think FO: I think they did, and I think the both ways around. In one case some Charlie Lauritsen's son [Thomas] was groundwork was laid for saying, "We of the energy was emitted through a a graduate student at the same time ought to find out how to measure gamma ray, and the level system you were. some of these cross sections," but the showed that had to be so. technique for measuring the cross sec­ FO: He was an undergraduate, I tions - the sensitivity - wasn't there. JG: Where did you actually do your think, when I first started, and then experiments? was a graduate student after that. JG: That's why, apparently, they As I remember, you'd come into decided to build an electrostatic FO: In that office. Because they the building from an alleyway, and generator. would rush radioactive material, even then over here was the x-ray facility. if short-lived, over from Kellogg. But My office was the second one along FO: Well, the Van de Graaffwas also, at that time, I checked the there, looking out into that courtyard already built when I arrived. Then they apparatus because they had a radon just in front of the Kellogg Lab. So it [Fowler and Tommy Lauritsen] built a source which could put down radium was right where everybody else was. second one. [radium A] that just gave alpha parti­ Then, Charlie at that time, as I cles and decayed to radium C and C', remember, had his students over to his JG: When you left, what happened to so I could check the gamma rays from house every Friday evening, or maybe the apparatus that you built? those radioactive nuclei that I was every other. familar with, and they really gave nice FO: Well, another graduate student, curves, so I knew the thing was work­ JG: Is that really where most of the [E.
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