Oral history interview with Matthew L. Sands, 1987 May 4 and 5.

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Oral history interview with Matthew L. Sands, 1987 May 4 and 5.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/84004533

Childhood, family life, early influences; to Clark University in physics and mathematics; financial hardships; graduate work at Rice University (W. Heep, H. A. Wilson), M.A., 1941; chooses ferromagnetism over more popular nuclear physics. To Naval Ordnance Laboratory to work on magnetic mines, 1941; discovers electrical engineering (J. Kiethley). Leaves Navy of own accord for Los Alamos; reading "The Primer;" makes electronic instruments; the collaborative environment; making a temperature controller for the first chain reaction; life and work at Los Alamos (Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Bruno Rossi), Alamagordo test; Los Alamos Association of Concerned Scientists; "Los Alamos University." Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1946-1949; nature of his position and funding at MIT; cosmic ray research (Rossi); the Laboratory of Nuclear Science; fixing the synchrotron; consultant for Brookhaven National Laboratory; forced to leave MIT for personal reasons. California Institute of Technology (Robert Bacher), 1949-1963; making electronic instruments for new accelerator laboratory; Fulbright Fellowship year in Rome, 1952; conditions in Italy; discovers resonances in the strong focussing synchrotron (Bruno Touschek); lectures at Saclay. Teaching at Caltech; compares MIT and Caltech; lectures on arms control and disarmament, beginning 1953; proposal for super-proton synchrotron, 1959, later abandoned; reworking Caltech curricula. Joins President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) (Limited War Panel), 1961-1966, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Reasons for joining JASON; work on anti-submarine warfare, surface ship speed; N. Christofilos; Wellesley-Santa Barbara Summer Study, 1966: getting good data, counter-insurgency, Barrier Study (Robert McNamara), 1966; reasons for leaving JASON, 1969; its influential members; secrecy; relation of JASON work to academic physics work. Pugwash Conferences, 1960-1963; Commission on College Physics; "Feynman Lectures on Physics" (Robert Leighton, Victor Neher, Bacher, Feynman), 1960-1966; decision to leave Caltech (Wolfgang Panofsky). To Stanford Linear Accelerator Center as professor and administrator, 1963; building the laboratory, 1963-1969; electron-positron storage ring (SPEAR); decision to leave SLAC. To University of California, Santa Cruz, as vice chancellor; the psychology of education.

Sound recordings: 7 sound cassettes (ca. 6.0 hrs.), 2 sessions.Transcript: 118 p.

American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library

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SNAC Resource ID: 8311945

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