Oral history interview with Edwin Ernest Salpeter, 1978 March 30.

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Oral history interview with Edwin Ernest Salpeter, 1978 March 30.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/83226002

Early years in Vienna; emigration to Sydney, Australia as refugee; training there in theoretical physics, to 1946. Quantum field theory and social interactions under Rudolf Peierls at University of Birmingham, to 1949, and Hans Bethe at Cornell University; relations among U.S. field theorists; nuclear theory applied to experiments. Discovery of triple-alpha process at Caltech, 1951; move into astrophysics and social relations in Cornell physics and astronomy departments. Work on increasing variety of astrophysics problems, some related to cosmology, and on ionosphere; Arecibo observatory. Sources of funds. Consulting on anti-ballistic missiles etc. in the 1960s; JASON, NASA and other government relations. Comments throughout on politics; discussions of work style, "pragmatic" approach to theory. Also prominently mentioned are: Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade, Victor Bailey, David Bohm, Henry Booker, Sidney Brenner, Dale Corson, Francis Crick, Frank Drake, Freeman Dyson, Richard Phillips Feynman, William Alfred Fowler, George Gamow, Murray Gell-Mann, Thomas Gold, Bill Gordon, Fred Hoyle, Charles Christian Lauritsen, Thomas Lauritsen, Francis Eugene Low, R. E. Makinson, Robert McNamara, Philip A. Morrison, Mark Oliphant, Eugenia Peierls, David Pines, Martin Ryle, Miriam Salpeter, Allan Sandage, Martin Schwarzschild, Julian R. Schwinger, R. W. Shaw, Tamann, Robert Rathbun Wilson, R. W. Wooley; California Institute of Technology, Conference on Relativistic Astrophysics, Conference on Stellar Populations (1957 : Rome, Italy), Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), National Science Foundation, Philips Elektronik Industrie GmbH, Sydney Boys High School, Tel-Aviv University, Texas Relativistic Astrophysics Conference, United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, United States Department of Defense, United States President's Science Advisory Committee, University of Sydney, and Vatican Symposia.

Sound recordings: 6 sound cassettes (ca. 5.5 hrs.), 1 session.Transcript: 89 p.

American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library

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SNAC Resource ID: 8297766

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