Antisemitism

In this interview Marguerite Goldfarb, Richard Garwin's aunt, discusses topics such as: Garwin, his parents, Garwin growing up, anti-semitism in Cleveland.This interview is part of a collection of interviews on the life and work of Richard Garwin. To see all associated interviews, click here.

In this interview Lois Garwin discusses topics such as: how she and husband Richard Garwin met, Richard Garwin in school, growing up in Cleveland, Judaism and antisemitism, Richard Garwin's parents, University of Chicago, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, the hydrogen bomb, Jay Keyworth, IBM, the Garwin children.This interview is part of a collection of interviews on the life and work of Richard Garwin. To see all associated interviews, click here. 

After surveying Martin Harwit's family background and early education, the interview concentrates on: his graduate education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; his career in physics at Cambridge Unviersity as a NATO Fellow; his time at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) as a National Science Foundation Fellow; and, principally, his work at Cornell as assistant and associate professor of astronomoy, professor, and chairman of the Physics department.  While discussing his childhood and education, Harwit addresses the antisemitism he and his family faced in German and in the United States.  This interview covers a broad range of his scientific interest: galaxy and star formations; comets; infrared optics, especially relating to detector technology; infrared astronomy; rocketry; history of philosophy in science; use of balloons in observation; and astronomy education.  Some affliliations discussed include:  John Decker, Herbert Friedman, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle.

After surveying Martin Harwit's family background and early education, the interview concentrates on: his graduate education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; his career in physics at Cambridge Unviersity as a NATO Fellow; his time at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) as a National Science Foundation Fellow; and, principally, his work at Cornell as assistant and associate professor of astronomoy, professor, and chairman of the Physics department.  While discussing his childhood and education, Harwit addresses the antisemitism he and his family faced in German and in the United States.  This interview covers a broad range of his scientific interest: galaxy and star formations; comets; infrared optics, especially relating to detector technology; infrared astronomy; rocketry; history of philosophy in science; use of balloons in observation; and astronomy education.  Some affliliations discussed include:  John Decker, Herbert Friedman, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle.

After surveying Martin Harwit's family background and early education, the interview concentrates on: his graduate education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; his career in physics at Cambridge Unviersity as a NATO Fellow; his time at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) as a National Science Foundation Fellow; and, principally, his work at Cornell as assistant and associate professor of astronomoy, professor, and chairman of the Physics department.  While discussing his childhood and education, Harwit addresses the antisemitism he and his family faced in German and in the United States.  This interview covers a broad range of his scientific interest: galaxy and star formations; comets; infrared optics, especially relating to detector technology; infrared astronomy; rocketry; history of philosophy in science; use of balloons in observation; and astronomy education.  Some affliliations discussed include:  John Decker, Herbert Friedman, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle.

In this interview, Leopold Halpern discusses the life of Marietta Blau.  Topics discussed include: Hertha Wambacher; Institute for Radium Research; Auguste Dick; Georg Stetter; Albert Einstein; Otto Halpern; Philipp Lenard; Brookhaven National Laboratory; experiences with gender discrimination and antisemitism.

Career in nuclear physics, chiefly through 1939; describes differences in atmosphere among the Universities of Vienna, Berlin, London and Copenhagen; his switch from mathematics to physics at Vienna; work at University of Berlin on a grant, with Peter Pringsheim, before going to Hamburg to work with Otto Stern; with Hitler laws in effect, leaves for position with Patrick M. S. Blackett at Birkbeck College, 1933; then to Niels Bohr's Institute, until 1939; anecdotes about working on neutron experiments and nuclear models in Copenhagen; recounts how he and Lise Meitner explained fission, and memorandum with Rudolf Peierls on bomb possibilities; brief comments on postwar career.

