physicsworld.com Comment: Robert P Crease Critical Point Bronx physics With seven of its former pupils afterschool trips to the used bookstores that then populated lower Manhattan. having gone on to win a Particle theorist David Politzer, who shared the 2004 Nobel prize and who spoke Nobel Prize for Physics, the Shunella Lumas at last month’s APS ceremony, described the Bronx High School of Science school’s spirit by citing a transport strike that took place in 1966 – the year he left Bronx. is no ordinary school. The strike paralysed the city for almost two Robert P Crease finds out why weeks and in most schools attendance plum- meted; in some, nobody turned up. “[But] at Every morning about 3000 students at the Bronx Science, attendance was normal,” Bronx High School of Science in New York Politzer recalls. “We walked, bicycled and pass beneath a huge mosaic that hangs over hitchhiked to school. We wouldn’t miss it!” the school’s entrance. It shows a Moses-like Politzer’s classmate Russell Hulse, who figure – representing “the humanities” – ri- shared the 1993 Nobel prize for discovering sing over a rainbow, beneath which are tile the first binary pulsar, recalled that his depictions of Pythagoras’s theorem, survey- favourite afterschool activity was building ing gear, a Benjamin Franklin-like key and various antennas, including a radio tele- kite, and more old stuff. The students rush- Official recognition The American Physical Society has scope. As Hulse told me, “It was very special ing to class hardly notice. They are into cal- placed Bronx Science on its “register of historic sites”. to me to finally be in a place that focused on culus, photodetectors and robots. what I found most interesting and com- On 15 October this year, Bronx Science, as more was thrilled to find he understood it. pelling in life, namely science.” it is colloquially known, was officially desig- Glauber went to Harvard in 1942, skipped Much has changed in recent years. The nated a “historic physics site” in a ceremony the intermediate physics courses, discov- advanced-physics labs were renovated last organized by the American Physical Society ered that advanced courses were cancelled year, and “we try to instil an inquiry mind- (APS). The high school joins an imposing list because the teachers were doing war work, set”, says Jean Donahue, the assistant prin- of 18 other landmarks with that status. They and was catapulted into graduate physics. cipal for science. In one physics classroom, I include Bell Labs in New Jersey, where the His outstanding performance caught the saw the teacher illustrate a talk on vectors by transistor was discovered, the Massachusetts attention of well-connected scientists, and having a student navigate a blindfolded com- Institute of Technology’s Radiation Labor- in 1943 – age 18 – he was spirited to the top- panion around the room by shouting direc- atory, which helped to develop radar, the secret Los Alamos laboratory to help build tions and magnitudes; in another, the teacher University of Chicago site where Robert Mil- the atomic bomb. taught the same principle by asking students likan measured the charge on the electron, Leon Cooper, who shared the 1972 prize how far fish swim in currents of various and the spot outside Cleveland, Ohio, where for work on superconductivity, recalls phys- strengths heading in different directions. Albert Michelson and Edward Morley did ics lessons as boring, and was far more en- The school’s most fearsome physics mod- their epochal ether-drift experiment. chanted by his biology classes, which lured ule – Advanced Placement Physics C – is Located in the northwest corner of him to stay late after school designing and tougher than most college-physics courses. New York City, Bronx Science owes its his- running experiments “until they threw me Its dynamic instructor is Ghada Nehmeh, toric status to the fact that seven future out”. Indeed, the school’s basic-physics text- who was born in Lebanon and studied nuc- Nobel-prize-winning physicists went through book was written by a certain Charles E lear physics. Diminutive – smaller than most its doors – more than any other high school Dull, whose work, though widely used in US of her students – and scarf-clad, she jumps in the world and more than most countries high schools, lived up to his name. The fu- rapidly from lab table to lab table, helping have ever achieved. The school, which ture particle physicist Melvin Schwartz, who piece together equipment and analyse re- opened in 1938, was founded by the educa- shared the 1988 Nobel gong, once told me sults. Famous for being ruthlessly demand- tor Morris Meister, who believed that if a his classmates’ excited discussions – not his ing, she tests the students on their first day school put bright students together, it would teacher – were what first awakened his inter- by assigning them 40 calculus problems, due kindle ill-defined but valuable learning pro- est in physics. back the next day. “I’d never seen deriv- cesses. The school seems to have proved him The class of 1950 – the year below atives before,” says Kezi Cheng, a senior right: according to the Bronx laureates, their Schwartz – included Sheldon Glashow and interested in theoretical physics. So Cheng physics learning took place mainly outside Steven Weinberg, who shared the 1979 did what most Bronx Science students do – the classroom. Nobel prize with Abdus Salam. Glashow she asked her classmates to give her a crash Roy Glauber, who shared the 2005 Nobel recently told me that he cannot remember course on the subject. “They’re always will- prize for his work on quantum optics, en- learning anything much from his introduc- ing to help.” tered in 1938 in the school’s initial class. The tory-physics class. At the time, the school After last month’s ceremony, Bronx stu- first physics course was not taught until 1939, offered only two advanced-physics courses. dents now have a new plaque to walk past. and its textbook did not even mention atoms. One was in “radio technology”, in which My guess, though, is that they will be too busy That subject was addressed in the chemistry students built crystal radio sets, while in scurrying to the next class to notice. textbook, which did not even say that atoms the “automotive physics” they took apart contained neutrons, despite their discovery and reassembled an old aeroplane engine. Robert P Crease is chairman of the Department in 1932. Neither Glashow nor Weinberg bothered of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, and historian A Bronx mathematics teacher changed with either. Far more exciting was the sci- at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, US. He is the Glauber’s life by giving him a book on cal- ence-fiction club – whose members clustered father of a Bronx Science junior now taking his first culus for summer reading, and the sopho- around lab tables to talk about physics – and physics course, e-mail [email protected] Physics World November 2010 19.