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Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology (LPPC)

The Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology (LPPC) at Harvard University conducts cutting edge research in experimental particle physics and observational cosmology, and provides education for graduate and undergraduate students.

The LPPC Building

LPPC is spread across buildings in the Northwest Campus. Our main office building is Palfrey House, originally built by  John Palfrey . To find Palfrey on the Harvard campus, view this  Harvard Map .

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The LPPC is led by five faculty members from Harvard Physics and Astronomy Departments: Profs. Carlos Argüelles ,  Melissa Franklin , John Huth ,  Masahiro Morii , and Chris Stubbs .

Astroparticle Physics Frontier

The Astroparticle Physics Frontier Group is led by  Carlos Argüelles , a neutrino physicist. His work explores properties of neutrinos using data from the  IceCube Neutrino Observatory . IceCube data provides a unique window on the highest energy neutrinos ever observed. It is an ideal place to search for new Beyond Standard Model effects.

Energy Frontier

The Energy Frontier Group, led by Profs. Franklin, Huth, and Morii, studies the highest-energy proton-proton collisions with the  ATLAS Experiment  at the Large Hadron Collider  (LHC). We measure the properties of the Higgs boson, and searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model. We also have a dedicated website for the ATLAS group.

Cosmic Frontier

The Cosmic Frontier Group, led by Prof. Stubbs, is primarily working on the development of the  Vera C. Rubin Observatory  (formerly the LSST) as a tool for studying the accelerating expansion of the Universe. Our group plays a central role in the calibration system, in optimizing implementation of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) survey strategy, and in commissioning and exploitation of the full Rubin system. Working in partnership with DOE laboratories (SLAC and BNL), we are also engaged in the construction of the 3.5 Gpixel Rubin Observatory LSST camera system.

Institute for Theoretical Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics is a branch of research describing the interactions of light and matter. Understanding these interactions is essential for studying a variety of astrophysical phenomena, lasers, collisions between atoms, atmospheric science, chemical reactions, and the behavior of matter at very low temperatures. The Institute for Theoretical Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics (ITAMP) at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian provides a home to physicists working on the theoretical foundations for AMO laboratory and astrophysical observations. In addition to resident researchers, ITAMP supports visiting scholars, with special fellowships offered to faculty and students from traditionally underrepresented groups in science, workshops in all areas of AMO physics, and public educational and research programs. The Institute also maintains a blog and a YouTube channel for public outreach.

LEARN MORE ABOUT ITAMP

The Theory of Light and Matter

For more than a century, physicists and chemists have studied matter and its interactions with light on the level of individual atoms and molecules. Modern AMO physics uses techniques learned over that time to make advances in the understanding of atoms and molecules, improve laser technology, and study matter at extremes of temperature. One particular area of interest is studying the spectrum of light absorbed and emitted by atoms and molecules under a wide range of temperatures, densities, and magnetic and electric field strengths — conditions occurring in a variety of astrophysical systems. These include molecules found in planetary and stellar atmospheres , interstellar clouds , cold plasmas, and other environments.

ITAMP brings together the many interdisciplinary approaches to AMO theory, as it is applied in physics, astronomy, chemistry, or materials research. Modern AMO theory includes computational techniques, as computers are increasingly able to model more sophisticated physical systems. Since few universities have dedicated AMO theory research groups, the Institute offers visiting scholar positions, postdoctoral positions, a Winter Graduate School at the B2 Institute in Arizona, and interdisciplinary development workshops. In particular, the ITAMP Underrepresented Faculty/Student Tandem Visiting Fellowships provide funds for faculty from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to bring their students to the CfA for two month periods during summer academic breaks, facilitating collaborations with other researchers.

ITAMP was founded in 1988 as the Institute for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics; optical physics was added to the name later, though the original acronym was left unchanged. Its mission from the beginning was to fill a need for theoretical work in the AMO community, which is largely experiment-driven. The Institute is supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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A search for sterile neutrinos at the noνa far detector , a thermochemical cryogenic buffer gas beam source of tho for measuring the electric dipole moment of the electron , advances in ab initio modeling of the many-body effects of dispersion interactions in functional organic materials , an integrated diamond nanophotonics platform for quantum optics , analytical methods in mesoscopic systems , apparatus and methods for a new measurement of the electron and positron magnetic moments , applications of many body dynamics of solid state systems to quantum metrology and computation , aspects of symmetry in asymptotically flat spacetimes , aspects of symmetry in de sitter space , asymptotic symmetries in four-dimensional gauge and gravity theories , atomic bose-hubbard systems with single-particle control , bat slew survey (batss): slew data analysis for the swift-bat coded aperture imaging telescope , beam characterization and systematics of the bicep2 and keck array cosmic microwave background polarization experiments , brane constructions and bps spectra , carving out the space of conformal field theories , channel length scaling in microwave graphene field effect transistors , chirality of light and its interaction with chiral matter , a classical perspective on non-diffractive disorder , the classical-quantum correspondence of polyatomic molecules .

Applied Physics

Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is at the intersection of physics and engineering. Applied physicists discover new phenomena that become the foundation for quantum and photonic devices and novel materials. They also study the fundamentals of complex systems, including living organisms, which often involves the development of novel instruments. Applied physicists are problem solvers by nature. The problems they attack often require new science to be developed for their solution, which can lead to whole new research fields. Our PhDs therefore find employment both in academia and in non-profits and industry, including startups.

