Oral History Center University of California the Bancroft Library Berkeley, California George Leitmann: Engineering Science, R

Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley Oral History Center University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California George Leitmann: Engineering Science, Risk, and Relationships at UC Berkeley and Beyond Interviews conducted by Paul Burnett in 2018 and 2019 Copyright © 2019 by The Regents of the University of California Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley ii Since 1954 the Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library, formerly the Regional Oral History Office, has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ********************************* All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and George Leitmann dated May 9, 2019. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://ucblib.link/OHC-rights. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: George Leitmann, “George Leitmann: Engineering Science, Risk, and Relationships at UC Berkeley and Beyond” conducted by Paul Burnett in 2018 and 2019, Oral History Center of the Bancroft Library, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2019. Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley iii Interview History There are several reasons for conducting a life history of this size. First, the sheer length and density of a life lived demands it. Second, we look to individual narrators as witnesses to important and complicated historical events. We want them to speak about what they have seen, experienced, suffered, and accomplished. We want them to tell us something about the inexplicable, the invisible, or even the conventional and overwritten. What do you learn when things fall apart? One of the themes that emerged clearly before we started filming at the beginning of 2018 was risk. George’s life until the age of twelve or so had been pretty idyllic. Then everything got turned upside down, and a young boy had to become a man very quickly. The catastrophe seemed highly improbable in the prosperous and stable Vienna of the 1930s. His elders told him so. They joked about it. Then he saw the man that everyone was talking about drive into town, and he saw the other boys marching with crisp uniforms that had been brought in on trucks or out of hiding. His home was stolen and his family were split apart. With the adaptability of youth, George escaped with some of his family and he developed a new version of stability and relative happiness in a high school in New York. But he turned again to a world of danger by joining the US Army combat engineers in World War II. Combat engineers rebuild bridges and roads destroyed by a retreating army, and George performed reconnaissance for the engineers. In other words, he was in front of the group that was in front of an advancing army, often behind enemy lines, witnessing again and again the fates of the less fortunate. Risk. I am a historian of science, and the bread and butter of my area of research is the relationship between the social and the technical, the study of the institutions, the people, and the politics that make knowledge. It has seldom been so clear to me the relationship between a scientist’s lived experience and their research. After the war and a master’s degree in physics, George was recruited to work on the theoretical foundations of rocket research for the US Navy. He turned this experience and knowledge into seminal contributions to something called control theory, basically the mathematical rules that govern a system in a defined state of optimality or stability. This sounds very abstract, but George’s research ends up being used in rocket research, economics, fisheries management, seismic stabilization, wind shear of aircraft, AI, and many other areas. Many of our society’s systems are organized around probability, what is most likely to happen or not happen. There is a danger in this design that George has lived before. One key element of his life’s work is to account and control for highly improbable and catastrophic threats to a system, any system. Rarely has such an abstract theoretical research trajectory been so deeply informed by such a visceral experience of danger and catastrophe. This was one of the most striking themes of these interviews: plan for the improbable and the terrible. Don’t look away. Finally, and because of all of the above, we want narrators of these long life histories to be wise. When I asked George to be wise, he would usually shrug and say he was no expert, even when he was. So that was another piece of wisdom: be humble. We are not so much individuals as people who stand and fall by our communities. When we were planning our interview sessions together, I was constantly trying to get a handle on the vast range of his research interests, or to understand how to approach the monumental and global tragedies to which he was an important Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley iv witness, and George would always come back to people. Did he mention this person? Did he give enough credit or time to that person? Other people matter. Family matters. Family is bigger than family. Other people first. This is his way of living, and his secular way of repairing the world, about whose broken state he always worries. And this is one reason George and I both suspect he has been so celebrated and decorated by his peers, his colleagues, his country and many others. He stands as an example of how to move through difficult times and face problems without being consumed by them, to reach a state of gratitude and qualified happiness for the complicated gift of being part of something grander than oneself. Paul Burnett, Berkeley, CA, 2019 Acknowledgements The Oral History Center wishes to thank Richard Robbins for a generous contribution that made this project possible. Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley v George Leitmann Photo courtesy of Paul Burnett, 2018 Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley vi George Leitmann is Professor Emeritus of Engineering Science at UC Berkeley. Born in Vienna, Leitmann’s family immigrated to the United States in 1940. Dr. Leitmann subsequently fought with distinction in World War II for the US Army’s combat engineers. After the war, he worked for the Counter Intelligence Corps where, among other duties, he was an interrogator for the Nuremberg Trials. After studying physics at Columbia University, Dr. Leitmann worked at the Naval Ordnance Test Station – China Lake, where he rose to become the head of aeroballistics. He completed his PhD in 1956 in engineering science and was hired immediately as a professor at UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering until his retirement in 1991. Dr. Leitmann helped found the field of control theory, which then branched into seminal contributions to ballistics, game theory, ecological systems, economics, seismic research, wind shear, and counterterrorism, among other subjects. His 60-year career at UC Berkeley was also marked by academic service, including as the university’s first ombudsman during the unrest around campus in 1969, service on the budget committee, numerous associate deanships for the College of Engineering, and as the head of multiple campus-wide programs. Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley vii Table of Contents—George Leitmann Interview 1: February 12, 2018 Hour 1 1 Birth in Vienna — Religion and culture in family — Austrian identity and military service of relatives — Relatives in California — Childhood in Vienna — Cottage and summer in the country — Growing political polarization in Austria in 1930s — Austrian Civil War and Nazi coup, 1934 — Realgymnasium — Misbehaving and punishment — Encountering Sigmund Freud — Great Depression, effects — Grandmother — Father’s interest in learning and technology Hour 2 15 A dangerous encounter with a chemistry

Load more