Karl Kelchner Darrow Papers, 1872-1978, (bulk 1917-1972)

ArchivalResource

Karl Kelchner Darrow Papers, 1872-1978, (bulk 1917-1972)

Correspondence; diaries; manuscripts; lectures; reprints; financial and legal documents; testimonials; photographs; student notebooks; postcards. The collection is important primarily for its intellectual and social history. With the exception of the reprints, lectures, and college notes, there is little substantive scientific information. It is made up largely of correspondence (1872-1978) which is primarily social in content, and includes a significant quantity of family letters and history. Darrow's wide international circle of friends in both the arts and sciences reflect such events in the correspondence as the Depression, World War II, the influx of foreign scientists into the United States, the impact of the development of the atomic bomb within the physics community, the increasing participation of women in science, Presidential campaigns, and political developments in both the United States and Europe. There is a small series of professional correspondence from Darrow's office at Bell Laboratories (1955-1956) which deals mainly with his retirement and his work as Secretary of the American Physical Society. Correspondents include Raymond T. Birge, Niels Bohr, Léon Brillouin, Clinton Joseph Davisson, Arthur J. Dempster, Jesse W. Du Mond, Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence, Leona Marshall, R. A. Millikan, George Mulfinger, Manuel Vallarta, John H. Van Vleck, and Ralph W. Wyckoff among many others. Testimonial letters from his retirement represent some of the most imporant names in the international scientific community. The biographical materials include family histories, wills, obituaries and some of Darrow's childhood writings. The diaries (1902-1972) contain accounts of travels, appointments and daily activities. There are copies of many of Darrow's lectures, including an annotated copy of his Lowell Lectures of 1935, manuscripts, and a complete set of reprints of his published articles. Darrow's college notes include those from his Freshman physics course with R. A. Millikan in 1908 at the University of Chicago. Random financial information includes tax forms, investment records, contracts and family estate settlement papers. Photographs include family and professional pictures. Among the correspondence are approximately 800 picture postcards (1917-1976) from the United States and around the world.

20 linear feet.

Information

SNAC Resource ID: 6862754

Related Entities

There are 17 Entities related to this resource.

Bell Telephone Laboratories, inc.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6650fn9 (corporateBody)

Dempster, Arthur Jeffrey, 1886-1950

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6621qw3 (person)

Arthur Jeffrey Dempster was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago. Dempster joined the physics faculty at the University of Chicago in 1916 and remained there until his death in 1950. During World War II he worked on the secret Manhattan Project to develop the world's first nuclear weapons. From 1943 to 1946, Dempster was chief physicist of the University of Chicago's...

Darrow, Clarence S. (Clarence Seward), 1857-1938

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w67q9pzg (person)

Clarence Seward Darrow, prominent Chicago trial lawyer, was born in Kinsman, Ohio on April 18, 1857. He attended Allegheny College, after which he studied one year at the University of Michigan Law School. He then worked as a lawyer in Youngstown, and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1878. He practiced in Ohio for nine years, before moving to Chicago, where he practiced privately before being appointed assistant corporation counsel for the City of Chicago. For four years he served as Chi...

Bohr, Niels, 1885-1962

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6t836n5 (person)

Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who made tremendous contributions to his field, transforming accepted notions of atomic structure, helping to develop nuclear fission, and advocating for international cooperation in crafting responsible nuclear policy. Bohr was born in Copenhagen in 1885 into a family that encouraged his academic pursuits. Christian Bohr, his father, was professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen. Bohr credited his father for awakening hi...

Birge, Raymond T. (Raymond Thayer), b. 1887.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w61c1z54 (person)

Physicist (spectroscopy, statistics). On the physics faculty at Syracuse University, 1913-1918; University of California at Berkeley from 1918, department chair, 1933-1955; chairman of committee on physical constants, National Research Council, 1930-1937. From the description of Lectures by Niels Bohr and by R. T. Birge, 1922-1969. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 79125366 From the description of Comments on A. A. Michelson, 1962. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 82481619 ...

DuMond, Jesse W. M. (Jesse William Monroe), 1892-1976

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6kh0pqz (person)

American physicist. From the description of Papers. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 154302843 Biography Jesse William Monroe DuMond, experimental physicist, was born in Paris on July 11, 1892, to expatriate American parents, Fredrick Melville DuMond and Louise Adele Kerr. After the death of his mother before he was two years old, DuMond was cared for by his maternal grandmother, Catherine E. Kerr, a resident of Paris, up t...