Applied Physics research at Harvard is facilitated by a number of world-class facilities and centers, including the  C enter for Integrated Quantum Materials ; the  Center for Nanoscale Systems , one of the world's most advanced research facilities housing a shared cleanroom, facilities for materials synthesis, and a microscopy suite; the  Materials Research Science and Engineering Center ; the  Kavli Institute for Bionanoscience and Technology ; the  Quantitative Biology Initiative ; the  Center for Integrated Mesoscale Architectures for Sustainable Catalysis ; and the  Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering

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Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature

High energy theory group.

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The High Energy Theory Group at Harvard consists of faculty, post-docs, graduate students and affiliates. Members pursue a wide and exciting selection of research topics and seminars. The High Energy Theory Group also hosts two seminar speaker series in Particle and String Theory throughout the academic year.

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2017 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics Awarded to Joseph Polchinski, Andrew Strominger, and Cumrun Vafa

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Harvard's Nobel Laureates in Physics

Our laureates, roy j. glauber.

“For his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence.”

A friendly, unassuming man and a popular teacher, Glauber updated the theory of the nature of light from its origins in the 19th century to include modern quantum principles. He helped explain how light can travel in the form of quanta (particles) as well as rays or waves. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Glauber took graduate level math courses and worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb, before he graduated. He first worked at what he calls “routine” tasks, and then participated in the “calculations that were important in determining the critical mass (of explosives) and the efficiency of the explosion.” Glauber has been tenured longer than any currently active member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, having received tenure on July 1, 1956. Despite his position at the apex of discovery, Glauber continues to teach the complex science to freshmen and to the public through a well-attended course at the Harvard Extension School. Glauber shared the prize with John L. Hall of the University of Colorado and Theodor W. Hansch of the Institute for Quantum Optics in Munich, Germany.

Riccardo Giacconi

“For pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources.”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored Riccardo Giacconi with the prize because of his pioneering work with X-ray astronomy, including developing instruments to detect X-rays in space. He did much of this work while Associate Director of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Professor of Astronomy between 1973 and 1982.

Giacconi contributed to the development of the Einstein X-ray Observatory, which was a great improvement over earlier X-ray telescopes because it provided sharper images and was stronger. He also initiatived the construction of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, known for its extraordinarily detailed images in X-rays. Giacconi shared the Nobel Prize with Raymond Davis Jr. and Masatoshi Koshiba.

Norman Ramsey

Research on separate oscillatory fields to make precise measurements of how various parts of atoms and molecules interact with each other

“When I learned,” said Ramsey about his vocation, “that you could make a living studying how nature operates, I knew that was what I wanted to do.” Ramsey’s explorations have had many applications: from his research on radar and the atomic bomb during World War II to the work which led to the invention of phenomenally accurate atomic clocks – devices that are able to operate for thousands of years without losing a second. Ramsey is Higgins Professor of Physics Emeritus.

Carlo Rubbia

Discovery and investigation of new subatomic particles and their properties

Rubbia has been the dynamic leading force in some of the most dazzling recent advances in physics, including the discovery of the sixth (or final) quark. Quarks are believed to be the fundamental constituent of which all particles are made. The flamboyant Rubbia has been characterized by fellow Harvard Nobelist Sheldon Glashow as “a wild man in the best tradition of wild men . . . emotional, ebullient, and full of life.” Rubbia is the former Director-General of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva.

Nicolaas Bloembergen

Discovery of laser spectroscopy, whereby atoms can be studied with higher precision

As a 26-year-old graduate student at Harvard, Bloembergen worked with Edward Purcell to develop the theory of nuclear magnetic resonance, for which Purcell was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize. Bloembergen’s subsequent work with masers and lasers have found hugely diverse practical applications, from surgical operations to boring and cutting metal to the development of fiber optics. Bloembergen is Gerhard Gade University Professor Emeritus.

Steven Weinberg

Used mathematical hypotheses to explain electromagnetism and “weak” interactions (with Sheldon L. Glashow)

In addition to his primary task – that of elucidating the unity and simplicity underlying nature’s apparent complexity – Weinberg’s avocation is history, specifically medieval and military history. His interest in the subject goes way back: his book The First Three Minutes (1977) graphically recreates the birth of the universe. Weinberg, a colleague notes, is “dedicated but not driven. He even works with the television on.” Weinberg holds the Josey Regental Chair in Science at the University of Texas at Austin.

Sheldon L. Glashow

Used mathematical hypotheses to explain electromagnetism and “weak” interactions – two of the four basic forces in nature – according to the same laws (with Steven Weinberg)

Despite the fact that Glashow and co-winner Steven Weinberg attended Bronx High School of Science and Cornell University together, and remained friends through their Harvard years, they separately developed this stunning advance toward a unified field theory. Glashow was driven by a curiosity which many more modest homeowners would understand, saying about the universe, “It is intellectually vital to know what the place in which you live is made of.” Glashow is Higgins Professor of Physics Emeritus.

John H. Van Vleck

Pioneered the application of quantum mechanics to the study of magnetism

Van Vleck, known for his love of the arts, his quietly piercing wit, and his intense loyalty to Harvard, made cutting-edge contributions to the fields of radioastronomy, microwave spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance. His application of quantum mechanics altered both physics and chemistry, deepening our understanding of atomic systems – from single molecules to crystalline solids.

Julian S. Schwinger

Contributed to the study of quantum electrodynamics

The son of a dress designer and manufacturer, Schwinger found his calling by reading scientific pulp magazines. In the ensuing years he, along with other physicists, restructured the equations of quantum mechanics to make them fully consistent with Einstein’s special relativity theory. Robert Oppenheimer noted that Schwinger’s “greatest work has been to give us a new understanding of that old and deep problem of the interaction of light and matter.”

