Subject Files
 |
Bell Telephone Laboratories patents and papers of the George C. Southworth Collection. |
Since the early 1960s, the Center has been collecting information on physics-related topics, including biographical and autobiographical information on physicists, subject files on physics, and institutions involved in physics.
Numerous American physicists, selected on criteria of honors, publications, and reputation, were asked to furnish biographical information on themselves, including a bibliography of their writings. Over the years, other names and nationalities were added to this list, and the collections now contain information on some 1,500 scientists.
As part of the initial project, a small number of individuals were asked to write autobiographies; others were written spontaneously. The manuscript biographies, ranging from a few pages to book-length works, now number well over 200.
Uniform surveys which can be used for quantitative studies are also part of the vertical files. For example, in a survey done for the Sources for the History of Modern Astrophysics project, 100 senior astronomers were asked identical questions about their education, funding, opinions on current scientific developments, and other matters.
Other surveys were addressed to physicists who had received their Ph.D.s in 1930-1933, to senior nuclear physicists, and to eminent geophysicists. The replies are in effect short autobiographies with information on the careers and ideas of a sample of certain groups.
The vertical files also contain miscellaneous published and unpublished material on physics-related institutions in government, academia, and industry. Particularly useful are more than 200 unpublished histories of American academic physics departments and other science institutions. All of the unpublished material is cataloged.
Our ‘Miscellaneous Physics’ collection includes originals and photocopies of many significant letters, manuscripts of important articles, and research and student notebooks.