Sandoval Vallarta, Manuel, 1899-1977

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6v69m66 (person)

Wyckoff, Ralph W. G. (Ralph Walter Graystone), 1897-1994

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w64m96bn (person)

Wycoff died in 1994. From the description of Reminiscences of Ralph W. G. Wyckoff, ca. 1962. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 78201735 ...

Marcy, D. Elizabeth.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w67s7qc6 (person)

Van Vleck, J. H. (John Hasbrouck), 1899-1980

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6bp03zm (person)

Van Vleck died in 1980. From the description of Nobel Prize and Lorentz Medal information, 1980. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 78291608 From the description of The first ten years of John Slater's scientific career, ca. 1979. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 83857765 Physicist. Died in 1980. From the description of Oral history interview with J. H. Van Vleck, 1966 February 28 and 1973 January 19. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 77805000 J. H. Van ...

Fermi, Enrico, 1901-1954

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6736s35 (person)

Enrico Fermi was a physicist. From the description of Letters, 1918-1926, to Enrico Perisco. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 173466015 From the guide to the Enrico Fermi letters, 1918-1926, to Enrico Perisco, 1918-1926, (American Philosophical Society) Physicist. From the description of Papers of Enrico Fermi, 1919-1954. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 71068165 Physicist (slow neutrons, artificial radioactivity, beta-ray emission, statistical mode...

Brillouin, Léon, 1889-1969

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6p84dwx (person)

Physicist (theoretical physics, quantum theory, electromagnetic waves). On physics faculty at Collège de France, 1932-1939, and Harvard University, 1946-1949; general director, French National Broadcasting System, 1939-1940; director of research, Watson Laboratory, International Business Machines Corporation, 1949-1954. From the description of Papers, 1877-1972. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 80490114 Died in 1967. From the description of Oral history interview ...

American physical society

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6pg5mr2 (corporateBody)

This professional society of educators, industrial and government research workers, and students of physics and related fields, was established in 1899 to promote the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics. It was a founding Member Society of the American Institute of Physics. The Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) Study was commissioned by the American Physical Society on November 20, 1983 to evaluate the status of the science and technology of DEW. A study group was formed by Novembe...

University of Chicago.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6449cnx (corporateBody)

Most of the records in the collection pertain to the $400,000 raised by the American Baptist Education Society in 1889-1890 in order to obtain a 600,000 grant from John D. Rockefeller for the creation of an endowment for the University of Chicago. The first volume in the inventory, Record of Pledges for the University of Chicago, contains an alphabetical numbered listing of subscribers, amounts pledged, and payments made through 1906. The subscription forms and letters (1:4-13) are numbered to c...

Millikan, Robert Andrews, 1868-1953

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6pk0hdg (person)

Physicist (photoelectricity, ions) and educator. On the physics faculty at the University of Chicago, 1896-1921; on the faculty at California Institute of Technology: director, Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics and chairman of the Executive Council, 1921-1946, emeritus professor of physics and chairman of the Board of Trustees from 1946; Nobel Prize in physics, 1923. From the description of Papers [microform], 1847-1953. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 77594601 Millikan was...

Lawrence, Ernest Orlando, 1901-1958

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6ns0wbw (person)

Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Nobel prizewinning physicist, inventor of the cyclotron and the founder and first director of the University of California Radiation Laboratory, was born on August 8, 1901 in Canton, South Dakota. His parents Carl Gustavus and Gunda Jacobson Lawrence were the children of Norwegian immigrants. Ernest Lawrence attended St. Olaf College and later the University of South Dakota, where he received his A.B. degree in 1922. He had originally thought to become a medical doctor, ...

Darrow, Karl K. (Karl Kelchner), 1891-

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6sx6g0b (person)

Physicist (science writer). Physicist, Western Electric Company, 1917-1924 and Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1925-1956; Secretary, American Physical Society, 1941-1966. Died 1982. From the description of Karl Kelchner Darrow Papers, 1872-1978, (bulk 1917-1972) (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 154306668 Physicist (science writer). Physicist with Western Electric Company, 1917-1924 and Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1925-1956; Secretary, American Physical Society, 1941-1966. Died 1...