Session B10: Transitions in Physics and Related Fields from the Late 19th Century to Today

Before New Big Science: Alfred O. C. Nier and the Resurrection of Mass Spectrometry

The mass spectrometer found its first success as a means to determine the isotopic masses and constitutions of chemical elements. As the last known elements were analyzed, its future in physics and chemistry laboratories was in doubt. From the 1940s to the 1960s, however, the mass spectrometer transformed from an instrument built for a specific purpose into a flexible analytical tool that brought together researchers from disciplines across the natural sciences. This talk examines that transition through the career of Alfred Otto Carl Nier, the University of Minnesota mass spectroscopist who was instrumental in both finding new realms where his favored tool could be applied and in building an interdisciplinary community around it. It argues that the reinvention of the mass spectrometer that Nier helped effect prefigured a similar transition in accelerator laboratories, which Catherine Westfall and Robert P. Crease have called ``New Big Science,'' some decades later.   

Across the Divide: From the One Galaxy Universe to the Expanding Universe

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the early 1930s, astronomical thinking on the large-scale nature of the universe was transformed. At the end of the nineteenth century, astronomers were little concerned with the large-scale properties of the universe, its history and what was beyond our Galaxy. In this talk I will discuss these attitudes as well as what happened to change them during the first few decades of the twentieth century. I will conclude by examining the establishment of the expanding universe in the late 1920s and early 1930s.   

An Attempt to Solve the Controversies Over Elements 104 and 105: A Meeting in Russia, 23 September 1975

In September 1975, Glenn Seaborg and Al Ghiorso of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) travelled to the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, to attend the International School-Seminar on Reactions of Heavy Ions with Nuclei and Synthesis of New Elements. While there, they had a 2 hour long meeting with Georgy Flerov, Yuri Oganessian, and other Soviet scientists, in which they discussed the disputes related to the discoveries of elements 104 and 105. This meeting came at a time when an international group of physicists and chemists, referred to as the joint neutral group, had been formed to attempt to solve the problems surrounding the discovery of these new superheavy elements. Neither LBL nor JINR wanted what Flerov referred to as their "dirty underwear" put in the "fresh air" of this group. What was this "dirty underwear"? For Flerov, it was the "wrong" discussion or speculation on experimental data. But there were other matters of debate, as well, such as experiment design and equipment, the types of techniques used, and differences of opinion regarding what constitutes discovery. This meeting was an attempt to make the joint neutral group unnecessary. In the end, this was goal was unsuccessful. However, thanks to the transcript of the tape recording made by Ghiorso, the meeting provides an insider's view of the dispute and the ways in which the scientists involved attempted to solve it amongst themselves rather than resorting to an outside group.