Physics is Fun Memoires of Richard Wilson Version of September 25th 2009

Dick Wilson discovers America
My father started writing for the “Gramophone” magazine in the 1920s, and later for “Wireless World” also. His collection of radio books included a number of copies (from about 1930-39) of the “RCA review”. It was in a 1936 issue of the RCA review that I read an article about negative feedback amplifiers and built one before any UK manufacturer used the idea. My father always told me that I should visit America because that was the land of future technologies. The second world war made that even more important. My advisor Hans Halban (in 1945-1950) was not so insistent but he concurred. The maps of the world were convincing too. Where else could one see anything like the Rockies? I never even had to search for a position. It was done for me by Jim Tuck.
Jim, disgusted with decision making in Oxford physics, as I was to be some years later, agreed to accept a research position at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1948. Passing through Rochester NY, he called on an old friend Sidney Barnes, who was just finishing a 250 Mev cyclotron. In response to Sidney’s request: “Do you know a bright young man to come over and work with it?” Jim nominated me. In 1949 I therefore got a letter from a person I had never heard of, Professor Robert Marshak, from a place I did not know, Rochester, New York. Bob Marshak was then Chairman of the physics department. I was in the middle of an experiment and delayed a year. I accepted in January 1950 and came to Rochester at the end of June. I had problems with my visa to enter the USA. In 1949 the nuclear physicist Dr Alan Nunn May had been arrested as a spy in Montreal, and all foreign nuclear physicists were suspect. Bob went into action in what I found was his typical enthusiastic way. He called the Office of Naval Research and the Atomic Energy Commission and pointed out that I would be doing work of interest to them. This was probably a mistake. It led my being put on a special list. It got worse. Klaus Fuchs was arrested in March. Although I had applied for a visa in January, and had my X ray and bought my non refundable steamship ticket, bureaucratic concerns delayed my visa for 5 months. Dr Ed (Eddie) Salant was in the US Embassy as special naval attaché for scientific affairs and on a visit to Oxford gave a lecture in the Clarendon lab.. I explained my problems and he promised to do what he could. He did just that. He called a colleague in the Navy Department in Washington, who walked over to State Department at lunch time, called upon the person responsible for visas, and left a note asking that he be informed of the progress of my file. The visa was issued later the same afternoon! A week before I was due to sail I got a telephone call from Office of Naval Research (US Embassy) in London saying that my visa was being sent to London by surface mail, where it arrived the day before my departure! I went up to London, collected my visa, went to the Bank of England in London (Threadneedle Street) to argue that they should allow me to convert some pounds into dollars even though foreign currency was restricted, and the next day caught the boat train to Southampton to catch the “Queen Elizabeth”. Thus began the next exciting phase of my life. I was told later that the person in the Bank of England who approved my request was Thomas Armstrong, now Lord Armstrong, who had been an undergraduate acquaintance of mine, studying economics, and was son of the cathedral organist “Tommy” Armstrong. It pays to have contacts.
On the boat there were many students returning to the US from study in Europe. They got up early as we came into New York. We saw the Nantucket lightship as dawn was breaking, passed the Statue of Liberty and then ended up on the pier at about 50th street. Then I took a taxi to the Hotel New Yorker a few blocks away for $5 a night. I was surprised to find on the boat my friend David Ritson who was also off to Rochester to work on cosmic rays with Professor Bernard Peters. I had met David my first`day in college 7 years before; he was also off to Rochester after spending a year in Dublin. Marshak had also offered a job as Assistant Professor to John Tinlot, who was leaving Columbia to join the Rochester faculty, and he suggested that John drive us up to Rochester with his family. So on the afternoon of our arrival we took the train to Tarrytown and walked to the Nevis laboratory of Columbia University to meet John and make arrangements. It was there that a larger cyclotron - of 400 MeV was being built by Booth, Rainwater and Havens. Interestingly, although I have been to the 116th st. campus of Columbia University many times since, I have never been back to Nevis. Then I was invited to dinner by Eddie Salant - back in NY with his wife and stepdaughter, Maedre. I was presented with my first American steak - about 2 weeks meat ration, and I could not eat all of it. Some things are just not possible. But with experience what seems at first to be impossible become quite easy. I learned quite quickly that it is possible to eat a large steak in one sitting. Then I took Maedre to the movies - “Kind Hearts and Coronets” starring Alec Guinness - and escorted her home.
I explored a bit of New York. I had anticpated that clothes would be cheaper in England and had brought a lot of underwear. But I was wrong! Down on thirs treet I found I could buy a dozen pairs of socks for a dollar. To have them cleaned in a laundry cost 25 cents each pair. So I enthusiastically joined the throw away society with a dozen pairs of socks. But being a cheapskate, I wore them 2 days and even sometimes washed them by hand. I took the ferry out to Staten Island and walked around a bit, buying my first milk shake. I was to find later that New York milk shakes are despised in California.
Two days later this excitement continued. John Tinlot drove a crowded car. John, his wife Betty, two children, David Ritson and myself. I can’t remember but I assume that I had shipped from the pier most of my luggage direct to Rochester by train. We went by Port Jarvis and up the Delaware River and I was impressed (and still am) by the way the small towns were laid out - and the absence of fences. Then a stop at teatime at Ithaca where John called on his college friend Norman Kroll and we were introduced to the great unassuming physicists Hans Bathe and Robert R. Wilson who, although older, later became close friends of mine. The next day, July 1st (I believe) we turned up at the university of Rochester and Bob Marshak took us straight into a seminar by a 25 year old Chinese - Frank Yang - who was a research fellow with Fermi in Chicago. This pace slowed a bit during the summer, but not much.
I used to eat lunch in one of two places. The University faculty club where we would sit and discuss physics (and life) with Bob Marshak. And in the other direction from the cyclotron laboratory I could walk across the two railroad tracks (Lackawanna and Lehigh Valley) to the Strong Memorial Hospital where I would eat in the cafeteria and talk to the nurses. I met one 30 year old intern. He was Polish and had been in the Polish underground and when the Russians came to Warsaw he was one of those who fought in the sewers as the Russians watched from their camps on the other side of the river Vistula. He was, so I was told, one of the three who were pulled out alive by the Germans at the end of that valiant fight. Although he had a medical degree in Poland he had to start all over agin in the USA and was completing his residency. He was somewhat disillusioned. About 10 years later I was giving a lecture at Rochester and called him. By that time he was married to an American born girl and had two children.
In August, I went to Princeton to see Bob Hofstadter’s work with scintillation counters at the University, RCA work on photo multipliers at RCA laboratories nearby, and then to Brookhaven Laboratory to see what they were doing. Eddie Salant was spending the summer there with his wife and stepdaughter. Physics was interrupted when it was suggested that I join Eddie Salant on the beach - with of course his stepdaughter Maedre. This romance did not go much farther. I tried to see Maedre in New York on labor day weekend but she discouraged me. So on a whim I hitchhiked up to Montreal and back to Rochester. As I left NY I noticed, with approval, the cricket game among west Indians in the park at the end of the subway line. On Sunday before labor day I found myself in Fairlee, Vermont at a diner. I noticed a flyer “midnight square dance” at Orford, NH on the other side of the river. I thanked the driver of the car who had brought me this far and said I was going to the dance. As I sat there the owner of the diner told me not to wait for the waitress to get off work because she had a boy friend. It was not in my mind! I went outside to a junk dealer, slept in the back of an old car for a couple of hours and walked over the bridge to the dance. Then I realized why it started at midnight. Dancing on the Sunday was improper and at that time illegal in new Hampshire.. The enjoyable dance went on till 3 am or 4 am when I went back to the abandoned car for another rest. At 6 am I was on the road headed north. The first car took me up through North Troy to the Canadian border and turned right. The road to Montreal went left (westward). As I waited there, a child came down from the farmhouse on the corner and invited the ragged hitchhiker to breakfast. Fortunately I spoke French. Andrée and I passed this way in 2005. The farm house was obviously a farm house no longer. But I refrained from knocking on the door and saying “bonjour”. So in 1950 I soon got a lift on to Montreal. After looking around the city I hitchhiked back by the Thousand Islands bridge to Rochester and work.

