Barschall/Haeberli Symposium
My experience at UW (1951-1960) was unusual
Here as UG (Ray Herb)-Field Emission Ion Source
GS (HHB): Thesis work, I hardly saw Heinz
Postdoc (HHB): n-4He scattering on new tandem
Heinz and finding jobs
Wisconsin on forefront of nuclear science
I followed Heinz as PRC Editor, will talk about his influences there
Martin Walt was scheduled to describe this period.
He can’t be here, but you should read his elegant essay.
I’ll quote it when appropriate and show some of his pictures
Coming to UW
I grew up on a farm near Columbus, Wis.
Attended a one room school: 1 teacher, 8 grades, 26 students
Intended to farm: no college prep, Math through geometry; Lots of FFA
Last minute decision, summer after HS to come to UW as Math major, but
soon changed to physics
Second semester of sophomore year, started hourly work with Ray Herb
Working with Ray Herb
Ray Herb a driving force in the UW
PD for many years
Developed much the machinery of
nuclear physics: pressurized Van
de Graaff, getter ion pumps,
negative ion sources, Pelletrons,
the highest energy VdGs.
In 1953, Ray was building a new
organic free VdG, in many ways the
precursor of the large Tandems
made by the company NEC he later
founded.
My first physics job: drilling holes
with complicated shapes in 500
kovar spheres for this VdG
Then a Senior Thesis: Field
Emission Ion Source
Sterling Hall (1952, from M. Walt), then
home of Physics.
Field Emission Ion Source
The idea: Produce a proton beam by field
emitting protons from metal tip with roughly the
radius of visible light.
Why? The emitting area will be tiny, giving
very good optical properties (emittance)
How? There’s the rub!
Hollow rod made of Palladium which
transmits hydrogen
Etch a fine tip.
Apply positive voltage. Electric fields
around ≈ 5 Volts/Angstrom
Out come the protons!!
Here’s a Field Ion Microscope
example: Platinum tip emitting
protons. Each dot is an atom
Palladium
What’s to do
To do (Crazy job for an UG working alone)
Etch a fine tip
Make a getter ion pump
Make Einzel Lenses
Assemble power supplies, etc.
Became a graduate student—Stayed at UW. Also around this time built,
with Alan Johnsrud, a prototype for Ray’s NRC getter ion pump.
Turn on the voltage
Result: NADA!!! Or Not A Damn Ampere !
Why? Obviously many things could be wrong.
BUT: The real problem: If you calculate the tensile strength of Pd, it
can’t stand the electrical force; we’d known it was marginal.
Tried with a tungsten point in around 10-4 mm Hg, of H2, hoping to
desorb the H attracted to tip by dipole forces, as in field ion microscope.
NADA!!
GAVE UP. Time to do a thesis. I changed advisors--to HHB
Reason for a Change
Here’s why
On the right is the farm
where Ray Herb grew up.
Also the place where his
niece Mary grew up
The Herb Farm, near Bonduel, Wisconsin
Mary and I became close friends (she now has been
my wife for 55 years)
I felt uncomfortable continuing to work with Ray.
And I was driven more by physics than accelerator
development. And preferred to graduate quickly.
THINKING OF WORKING FOR HEINZ-IF HE WERE WILLING
Some quotes from Martin Walt (view of HHB in 1950):
“…Barschall had a fearsome reputation as a no-nonsense,
rigorous, humorless, strict, authoritarian taskmaster. He
was tall, ramrod straight, and in those days, not easily
moved to laughter.”
"I suppose you will learn a lot from Professor Barschall, but
have you thought of what will happen if you make a
mistake?“
“Evidently Heinz's early education had included
horsemanship and like everything he did, he had mastered
the lessons perfectly.
“Barschall's concern for his students was legendary. He
adopted his students for life, maintained contact with them,
and supplied advice, job recommendations, and
professional help forever.”
If I’d seen these all in advance I might have hesitated. But
I didn’t. And in the end I believe all of them are accurate,
except that the first was exaggerated by the time I was
involved.
H. H. Barschall in
1960. Born April 29,
1915. He had this
reputation by age
35.
Graduate Experience
I didn’t feel a great rush to finish grad school
I was a dorm house fellow for a year—a major time sink
And I continued to work on that senior thesis
And spent a lot of time in a sailboat on Lake Mendota
And playing bridge in the Pine Room
When I finally passed Prelims and started my thesis, Heinz was busy.
Chair of Physics
Working on getting a Tandem for the Department , the first in the US
I saw him, I think, four times
When he proposed a thesis topic after I passed prelim
At 4:30 one morning when he couldn’t sleep and came in to check up
When I handed him my thesis
At Thesis Orals
But he had arranged plenty of help:
Bud Darden (Notre Dame), Al Okazaki (CRNL), and Zdzislaw Wilhelmi,
Two solid, experienced, researchers and one wild man
Los Alamos Summer
In 1957 Heinz arranged summer jobs for Bob Shamu and me at Los Alamos
It was all still behind the fence so we got Q clearances
My job was to study Mie Scattering with Jerry Conner
Mie scattering occurs when light and
droplet sizes are similar. All wavelengths
scatter similarly—It makes clouds white.