Edward M. Purcell

Discovered the nuclear resonance method that measures magnetic fields in atomic nuclei

Purcell’s work resulted in applications ranging from the making of more accurate medical diagnoses to the mapping of our galaxy by radioastronomers. During World War II, he helped develop advanced microwave radar. Purcell was as devoted to teaching as he was to research, debunking the myth that research scientists make poor teachers. He once called the overhead projector “the greatest invention since chalk.”

Percy W. Bridgman

Investigations in changes that occur when various materials are subjected to extremely high pressure

The quintessential Harvard man, Bridgman, born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1882, received three degrees from the University and remained to teach with brilliance, intensity, and dedication. His discoveries made possible the artificial production of diamonds and other mineral forms, and his The Physics of High Pressure (1931) remains the outstanding work in the field.

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About the department, harvard physics faculty in 2024.

The Department of Physics at Harvard is large and diverse in its research interests. With 10 Nobel Prize winners to its credit, the distinguished faculty of today engages in teaching and research that spans the discipline and defines its borders, and as a result Harvard is consistently one of the top-ranked physics departments in the nation.

The Department's greatest resources are the people that fill its classrooms, labs, and offices, as well as state-of-the-art facilities. For undergraduate concentrators, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers, Harvard features a complete range of opportunities to engage in world-class physics from theoretical to the experimental.

Research in the Department seeks to explore and explain fundamental questions that range from understanding the origin of the universe, including string theory, cosmology, and astrophysics, to understanding the visible world of colloids and the world on an ever diminishing scale, from the mesoscale to the nanoscale, condensed matter, and atomic, molecular and particle physics.

Faculty have established several research centers on campus, including:

• Center for Ultracold Atoms  (CUA)
• Center for Nanoscale Systems  (CNS)
• Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature
• Center for Integrated Quantum Materials (CIQM)
• Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics  (CfA)
• Institute for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Physics  (ITAMP)
• Kavli Institute for Bionano Science & Technology (KIBST)
• Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology  (LPPC)
• Materials Research Science and Engineering Center  (MRSEC)
• Max Planck Harvard Research Center for Quantum Optics (MPHQ)
• Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center  (NSEC)

Several collaborations and projects are also being carried out by Physics Department faculty and graduate students at centers outside of Cambridge: the  Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; the  CERN  in Geneva; the Cornell Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory; the  Stanford Linear Accelerator Center ; the  Lawrence Livermore National Lab ; the  Soudan Mines in Northern Minnesota ; and the  National Institute of Standards and Technology .

Research in the Department is frequently interdisciplinary in nature thus the Department has strong links to the:  Astronomy ,  Biophysics ,  Chemistry and Chemical Biology , and  Molecular and Cellular Biology  departments. The Department shares a particularly close relationship with the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences , where crosscutting research in computational physics, electrical engineering and nanotechnology is ongoing.

The Harvard Physics Department also has a close relationship with MIT which is perhaps best represented by the  Harvard/MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms .

With more than 50 affiliated faculty members and about 170 undergraduates,  250 graduate students, and 120 postdoctoral fellows and other scholars, the Physics Department has a lively intellectual environment, and emphasis is placed on teaching and preparing students to be at the forefront of the next generation of physicists.

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Chemical Physics

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This program is an intriguing and exciting area of study that covers the clarification of the properties and behavior of nanostructures, the characterization of the interior workings of individual cells, the preparation of the first quantum spin liquid, research in experimental physical chemistry, and much more. Our award-winning faculty, which includes Nobel Prize and Welch Award laureates, will help you explore the theoretical and practical aspects of material sciences, engineering, and chemical engineering. The education you receive will enable you to successfully pursue a career in either academia or industry.

Students in the program have collaborated with leading scientific institutions, like the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, and with fellow students in various labs across the Harvard campus.

Examples of student projects include developing materials to create sustainable heating and cooling options to reduce greenhouse gases and the development of novel molecules that the world has never seen.

Graduates of the program have secured faculty positions at prestigious institutions like MIT, Stanford University, and Princeton University. Others have launched careers with well-known companies like Dow Chemical, Chevron, and Merck. 

Additional information on the graduate program is available from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and requirements for the degree are detailed in Policies .

Areas of Study

All applicants to Chemical Physics must apply through Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

Admissions Requirements

Applicants interested in Chemical Physics apply through the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. In the online application, select “Chemistry and Chemical Biology” as your program choice and select "Chemical Physics" in the Area of Study menu.

Please review admissions requirements and other information before applying. You can find degree program-specific admissions requirements below and access additional guidance on applying from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology .

Statement of Purpose

For applicants to chemical physics, the statement of purpose should include two sections. Please clearly delineate the two sections within the same document using the headers "statement of purpose" and "research accomplishments.”

• Statement of Purpose : Statement of your scientific and professional interests and objectives, not to exceed 300 words.
• Research Accomplishments : Statement of your research accomplishments and/or current projects, not to exceed 500 words. In the event that undergraduate research opportunities have not been available to you, please discuss other science projects, reading projects, etc., that you have undertaken.

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April 18, 2024

18 min read

The Theoretical Physicist Who Worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

Melba Phillips co-authored a paper with J. Robert Oppenheimer in 1935 that proved important in the development of nuclear physics. Later she became an outspoken critic of nuclear weapons

By Joe Armstrong , Deborah Unger , Katie Hafner & The Lost Women of Science Initiative

Melba Phillips

Keren Mevorach ( illustration ); Pach Brothers, NY, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives ( photograph )

Melba Phillips , who grew up on a farm in Indiana at the turn of the 20th century, was one of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s first graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. Together they discovered the Oppenheimer-Phillips process , which explained a particular kind of nuclear reaction. In this episode, we explain what that is, with a little help from generative artificial intelligence. Phillips did not follow Oppenheimer to Los Alamos National Laboratory and was vocal in her opposition to nuclear weapons. During the McCarthy era, she lost her teaching job, and she did not return to academia until 1957. In 1962, then in her mid-50s, she finally became a full professor at the University of Chicago.

