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Interview with Stanley Whitcomb STANLEY E. WHITCOMB (b. 1951) INTERVIEWED BY HEIDI ASPATURIAN April – June 2017 ARCHIVES CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Pasadena, California Subject area Physics, LIGO Abstract Interview in five sessions, April–June 2017, with Stanley Whitcomb, chief scientist with LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and one of the longest-serving principals on the project, having been at various times deputy director, R&D director, detector group leader, and acting director. These interviews, a follow-up to a 1997 interview [http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S], were conducted about 18 months after LIGO made its landmark detection in September 2015 of gravitational waves from colliding black holes, confirming a key prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The first session deals with Whitcomb’s account of the discovery and its aftermath, with sessions 2 through 5 focusing on his involvement with LIGO from the 1990s to the present day. He describes LIGO’s evolution from a modest scientific undertaking to a Caltech-MIT-NSF mega-collaboration with hundreds of personnel at multiple institutions, and recalls http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S_Ligo_2017 the organizational, administrative, and technical changes that accompanied this transition. There is extensive discussion of the roles played by B. Barish, R. Drever, J. Marx, D. Reitze, K. Thorne, R. Vogt, and R. Weiss, and numerous others who made essential contributions to LIGO’s success. He recalls the doubts and controversies that swirled around the project, especially in its earlier phases, and offers his thoughts on the factors that kept it viable and moving forward despite these challenges. He talks about his multifaceted administrative responsibilities, including his work with LIGO’s Livingston and Hanford observatories, particularly the latter, and his tenure as head of the detector group charged with developing and installing LIGO’s unprecedented optics and other innovative technologies. He charts LIGO’s progress from Initial to Advanced LIGO, the establishment of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and international outreach efforts, including overtures to Australia and the creation of LIGO–India. His personal reflections on LIGO’s scientific and historic significance also form part of this oral history. Administrative information Access The interview is unrestricted. Copyright Copyright has been assigned to the California Institute of Technology © 2019. All requests for permission to publish or quote from the transcript must be submitted in writing to the University Archivist and Head, Special Collections. Preferred citation Whitcomb, Stanley E. Interview by Heidi Aspaturian. Pasadena, California, April 24, May 8 and 22, June 5 and 19, 2017. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives. Retrieved [supply date of retrieval] from the World Wide Web: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S_Ligo_2017 Contact information Archives, California Institute of Technology Mail Code B215-74 Pasadena, CA 91125 Phone: (626)395-2704 Fax: (626)395-4073 Email: [email protected] Graphics and content © 2019 California Institute of Technology. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S_Ligo_2017 Whitcomb–i CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROJECT INTERVIEW WITH STANLEY WHITCOMB BY HEIDI ASPATURIAN PASADENA, CALIFORNIA Copyright 2019 by the California Institute of Technology http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S_Ligo_2017 Whitcomb–ii Stanley Whitcomb http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S_Ligo_2017 Whitcomb–iii FORWARD Embedded in the sidewalk leading to the main New York City Public Library, there are a series of brass plaques with quotes from various sources, all appropriate to the role of libraries in society. I came across the following one in the summer of 2016: why some people be mad at me sometimes by Lucille Clifton they ask me to remember but they want me to remember their memories and i keep on remembering mine Coming shortly after the announcement of the first LIGO detection, at a time when people were starting to ask and write about the history of LIGO, this poem resonated with me. This oral history has been almost two years in the making. I was first approached by Heidi Aspaturian of the Caltech Archives in January 2017 asking if I would be willing to sit for a series of interviews about LIGO. We soon realized that the earlier interviews I had completed in 1997 had never been officially published, stalled on my side waiting for my final edits and approval. We agreed that we would first finish and publish the 1997 transcript [ ] and then we would continue with a second round of interviews. Those interviews, five additional sessions,http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S took place in spring 2017. They were transcribed later that year, and we had a back and forth exchange of edits to produce this document. Stepping back and looking at the set of interviews as a whole, I would characterize it as a small, inside glimpse into LIGO rather than a “grand history” of the project. Those who read this expecting to learn how the project was conceived, how the big decisions were made about who would lead it, how it would be structured and managed, and so on, are likely to be disappointed. Caltech and MIT presidents and NSF directors appear only incidentally, not because they didn’t play a major role in the history of LIGO, but because my interactions with them were limited. The fact is, in most cases I had as limited a view of how the institutional leaders made the decisions that steered the project as they had about how the decisions concerning the detector design were made. For those who want it, that grand history of LIGO in its earlier stages is recounted in some of the other oral histories in the Caltech Archives. The battle to make LIGO a success was fought on many different levels: at the level of the grand history, of course, but also on a working level, where the daunting technical challenges of building an instrument that many outsiders believed could not be built were faced and vanquished, and on a personal level, where a team of scientists and engineers had to soldier on for years without the usual scientific http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S_Ligo_2017 Whitcomb–iv rewards. I would like to think that this look into those other aspects is a tribute to those who labored at the working level, though to be honest, I feel it falls a bit short of my goal in that respect. Next time, perhaps. I expect that many of the readers of this oral history will be my friends and colleagues from LIGO, and I anticipate a couple of reactions from them. Many will ask how I could leave out Person X or not talk about the ABC incident. To them I would point out the impossibility of condensing more than 35 years of labor on LIGO into approximately five hours of interviews without leaving out numerous important people and events. Many organizations and people who played a significant role in my working life (and whose contributions I hold dear) do not even appear here, let alone get the recognition they deserve. The precise mixture of events and people that appear in this oral history is much more a matter of chance than we might at first think—driven by the confluence of the questions Heidi asked in a particular session, by what I was thinking about in the days and weeks before each session, etc. It is not an experiment that we will ever do, but I suspect that if Heidi and I were to sit down to repeat this exercise, the final product of those interviews might have less than a 50 percent overlap with this one. The other reaction that I expect is that some people may disagree with my version of events as recounted here. To them, I recommend reading again the Lucille Clifton poem at the beginning of this Forward. The more I learn about how “elastic” our memories can be, the less I am inclined to take anyone’s account of the past as completely correct, and I would advise readers not to accept my version of events without question either. There are significant places where my memories or impressions may differ from those of others. Truth may lie in one version or the other, somewhere in between, or even in some completely different place. What I can say is that this is the version I remember. Finally, I’d like to thank and compliment Heidi Aspaturian for her role in making this happen. In preparation for these interviews, I went back and reread some of the earlier LIGO oral histories from the Caltech Archives, mostly from the ’90s. One of the things that struck me from that rereading was how much influence the interviewer has on the outcome, both through the questions that are asked and through what gets followed up and what doesn’t. I felt that Heidi’s questions were insightful and well researched, and her instinct about when to push for just a bit more on a topic was generally spot-on. I confess that I started the whole business with some trepidation, but by the end I was looking forward to the next session. Thank you very much, Heidi! January 2019 http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Whitcomb_S_Ligo_2017 Whitcomb–v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTERVIEW WITH STANLEY WHITCOMB Session 1 1-23 Stan Whitcomb describes his reaction to LIGO’s historic detection of gravitational waves from two colliding black holes on Sept. 14, 2015. His role as chair of LIGO Detection Committee; overview of committee’s history and function as “skeptical group of experts.” Significance of 2010 LIGO-Virgo “Big Dog” injection. SW’s immediate conviction that LIGO discovery was real. Recalls initial surprise in LSC (LIGO Scientific Collaboration) concerning strength and clarity of signal and LSC speculation concerning blind injection possibility.
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