Used a diffusion cloud chamber; spent the
whole summer trying to make it work.
The other event of the summer was driving
to the Nevada Test Site to see bomb tests
from News Nob in Aug. 1957
Top: Franklin Prime 4.7 kton (about twice
expected).
Bottom: Smoky 44 kton.
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/DOENTSAtmospheric.pdf
Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing 1951-63\
Thesis Cast of Characters
Bob Becker, Al Okazaki, Bud
Darden in Room 23
(M. Walt)
The control room
(M. Walt)
Zdzislaw Wilhelmi
Active WWII Home Army;
Doctorate, Warsaw U, ‘54;
President of Polish
Physical Society (3x);
IAEA Geneva (1970-80);
Made him rich in Polish Zl.
Only Jaguar in Poland
No serious picture from that era.
The Equipment
Exhaust
CO2
The LONG (20 ft.) TANK
Voltage : 4 Million Volts
During my time used only one dome
The 3 ¾” diameter textolite tubes (3) that
support the structure had collapsed, repaired
BUT there was a lucite support
Insulating gas 100 psi air. Topped up daily.
Fire danger: 100 psi air means lots of oxygen,
Cotton belt, textolite (paper + shellac), motor
The Experiment: Polarization of n’s from 7Li (p, n)
Measure n’s scattered left and right from liquid oxygen
L/R  polarization, if know properties of analyzer
Liquid 16O in thin walled cigar container, Styrofoam insulation, filled
every 10-15 minutes. Easy to make, hard work experiment.
n’s detected with high pressure proportional counters.
Counts recorded in simple scalers
Ep: 2.2 to 3.0 MeV
Was a low rate experiment, pray for events
EXCITEMENT
Had a small fire, motor burned out
Tank of CO2 under the tank, but hard to reach--PANIC
Dumped the gas through 3 “ exhaust pipe-a loud banshee scream
Story: we wakened the hospital patients across the street??
Back on the air in a few days after replacing the belt motor
Results
Very simple to analyze raw data—fairly complicated corrections for
backgrounds, multiple n scattering in target, etc..
Results disappointing--hard to interpret. A little scanty.
Decided to do a detailed theoretical analysis:
When the data is marginal it takes a lot of theory to interpret.
For me another reason: nuclear theory wasn’t taught at Wisconsin
and I wanted that background.
Learned a lot about R-Matrix theory: 3, 6, 9-J symbols, etc
Could only place weak constraints on structure of 8Be, data not good
enough
I hear later that Heinz had wished I would quit spending my time with this
stuff and publish. But he didn’t interfere.
He was, mostly, right. I turned in my thesis in April, but it could have been
many months earlier.
A surprise: I had received an NSF Postdoc award—My first indication of
HHB’s helpfulness and attention. I decided to spend it at Oxford
University and begin in October.
Wilhelmi
Something, probably his army experience, gave him a daring personality
At Wisconsin
Drove a Harley type motor cycle, had an apartment filled with vodka bottles
In doing calculations of analyzing power of oxygen exhausted HHB’s
computer budget. Heinz thought I should have controlled him better.
Was rumored to have removed (cutoff tool in a lathe) the stainless steel cover
of a neutron source so he could better measure the neutron spectrum.
True???
In Warsaw was clearly influential.
Drove his Jaguar up to the steps of the Opera House and parked.
To Fill the Time and Use the New Tandem
Read an old paper of HHB’s
(Recoil energy spectrum) ∝ (cross section (cos θ))
Knew
n - 4He scattering cross sections only
known over limited energy range and
interpretation was uncertain.
Bob Shamu made a high pressure gas
scintillation counter for 20Ne (n, α )
measurements-we could fill it with helium.
A lot of details: get good resolution, check
linearity of system, get high pressure: 900 psi
of He + Xe
But it all worked well and we had results by
the end of summer. “Better” (GTP) phase
shifts described data worse
DGS
GTP
Comments about Wisconsin Nuclear Physics
Had the best technology for nuclear physics
Was in a transition period from
VdGs to Tandems
Proportional counters to much higher efficiency scintillators (e.g. stilbene)
Scalers to multichannel analyzers
Two years later my thesis would have been much better done.
Compare to Harwell
Wisconsin 100 channel MCA gave a printed tape. Harwell’s required
reading out 100 Dekatrons and registers and writing them down.
Although it wasn’t fancy, the UW system worked well..
Heinz’ Care of Students
My Fellowship was for one year and toward the end of that year Heinz
started contacting people who might have positions.