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Lost Women of Science is produced for the ear. Where possible, we recommend listening to the audio for the most accurate representation of what was said.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Adam Falk: She knew who she was, and that she was going to be a physicist. I imagine that Oppenheimer was very happy to work with her but my understanding is that at that time, women were thought to be a… some kind of oddity.

Katie Hafner: This is Lost Women of Science. I'm Katie Hafner. Last summer, when the film Oppenheimer opened, we got curious–well, more curious than usual–about the conspicuous absence of female scientists in the movie. So we started looking into that, and it didn't take long before we came upon the name Melba Phillips. OK just to be clear Melba Phillips did not work on the Manhattan Project itself but she was a gifted physicist. She was one of Robert Oppenheimer's first graduate students at UC Berkeley in the early 1930s when he was just starting out and together they made an important discovery, now known as the Oppenheimer-Phillips Process.

In this episode, we're going to explore Melba’s life and work– including the Oppenheimer-Phillips Process and its enduring importance in nuclear physics. And just as important as the science itself is the story of a young woman who, nearly a hundred years ago, thought nothing of declaring herself a physicist, and the story of the famous man who just as notably, thought nothing of regarding her as one.

Melba Newell Phillips was born on February 1st, 1907 in–or we’re not exactly sure, maybe near–Hazleton, Indiana, a speck of a place in the southwestern corner of the state. Her family was rich with teachers and farmers. Melba, it turned out, had a natural aptitude for science, and she excelled so much in school that she skipped a couple of grades and graduated from high school at the age of 16. Some sources we’ve seen even say she was 15 when she graduated from high school. I think we can agree on this: young Melba was no slouch of a student.

Jill Weiss Simins: She definitely was naturally smart. She tried to follow in the family profession of becoming a teacher.

Katie Hafner: That's Jill Weiss Simins, a historian at the Indiana Historical Bureau. She’s done a lot of research on Melba’s life.

Jill Weiss Simins: She actually passed the exam to become a teacher in Indiana, but she was too young.

Katie Hafner: And wasn't that lucky for the world, because...

Jill Weiss Simins: While she was waiting to be old enough, she pursued further education.

Katie Hafner: She decided to study physics at the school nearest to home, then known as Oakland City College in nearby Oakland City, Indiana. But when she arrived, she discovered that the school didn’t have a major in physics so she majored in mathematics. The physics she wanted was about 300 miles north in Michigan. She ended up getting her masters degree in physics from Battle Creek College and she stayed on to teach there. Then in the summer of 1929 she took a class in theoretical physics at the University of Michigan. That summer course became known for the high caliber of the teachers, including Edward Condon, who was a leading nuclear physicist, and the British physicist Paul Dirac. That class was an eyeopener for Melba and it became her ticket to work with Oppenheimer.

Melba Phillips: I learned some things I’ve never forgotten, things about spectroscopy, atomic spectroscopy. The people in Michigan knew these things very well. That was extremely useful.

Katie Hafner: And that is Melba herself, recorded in 1977, describing that class in an interview she did with the American Institute of Physics.

Melba Phillips: But I was so naive that I did the homework in Ed’s class, and at one point I was trying to check on some of the stuff he’d given us and I couldn’t get the same answer that he did.

Katie Hafner: Here's Randy Mills, a retired professor of social sciences at what is now Oakland city university. Randy knew the Phillips family in Indiana.

Randy Mills: So everybody leaves but Melba, and she’s sitting there, and she’s all upset.

Melba Phillips: And I still remember that I couldn’t dream that I wasn’t making mistakes. Finally I went and asked the teacher.

Randy Mills: She says, Well, I'm working through this, and I went all the way through it, and I came up with a different answer. And so he kind of laughed. He said, well, there's no way you could have gotten that anyway during that time, but he said, let me look at your work.

Melba Phillips : It turned out that I was right. I think that maybe he looked at me twice at that point.

Randy Mills: And he realizes that he'd made a mistake. Melba had gotten the right answer. And he very quickly contacted Oppenheimer there at Berkeley, and that's how she was sent there to do graduate work.

Katie Hafner: So in 1930 the 23-year-old Phillips went to California to work with the 26-year-old J. Robert Oppenheimer, an assistant professor with a growing reputation for theoretical physics. It was common for Oppenheimer to leave the serious number crunching to graduate students, and Melba Phillips was very good at that.

Randy Mills: She became his mathematician on a lot of his work because she was better at math than he was.

Katie Hafner: If you read what Phillips said about her early career you get a palpable sense of how excited and how happy she felt being part of this group of pioneering scientists during these heady days when quantum mechanics and nuclear physics were Oppenheimer’s greatest preoccupation. And from what we can tell, her gender was irrelevant to Oppenheimer. Here’s Jill Weiss Simins again:

Jill Weiss Simins: Oppenheimer becomes her faculty mentor and a great influence on her. He wasn't really, like, the all-knowing professor. He kind of treated his students as colleagues and really felt like they had a lot to contribute.

So pretty quickly, she moved from being Oppenheimer's student to his peer.

Katie Hafner : Remember, this is the 1930s, and the number of women doing graduate work in physics in the United States could be counted on one hand. Well, maybe two. But you get the point.

Adam Falk: I'm Adam Falk and I'm the president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. It's a foundation in New York City that makes grants to support research in science and economics and a number of issues surrounding science and economics, including the public understanding of those fields.