Deals with the career of Herbert Friedman, an experimentalist who used space-borne instruments from the 1940s through 1970s to examine the upper atmosphere and astronomical phenomena. Pioneer in the fields of solar and non-solar x-ray astronomy. His role in development of Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) research programs. Discussed are: childhood and youth; his family's Jewish tradition; physics education at Brooklyn College and Johns Hopkins University during the Depression; anti-semitism in job-hiring; to the National Research Laboratory (NRL), 1940; war work on radio crystal oscillators using x-ray techniques; his atomic bomb detection work after the war; introduction to rocket research at NRL immediately after the war; Navy funding of rocket work; early solar x-ray work, 1949-1958; impressions of colleagues Edward O. Hulbert, Richard Tousey, T. Robert Burnight, Homer E. Newell; impact of Sputnik and creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958; pioneering work in ultraviolet astronomy and non-solar x-ray astronomy; x-ray astronomy work in the 1960s; trying to detect neutron stars in 1964; x-ray astronomy in the 1970s; High Energy Astronomy Observatory program; possible evidence for a closed universe; administration of NRL; his work on various committees (including the President's Science Advisory Committee); future programs such as the Space Shuttle and Space Telescope. Also prominently mentioned are: William W. Beeman, C. Stuart Bowyer, Werner von Braun, Gunter Bruckner, Edward T. Byram, George Carruthers, Talbot Chubb, James Franck, Riccardo Giacconi, Leo Goldberg, John Charles Hubbard, Neil Johnson, Jim Kurfess, James Van Allen; American Science and Engineering, Inc., High Energy Astronomy Observatory, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, National Academy of Sciences (U.S.), Naval Research Laboratory (U.S.), Phillips Petroleum Co., United States Office of Naval Research, V-2 (Rocket), and Washington Navy Yard.

Interview focusses on early life in Vienna, family and religion; atmosphere in Vienna in early 1930s; growth of interest in mathematical physics; anti-Semitism in Vienna; influence of history teacher and rejection of religion; influence of reading Eddington and Jeans in the mid-1930s; further study in England and contact with Eddington; Trinity College, 1937-1940; study with Besicovitch; collapse of plebiscite and family in Vienna; internment during World WarII; graduate study with Harold Jeffreys; naval radar, 1942; associates during war and circle at Cambridge; development of radar research team with Gold and Hoyle; developing astronomical interests, 1943; early research on accretion and evolution; cosmology; general relativity; contact with Dyson, Lighthill and W.H. McCrae; work in theoretical stellar structure; the problem of red giants; Hoyle's theory of stellar evolution; Hoyle-Lyttleton red giant models; growing interests in cosmology and discussion of Tolman and Hubble; the Steady State Cosmology; reactions to Steady State theory; gravitational theory and relativity circa 1955.

Family background, early life in Brooklyn and Detroit, high school; undergraduate studies at University of Michigan, switch from mathematics to physics. Graduate work at Michigan, 1931-1933; thesis research combines quantum mechanics and infrared spectroscopy. Difficulty finding academic job during Depression; works for Lowell Observatory while at Michigan, 1933-1936; devises long-path absorption cell, research in infrared spectrum of earth's atmosphere. Joins faculty of Johns Hopkins University (Gerhard Dietz), 1935-1936. To Lowell Observatory (Roger Lowell Putnam, V. M. Slipher, E. C. Slipher, C. O. Lampland), 1936; living conditions, constructing the prism spectrometer, studies in earth atmosphere, atmospheric chemistry of Venus, discovery of 20 micron window (Carl Sagan); constructing the grating spectrometer. Adel forced out of Lowell; problems encountered by Adel at Lowell; anti-Semitism. Wartime work in Washington, DC, submarine degaussing (Arthur Bennett), summer 1942. Returns to Michigan, 1941-1945, joins program for training military meteorologists; research to determine causes for failure of lcm radar. Joins McMath-Hulbert Observatory, 1946, discusses staff, autocratic research style. Accepts Air Force contract to build lab at Holloman Air Force Base, Alamagordo, NM to examine effective radiation temperatures of ozone, 1947-1948. Joins faculty of Arizona State College in Flagstaff, 1948; fate of the ozone lab. Air Force funding of Atmospheric Research Observatory at Arizona State College, 1950, establishing a database of ozone research; Yerkes Observatory Symposium, 1947; Gerard Kuiper, Otto Struve. Adel's place in infrared astronomy. Also prominently mentioned are: Ernest F. Barker; Professor Dennison; Edward Epstein; Henry Giclas; Leo Goldberg; Percival Lowell; Ohren Mohler; Henry Norris Russell; Edward Teller; George Uhlenbeck; Harry Wexler