PROBLEM: Letters didn’t reach me and HHB thought I was ignoring them
and making us both look bad. I wasn’t.
My office was not in the Clarendon Lab, my official address, but in the Old
Physiology Lab and later the Old Girls High School and there was another S.
Austin at Oxford. So the secretarial staff didn’t always get it right. But Heinz
clearly didn’t believe me-he KNEW the British Post Office was efficient and
told me so. That took a while to work out, but in the end I went to Stanford as
an Asst. Prof..
When I prepared to leave Stanford both Heinz and Stan Hanna wrote letters
looking for positions. I had a Sloan Fellowship and was pretty full of myself I
guess, and immediately turned down possibilities I didn’t think were the best I
could get.
I got some advice: don’t turn anything down until you have something better
in hand.
And when I was later choosing among options he gave me what I learned
later was insightful and accurate advice. I took it and am glad I did.
After that I thought I needed less help, but the Washington Dinners were a
continuing connection.
Wisconsin Academics
Not so much attention to UG teaching
UG
Quantum Mechanics: Lots of Bohr Sommerfeld Quantization.
Never got to the Schroedinger Equation
E&M: Lots of circuits. Never got to Maxwell’s Equations
Optics: Lectures read directly from Jenkins and white—text in hand
HHB and Physical Review C
PRE-HISTORY
In the beginning there was Physical Review 1893
And PR begat PR A + B
1964
And PR A + B begat PR 1234
1966
And PR 1234 begat PR12345
1967
And PR 12345 begat PRA + PRB + PRC + PRD 1970
If you come to a fork
in the road, TAKE IT Y Berra
PRE
WHY ? The great growth in the published literature
PR 1893-1896 0.5 Book per year
PR 1897
1 Book
PR 1898
2 Books
PR 1893-98 ≈ PR (1951) ≈ 0.1 PR (92) ≈ PRC(92)
WHY was the final split into separate journals different?
Each journal had it’s own editor, (eventually an expert in the field) who
understood the science and had the expertise for good referee choices.
Formation of Divisions (DNP in 1966) was, according to Heinz, partly a
result of dissatisfaction with Physical Review and decisions of editors with little
expertise in the field
The Editors
THE TRANSITION--A holding operation, minimal changes
1970—S. Pasternack, J.R. Roesser, and P.D. Adams
1971—P. Adams
FIRST REMOTE EDITORS
1972-1988 H. H. (Heinz) Barschall
M. Weiss, Co-Editor after 7/1984
Mort Weiss (1993)
AND THEN
1988-2002
Sam Austin
2002-present Ben Gibson
Events in the Life of PRC
EARLY EVENTS—HHB
Emphasis on improving refereeing (knowledgeable referees) and referee
response time, plus other technical improvements. Searchable data bases for
referees were becoming available (Adams, et al.)
A survey of the prices of journals: The Cost-Effectiveness of Physics Journals,
H.H. Barschall, Physics Today, July, 1988
Compared journals on Price/character-Impact Factor
Journal
Price (1987) Price/1000 character
$
Cents
J. Phys. G
440
5.5
Nucl. Phys. A
3000
7.4
Phys. Rev. C
365
1.1
Z. Phys. A
712
8.1
Impact Factor
Cost/Impact
1.5
2.5
2.0
1.6
3.7
3.0
0.52
4.9
Results--Large difference in Cost/Impact ratio
Gordon-Breach (highest cost/impact) sued HHB, AIP, APS in France, Germany,
Switzerland, US. Courts found in favor of HHB, in France only after 13 years, in 2000
--litigation cost in six-seven figure range.
Page Charges
Instituted in 1932 at $2/page to keep subscription prices down, and grew
Good in principle:
Wider distribution of results, reasonable to include as part of research cost
2009 $
4000
3500
Page Charge
8 Page paper
2009 $
3000
2500
2000
Page Charge EXPT
1500
1000
500
DELAYS
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
0
Not so good in the real world
Problems in practice
Some journals find competitive advantage in not having page charges
Journals have widely different prices
Research support, relative to publication cost, differs (for Theory especially)
Result: when research funding was tight (especially)
Authors were driven to journals without page charges
Some countries, apparently, were not willing to support page charges
Theorists found it difficult to pay page charges
Publication was sometimes delayed if page charges were not paid
Nuclear and particle physics journals were particularly affected
PRC and PRD Editors argued that net result of page charges was
Drive authors to journals without page charges
These journals had higher subscription costs, increasing library costs
Experiment: On July 1992, for three years, page charges waived for PRC and PRD
compuscripts
Never to return for compuscripts.
How PRC Grew
TOTAL ARTICLES
The nuclear physics literature = sum of EPA + JPG +NPA + PRC hasn’t much
changed since 1980: 1430 ± 80 articles per year (now more pages/article)
PRC share has grown from ~1/3 in 1970 to ~¾ at present.
PRC
NO P.C.
NPA
JPG
EPA