Katie Hafner: Adam Falk is also a physicist and he's the voice you heard at the beginning of the episode–by way of disclosure, the Sloan Foundation is one of the funders of Lost Women of Science. Adam pointed out just how rare it was for a woman in the 1930s to be pursuing a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. He also pointed out how thrilling it was to be a physicist in the 1930s. As Melba herself said years later in an interview with an Oppenheimer biographer, "Everything was happening in those years from the discovery of the neutron, the positron. All of this kind of thing was happening”

And a lot of it was happening at Berkeley.

Adam Falk: It was an extraordinarily exciting time. The first kind of particle collider was at Berkeley. It was called The Cyclotron. So this was a kind of rich experimental opportunity to start colliding nuclei and see, would they stick together? Would they bounce off each other? Would they transmute?

And so the people like Oppenheimer and Phillips who were theorists were in deep and immediate contact with the people doing experiments. And that's a very rich and exciting environment to be in.

Katie Hafner: After Phillips got her Ph.D., she remained part of a close-knit circle of scientists working with Oppenheimer. They used to meet for tea at 10 o'clock PM at the house where Phillips was renting a room. The discussions went long into the night. Here's Randy Mills again.

Randy Mills: We do know that they were — Oppenheimer and Melba were very close. Not only with class work, but also in their personal lives. They attended a lot of union organizing meetings during that time. The teachers were organizing during that time, but also other groups as well. They drove around a lot. He wasn't a very good driver, but she was because she'd driven tractors and everything else growing up in rural southwest Indiana.

Katie Hafner: In fact there are photographs from that period of Phillips with Oppenheimer and his car.

Randy Mills: There's a beautiful picture. It's just almost breathtaking.

Katie Hafner: Yep, it’s quite some photo. Phillips is sitting in the driver’s seat of Oppenheimer’s Chrysler convertible coupe. All you can see of Oppenheimer is this thin shadow, kind of ghostly thing, cast over the front door of the car. She’s looking ahead and not at the camera. I’m assuming he took the photo.

In any case there's only the slenderest of threads of evidence that the two dated. I mean, that thread is so slender it's almost non-existent but it made for a good story. Here's Randy Mills again.

Randy Mills: The most famous story about their relationship that you see in biographies is the one where they were up in the mountains there, by Berkeley and they had parked. And we don't know what that means, but they were certainly there in the evening. And she had fallen asleep in the back seat, so he put a cover, or his coat, on her and then he walked home, but they didn't know that. So the police found her in the car, and of course, that back in those days, a woman in the back seat being by herself in a car, what's going on? And the concern quickly grew: Where's Oppenheimer? He's not here. So they're looking on the mountain sides and they've, they've — afraid he's fallen down a cliff or whatever.

Finally, they go to his apartment and they knock on the door and he's there. He comes to the door and the person, the officer that's there is, is saying, Why did you leave her there by herself? And he said, I guess I'm just eccentric.

Katie Hafner: The headline on the story in the San Francisco newspaper the next morning was this this: “Forgetful Prof. Parks Girl, Takes Self Home.”

He is referred to as Dr. Oppenheimer. She is Miss Phillips.

Jill Weiss Simins: She's already got her Ph.D. She should be called Dr. Melba Phillips like he’s Dr. Oppenheimer.

Katie Hafner: That's historian Jill Weiss Simins again.

Jill Weiss Simins: But she’s called either Miss Phillips or I think even at one point, Little Melba, and they call her his assistant.

Katie Hafner: Little Melba? I don’t think so! Around the time of the abandoned-in-the-car incident, Phillips and Oppenheimer were working together on what has become known as the Oppenheimer-Phillips Process. And she was by no means his assistant; definitely not in the sense of being his secretary. It was a scientific collaboration in every sense of that phrase.

This was a time when theoretical physicists in Berkeley, like Oppenheimer and Phillips, could just stroll down the corridor to their colleagues running the cyclotron and see what kind of experiments they were doing with atomic particles.

The atom hadn't yet been split– that happened in 1938–but people were beginning to think that it might be possible. At Berkeley they were throwing atoms together inside the cyclotron to see what would happen next. And what Oppenheimer and Phillips discovered was an important stepping stone on the path to nuclear fission. All about that after the break.

Katie Hafner: So just what is this Oppenheimer-Phillips Process I was telling you about before the break? I’m going to start in a kind of roundabout way. At Lost Women of Science, we share the Sloan Foundation's mission to promote the public understanding of science. And we spend a lot of time looking for ways to explain the science we're talking about. But this Oppenheimer-Phillips thing? For a non-physicist, it's complicated. Being a non-physicist, I confessed to Adam Falk that I had turned to ChatGPT for an explanation. My prompt into the AI engine was: use an analogy to Describe the Oppenheimer-Phillips Process in language a nonscientist can understand. Which it did, in a couple of seconds. The analogy It came up with? Marbles.

I asked Adam to read the explanation.

Adam Falk: Imagine you're playing with marbles. You have a big marble, representing a nucleus of a heavy atom, and a small marble, representing a deuteron, which is just a kind of small atomic particle. You roll the small marble towards the big one, but instead of hitting it head on, the small marble brushes lightly against the side of the big marble. That part really isn't... relevant or quite right.

Katie Hafner: Our first red flag.

Adam Falk: …. When this happens a part of the small marble sticks to the big one the rest of the small marble bounces away. That's true.

Katie Hafner: But as Adam went on to explain, ChatGPT actually misses the point of the experiment. But let's get back to Oppenheimer and Phillips for a minute and why they might want to bounce atomic particles against each other. It was to see what kind of energy was released.

