History Newsletter CENTER for HISTORY of PHYSICS&NIELS BOHR LIBRARY & ARCHIVES Vol

History Newsletter CENTER FOR HISTORY OF PHYSICS&NIELS BOHR LIBRARY & ARCHIVES Vol. 43, No. 1 • Summer 2011 Taking Technology Through the “Valley of Death,” Physicists Don’t Fear Risk As the History of Physics Entrepreneur- Physicists are highly skilled in risk Two other issues surprised us by ship (HoPE) project transitions from the analysis and few, if any, appear inclined the degree to which they influenced interview phase to the analysis phase, to venture into activity at which they physics-based innovation in the US. The new and intriquing insights have begun do not feel confident they will succeed role of the federal SBIR/STTR programs to bubble to the surface. The project even though they are aware that they in providing resources to enable high staff have completed 114 interviews with are bringing new technologies through tech innovation appears critical. SBIR/ physicist entrepreneurs, STTR grants play at least 11 interviews with univers- two important roles. At ity intellectual property one level they provide transfer offices, and two critical seed funding for interviews with venture ideas and innovations capitalists throughout that have not yet the U.S. With field trips reached a stage that will to Georgia and Colorado attract venture capital remaining on the agenda, or angel investment. we expect to interview At another level they another ten to fifteen provide an essential physicist entrepreneurs resource for companies and five or six venture whose technologies are capitalists. We’ll then nearly fully developed spend the last year of but have not yet found the three-year study their proper market coding and analyzing and for whom venture the interviews and other capitalists are either resources and compiling our findings. what entrepreneurs call the “valley unwilling to provide further investment of death.” Physicist entrepreneurs do or the founding physicists are unwilling Some trends are obvious even though not perceive themselves as great risk to further dilute their share in the they await formal analysis. That physicist takers. Rather they are confident that technologies they are transitioning entrepreneurs do not feel they are the innovative technologies they have to the marketplace. In both cases the taking great risk in their entrepreneurial created will solve important social and SBIR/STTR programs play essential activity is among the most suprising. commercial problems. (Continued on page 2) In this issue... Taking Technology Through the “Valley of Death,” Documentation Preserved: New Collections .............................10 Physicists Don’t Fear Risk.................................................. 1 Documentation Preserved: New Finding Aids ............................16 Samuel A. Goudsmit Papers Are Available Online ........................ 2 New Grant for Oral History Interviews ......................................18 Disciplinary History Centers’ Success in Friends of the Center for History of Physics ...............................19 Capturing the History of Science ........................................ 3 History of Physics in Utrecht ................................................... 4 Joseph Rotblat’s Archive: Some Anomalies and Difficulties ............ 5 Cover Photo: L–R: Bob Standley and Len Storm in the basement low-temperature Grants-in-Aid Awarded in Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 ...................... 6 lab in the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana, circa 1979. Credit: Department of Physics, University Recent Publications of Interest ................................................ 8 of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Please Help Us Contact .......................................................... 9 Archives. AIP Member Societies: The American Physical Society • The Optical Society of America • The Acoustical Society of America • The Society of Rheology • The American Association of Physics Teachers American Crystallographic Association • American Astronomical Society • American Association of Physicists in Medicine • AVS The Science and Technology Society • American Geophysical Union (“Valley of Death”, continued from page 1) Samuel A. Goudsmit Papers Are Available Online roles in enabling American innovation and in creating well paying high-tech The Niels Bohr Library & Archives, by Goudsmit, other European-trained American jobs. American Institute of Physics (AIP), faculty, and by guest lecturers including is pleased to announce that it has luminaries like Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Finally we were surprised at the degree completed digitizing the complete Pauli, Ehrenfest, and Fermi. The Summer to which immigrant entrepreneurs Samuel Goudsmit Papers (1921–1979, School was the first program of its kind appear to play a role in physics 30 linear feet, approximately 67,000 on theoretical physics in America, and based entrepreneurship. Of the 114 images) and mounting them on the it played a critical role in introducing entrepreneurs interviewed thus far, Web at http://www.aip.org/history/nbl/ American scientists to quantum physics. nearly one third migrated to the United collections/goudsmit/. States, many, but not all, to complete In 1941 Goudsmit left Michigan to their education here. China and The papers are a major international go to the Radiation Laboratory at the India provided the most immigrant collection of correspondence, research Massachusetts Institute of Technology, entrepreneurs with six each, followed notebooks, lectures, reports, World where radar was perfected during by Germany and Russia with three War II science documents, and other World War II, and from 1944 to 1946 he each. Japan and Korea both provided material of Goudsmit (1902–1978) a was detailed to the War Department two physicist entrepreneurs while Dutch physicist who spent his career in as Chief of Scientific Intelligence of Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Egypt, the U.S. and was involved at the cutting the Alsos Mission. The mission moved England, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, edge of physics for over 50 years. It with the advancing Allied forces in Poland, Romania, Taiwan and Turkey contains especially strong sources on Europe to investigate the state of the filled out the list of source lands for the development of quantum physics in German research projects to develop immigrant physicist entrepreneurs. Europe and its spread to the U.S. during an atomic bomb and to capture both Another five of the 76 American-born the first half of the century; German relevant documents and the scientists physicist entrepreneurs identified efforts to develop an atomic bomb who participated. Goudsmit’s extensive their parents as immigrants. Almost during World War II, post-war physics Alsos Mission files are invaluable in as significant was the view, both by research, and scientific publishing. understanding German atomic bomb entrepreneurs and venture capital Because of its breadth and depth it is research and have been used by many of the importance of immigration to the most used collection in AIP’s Library historians. maintaining American competitive & Archives. advantage. One angel investor told us The last chapter of Goudsmit’s career that venture capital is beginning to move Goudsmit was a prolific letter writer began after the war when he accepted abroad because American immigration and a conscientious collector who two iconic positions, editor of the policy is discouraging the best and saved letters (often including copies Physics Review, then emerging as brightest from coming to or staying in of his outgoing correspondence) and the preeminent physics journal, and the United States. Another immigrant research director at the brand-new entrepreneur, who began his company other documents from his student days in the 1990s, now employing more than through the end of his career. He was Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 700 and the technological leader in his born in the Netherlands and studied 1966 he also became Editor-in-Chief field, told us that since 9/11 it was easier theoretical physics at the University of the American Physical Society. His for foreign students trained in the US of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest. His postwar files broaden to embrace both to return to their homelands to begin discovery of electron spin in 1925 with the new high-energy physics research companies; taking the technologies fellow student George E. Uhlenbeck at Brookhaven and the entire spectrum they had developed with them. ■ represents his signal scientificof Cold War physics. Goudsmit retired contribution. In addition, he conducted from Brookhaven in 1970 but retained other important research over his his editorial duties until 1974. career, and he received a variety of “Proof,” I said, “is always a rela- honors and awards, culminating in the In summary, the Goudsmit Papers, and “tive thing. It’s an overwhelming top U.S. science prize, the National especially his rich correspondence, balance of probabilities. And Medal of Science. document the mainstream of physics that’s a matter of how they research from the 1920s through the strike you.” Upon completing his doctorate in 1927, mid-1970s. The project to digitize the ” Goudsmit settled at the University of Goudsmit Papers took two years and Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s Michigan. In 1928 he helped establish was partially supported by the U.S. Farewell, My Lovely, 1940 the famous Michigan Summer Schools in National Historical Publications and Theoretical Physics, which were taught Records Commission. ■ 2

Load more