Oppenheimer and Phillips were trying to explain some curious results produced by the physicists down the hall at the cyclotron, where they would fire a deuteron at an atomic nucleus. The puzzling thing was that it took less energy than expected to get the two particles to interact, rather than just bounce off each other. And when they did interact, sometimes more energy would be released than the deuteron came in with. A deuteron contains one proton and one neutron. The proton is positively charged, as is the nucleus of the heavier atom it is approaching.

The solution has to do with understanding the interaction of two positively charged particles, when they are in close enough proximity for one to distort the other.

Adam Falk: What's interesting about the process is that it's difficult for two nuclei to interact because they both have positive charge. What Oppenheimer and Phillips realized is you don't have to shoot them as fast as you would think. And the reason is that when the deuteron gets near the carbon nucleus, as it’s coming in, it rearranges itself.

Katie Hafner : Alone by itself, a deuteron is round. But as it gets near the other nucleus, it stretches out. There’s a proton end and a neutron end, and the proton end–the positive charge which would be repelled by the positive charge in the atom it is approaching–is farther away from the other nucleus than the neutron end.

Adam Falk: And if they can really collide, this process can happen where the bigger one takes the neutron out of the deuteron and then the proton flies away. So the deuteron in that sense donates its neutron to the nucleus and the proton flies away. Which means that it's actually an easier process to have happen than you would have thought if you didn't have that analysis. And that's the thing that they realized. And that's what was so important. And, that's the part ChatGPT doesn't know anything about.

Katie Hafner: In effect, the experiment showed that you needed less energy to get a nuclear reaction when atomic particles collided. So, AI is pretty good, but it gets one thing wrong and then misses the most important part.

Adam Falk: I mean, I'm actually astonished at how well it did, right? That is, it did as well as you might expect a student who had just read up on this process but wasn't a physicist to do, if they had kind of just gone and read a little bit and tried to explain it. And I'm pretty impressed that a large language model can do that well.

Katie Hafner: All of which could boil down to the lesson being this: Ask GPT-4 or Gemini, or any AI. being, to explain something scientific that’s super complicated in terms you can understand, and it's ... okay. Not perfect. But back to the science itself. I asked Adam why it's important that the Deuteron can in fact collide with the atom and that the atom can grab its nucleus.

Adam Falk: So at this time people were starting to explore this whole question of how nuclei interact with each other, right? And they were doing experiments at the cyclotron. Of course, this became very important within the decade as they started to understand nuclear chain reactions that led to the atomic bomb in the end. Because these are exactly the kinds of interactions that happen in chain reactions. You have nuclei that decay and emit particles and then they interact with other nuclei that are in the substance.

So this is one of the stepping stones that's really important for understanding the kind of physics that you need in order to have a bomb or a nuclear reactor or something like that. And this was early on.

Katie Hafner: So it was very foundational.

Adam Falk: Very foundational, very important work.

Katie Hafner: In fact, Adam said he found a paper written a few years later by none other than Hans Bethe, one of the truly great physicists of the 20th century.

Adam Falk: And he writes a paper in Physical Review called The Oppenheimer-Phillips Process. He clearly thinks it's very, very important.

Katie Hafner: I asked Adam how he thought Oppenheimer and Phillips had divided the work.

Adam Falk: It was probably very, very collaborative. If I had to guess, this wouldn't have happened without him, but that once the idea came up, they were full partners in working it out.

Katie Hafner: And this got me thinking about something. I brought it up with Adam. I said one thing we're really careful about at Lost Women of Science , and it's something I'm constantly aware of, is this question of are we focusing on this woman for the right reasons. How important was her scientific contribution? And are we in high dudgeon about the fact that she didn't get the recognition she deserved because she was a woman? And are we losing sight of the actual science that she did? What I asked Adam was, Is it kind of a chicken and egg? Did Melba Phillips not have the chance to do the science she could have done?

Adam Falk: I think it would be, you know, fair to assume that she was very good at the physics that she did, that, that she wasn't kind of along for the ride on her advisor's project and, you know, really someone who was lucky to be in the place where a good idea came along and she was on the paper.

I think there's plenty of evidence — and that happens to both men and women. I think there's plenty of evidence that that is not the way to understand her, that this was published two years after she got her degree. She went on to a prestigious postdoc. I think the evidence is that she was a very good graduate student who did very good work with her advisor, Oppenheimer, and that a significant element in her not going on as a physicist had to do with the roles that women were confined to in the society of the time.

Katie Hafner: So there you have it. Melba Phillips was a promising young physicist who worked at an exciting place doing some of the most exciting theoretical work of the century in nuclear physics. However, in 1933, Oppenheimer himself recommended Phillips for a teaching position at Berkeley. He described her as quote "an extraordinarily able woman. The only woman I have ever known who had a genuine vocation for mathematics and theoretical physics, and an outstanding talent for it."

But she wasn't hired. Phillips later downplayed the rebuff. She chalked it up to a lack of funding at the school due to the Great Depression.

Then in 1935, the year the Oppenheimer-Phillips process article was published, she left Berkeley. She spent the next several years campus hopping, with short-term teaching gigs at Bryn Mawr College, then Princeton, Connecticut College for Women, then Brooklyn College. All of which sounds... exhausting.

Then came World War II. Melba Phillips went to the Harvard Radio Research Laboratory, where for several months she worked on technology for disrupting enemy radar. Her career after the war, though, bears an uncanny resemblance with that of her mentor. Both she and Oppenheimer became targets of an anti-communist witch hunt.

In December of 1951, Phillips received a letter from the New York Joint Committee Against Communism calling her to account for her support of eleven groups that the Committee suspected were affiliated with Communist organizations. Phillips’ response to the letter was brazen. She went out of her way to point out an additional group that she believed the committee had left out.

Then, in 1952, Phillips was back teaching at Brooklyn College when trouble showed up at her door. The McCarran Subcommittee, whose goals were similar to those of Joseph McCarthy's House Committee On Un-American Activities, summoned her to explain her affiliation with a number of labor groups. Phillips refused to answer, invoking the Fifth Amendment.

Here's Jill Weiss Simins again:

Jill Weiss Simins: Pleading the Fifth was part of her sticking to her moral convictions. And she did make clear that this was not an admission of guilt of any communist affiliation, but simply adhering to her principles.

Katie Hafner: New York was like a lot of other states in the McCarthy era. It had a law that required — I repeat, required — the firing of any public employee who refused to answer questions about communist affiliations.

Our producer, Deborah Unger found that audio you heard earlier of Melba Phillips herself talking during the interview with the American Institute of physics in 1977.

It isn't the greatest audio quality. So I'll tell you that what you're going to hear is Melba Phillip's going on the record about her dismissal from Brooklyn College in 1952.

Melba Phillips: I was dismissed from Brooklyn College in October 19–end of October, 1952–and I was essentially unemployed until around 1957…. not that I wasn’t busy.

Katie Hafner: She goes on to say that she was essentially unemployed until 1957. And then she says: “not that I wasn't busy.”

And yeah. She was busy. She wasn't destitute. She still received money from the farm she still owned in Indiana. But after those interrogations –we don't have the proof of this –but my guess is that she couldn't find a job teaching. So to make ends meet, she edited a couple of physics textbooks. In 1957, when McCarthyism finally faded, her teaching dry spell ended. And she got a job teaching physics at Washington University in St. Louis where she ran a program to help high school teachers improve their physics classes. And in 1962 she got her first, her very first permanent academic appointment at the University of Chicago. She stayed there for ten years until she retired.

Jill Weiss Simins: Who she was was somebody that is working in this climate and not even pausing for a second to feel like she shouldn't be there. So I think she was ahead of her time in not just blazing a trail through the physics citadel that other women could follow, but doing it in this unselfish way where it wasn't really about her, it was about the work.

Katie Hafner: Watch the film Oppenheimer and you'll get the impression that Oppenheimer's life was over after he was targeted by the anti-Communists. Yes, his security clearance was revoked, but he kept his position as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, one of the most prestigious, if not the most prestigious job you can get in physics.

If Melba Phillips had stayed in Oppenheimer’s orbit, would she have gone on to make more contributions to theoretical physics? I asked Adam Falk what he thought.

Adam Falk: There's no question there was an enormous waste of the talent of women who would have been terrific academicians, terrific physicists. And the assumptions about the roles of women in society meant they were never given a chance.

And that sounds like that could well have been the case, you know, with her. Speaking more specifically, it's honestly hard to know. I think there were many men who would have written a really good paper with their advisor and then not gone on to have academic careers, would have gone on to teaching.

But there's no doubt that, you know, she had been given nothing like the kinds of opportunities that a man in a similar situation would have been given at that time.

Katie Hafner: In 1987, Brooklyn College issued a formal apology to Melba Phillips for firing her during the McCarthyism period 35 years earlier. And if you happen to find yourself on the campus of Oakland City University in Oakland City, Indiana, you can visit a plaque honoring her.

Here's Jill Weiss Simins, reading from that plaque:

Jill Weiss Simins: Innovative physicist and educator Melba Phillips worked closely with J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1935, they proposed the Oppenheimer-Phillips Process, a staple of nuclear physics with continued application. During World War II and after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan, Phillips advocated for peaceful use of atomic energy.

Like many academics, during the McCarthy era, she faced charges of communist affiliation and lost teaching positions. Nonetheless, she became an influential physics educator and a leader within the field.

Katie Hafner: Melba Phillips never married and she had no children. At the end of her life, she returned to Indiana and lived with her niece near her hometown. She died in a nursing home in 2004, barely 15 miles from the farm where she was raised. She was 97 years old. On her death certificate, her occupation is listed as teacher in the field of education. Not physics. Education. But we know and now you know that Melba Phillips was so much more.

This has been Lost Women of Science. Deborah Unger and Joe Armstrong produced the episode and Sophie McNulty scored and edited it. Hansdale Hsu was our sound engineer. Lizzy Younan composes our music. Keren Mevorach designs our art, and Alexandra Atiya was our fact checker. Thanks to Amy Scharf, Julie Chow, Jeff DelViscio, Jill Weiss Simins, Randy Mills, and Adam Falk. Also many thanks to the folks at the American Institute of Physics for their help. Lost Women of Science is funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Anne Wojcicki Foundation. We’re distributed by PRX and published in partnership with Scientific American. Please visit us at lostwomenofscience.org, and don’t forget to click on that all-important donate button. I’m Katie Hafner. See you next time.

HOST Katie Hafner

GUESTS Adam Falk , president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Randy Mills , retired professor of social sciences, Oakland City University

Jill Weiss Simins, historian, Indiana Historical Bureau

PRODUCERS Joe Armstrong Deborah Unger

ART Art Design: Keren Mevorach. Credit Pach Brothers, NY, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives

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Four MIT faculty named 2023 AAAS Fellows

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Four MIT faculty members have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The 2023 class of AAAS Fellows includes 502 scientists, engineers, and innovators across 24 scientific disciplines, who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.  

Bevin Engelward initiated her scientific journey at Yale University under the mentorship of Thomas Steitz; following this, she pursued her doctoral studies at the Harvard School of Public Health under Leona Samson. In 1997, she became a faculty member at MIT, contributing to the establishment of the Department of Biological Engineering. Engelward’s research focuses on understanding DNA sequence rearrangements and developing innovative technologies for detecting genomic damage, all aimed at enhancing global public health initiatives.

William Oliver  is the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a joint appointment in the Department of Physics, and was recently a Lincoln Laboratory Fellow. He serves as director of the Center for Quantum Engineering and associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, and is a member of the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee. His research spans the materials growth, fabrication, 3D integration, design, control, and measurement of superconducting qubits and their use in small-scale quantum processors. He also develops cryogenic packaging and control electronics involving cryogenic complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors and single-flux quantum digital logic.

Daniel Rothman is a professor of geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and co-director of the MIT Lorenz Center, a privately funded interdisciplinary research center devoted to learning how climate works. As a theoretical scientist, Rothman studies how the organization of the natural world emerges from the interactions of life and the physical environment. Using mathematics and statistical and nonlinear physics, he builds models that predict or explain observational data, contributing to our understanding of the dynamics of the carbon cycle and climate, instabilities and tipping points in the Earth system, and the dynamical organization of the microbial biosphere.

Vladan Vuletić  is the Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics. His research areas include ultracold atoms, laser cooling, large-scale quantum entanglement, quantum optics, precision tests of physics beyond the Standard Model, and quantum simulation and computing with trapped neutral atoms. His Experimental Atomic Physics Group is also affiliated with the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms and the Research Laboratory of Electronics. In 2020, his group showed that the precision of current atomic clocks could be improved by entangling the atoms — a quantum phenomenon by which particles are coerced to behave in a collective, highly correlated state. 

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Twenty-three MIT faculty, five from Physics, honored as “Committed to Caring” for 2023-25

The honor recognizes professors for their outstanding mentorship of graduate students..

In the halls of MIT, a distinctive thread of compassion weaves through the fabric of education. As students adjust to a postpandemic normal, many professors have played a pivotal role by helping them navigate the realities of hybrid learning and a rapidly changing postgraduation landscape. 

The Committed to Caring (C2C) program at MIT is a student-driven initiative that celebrates faculty members who have served as exceptional mentors to graduate students. Twenty-three MIT professors have been selected as recipients of the C2C award for 2023-25, marking the most extensive cohort of honorees to date. These individuals join the ranks of 75 previous C2C honorees. 

The actions of these MIT faculty members over the past two years underscore their profound commitment to the well-being, growth, and success of their students. These educators go above and beyond their roles, demonstrating an unwavering dedication to mentorship, inclusion, and a holistic approach to student development. They aim to create a nurturing environment where students not only thrive academically, but also flourish personally. 

The following faculty members are the 2023-25 Committed to Caring honorees:

• Hamsa Balakrishnan, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Cynthia Breazeal, Media Lab
• Roberto Fernandez, MIT Sloan School of Management
• Nuh Gedik , Department of Physics
• Mariya Grinberg, Department of Political Science
• Ming Guo, Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Myriam Heiman, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Rohit Karnik, Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Erik Lin-Greenberg, Department of Political Science
• Michael McDonald , Department of Physics
• Emery Neal Brown, Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology
• Wanda Orlikowski, MIT Sloan School of Management
• Kenneth Oye, Department of Political Science
• Kristala Prather, Department of Chemical Engineering
• Zachary Seth Hartwig, Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Tracy Slatyer , Department of Physics
• Iain Stewart , Department of Physics
• Andrew Vanderburg , Department of Physics
• Rodrigo Verdi, MIT Sloan School of Management
• Xiao Wang, Department of Chemistry
• Ariel White, Department of Political Science
• Nathan Wilmers, MIT Sloan School of Management
• Maria Yang, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Since the founding of the C2C program in 2014 by the Office of Graduate Education, the nomination process for honorees has centered on student involvement. Graduate students from all departments are invited to submit nomination letters detailing professors’ outstanding mentorship practices. A committee of graduate students and staff members then selects individuals who have shown genuine contributions to MIT’s vibrant academic community through student mentorship.

The selection committee this year included: Maria Carreira (Biology), Rima Das (Mechanical Engineering), Ahmet Gulek (Economics), Bishal Thapa (Biological Engineering), Katie Rotman (Architecture), Dóra Takács (Linguistics), Dan Korsun (Nuclear Science and Engineering), Leslie Langston (Student Mental Health and Counseling), Patricia Nesti (MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), Beth Marois (Office of Graduate Education [OGE]), Sara Lazo (OGE), and Chair Suraiya Baluch (OGE).  

This year’s nomination letters highlighted unique stories of how students felt supported by professors. Students noted their mentors’ commitment to frequent meetings despite their own busy personal lives, as well as their dedication to ensuring equal access to opportunities for underrepresented and underserved students.

Some wrote about their advisors’ careful consideration of students’ needs alongside their own when faced with professional advancement opportunities; others appreciated their active support for students in the LGBTQ+ community. Lastly, students reflected on their advisors’ encouragement for open and constructive discourse around the graduate unionization vote, showing a genuine desire to hear about graduate issues.

Baluch shared, “Working with the amazing selection committee was the highlight of my work year. I was so impressed by the thoughtful consideration each nomination received. Selecting the next round of C2C nominees is always a heartwarming experience.” 

“As someone who aspires to be a faculty member someday,” noted Das, “being on the selection committee … was a phenomenal opportunity in understanding the breadth and depth of possibility in how to be a caring mentor in academia.”

She continued, “It was so heartening to hear the different ways that these faculty members are going above and beyond their explicit research and teaching duties and the amazing impact that has made on so many students’ well-being and ability to be successful in graduate school.” 

The Committed to Caring program continues to reinforce MIT’s culture of mentorship, inclusion, and collaboration by recognizing the contributions of outstanding professors. In the coming months, news articles will feature pairs of honorees, and a reception will be held in May.

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