A month or so later, in October 1950, I got wanderlust again. It was not yet cold, so I hitchhiked north, by Toronto to North Bay and down to Deep River, a “company town” for the Chalk River laboratories of where Atomic Energy of Canada had their laboratories. I got there on Sunday afternoon. I had met Bennett Lewis at Christchurch, and called on him. I knew of his work because he had made the first hard tube scaler. He was a bachelor, living with his mother and I was invited to tea. I had not realized he was Director of the laboratory but he was very courteous. Then I hitch hiked back to Rochester. In January I joined a group of undergraduates from the outing club” on a ski trip to Snow Ridge north of Utica. There I learned to ski. I also met Suzanne (Susie) Willems of whom more later.

Leaving them by train from Lyons falls, I went to the New York meeting of the American Physical Society where my arrangement to go to Stanford the next year was finalized. There also I met, on the NY subway (Broadway Line) I met Norman Ramsey, violating the well established rule that on crowded trains short people meet short people and tall people only meet tall people. Then I hitchhiked to Boston, and caught the 5 pm train to Concord. I stayed with Richard Conant and family in Lincoln. I had met their daughter in Oxford’s Cecil Sharp Club when she was visiting England and had an open invitation. She invited me to the local “English Folk Dance Society” meeting where I learned a new tune for my concertina that I still remember and play occasionally. I called on Theodore Dunham’s brother in Brookline, where Ted had stored an old station wagon that he was to lend to me. I also visited the cyclotron at Harvard, meeting Karl Strauch for the first time and had lunch with the physics department, being introduced by Norman Ramsey who I had met two days before. I remember that Van Vleck was the courteous chairman.

Leaving Lincoln early the next day in my station wagon I headed west. I reached Schenectady with no trouble. But as I headed on route 7 to pick up route 20 west it began to rain. Then to snow. So I stopped and installed my chains. I moved slowly at 35 mph. I am never quite sure where it was, but I think it was just before Richland Springs that I skidded and turned the car onto its side in a snowdrift. Fortunately, there was no damage and for $10 a tow truck set me straight. But it was now dark and the snow was unrelenting. So I stayed the night at a house on the hill. Just after I had rented a room a priest and another man came and wanted space. The B and B owner persuaded me to give up my room to the priest and sleep on the sofa which I did. The next day it was 20 degrees below zero and the car would not start. So I pushed until I could roll down the hill to the garage. They found the ignition points were iced over and the battery was ruined also. So I spent another day on the hill and turned up uneventfully in Rochester.

Although I had not get very far with Maedre I soon found other female company. But constraints were different in US universities at the time than they were in Oxford. At Oxford a man could not entertain a lady in his rooms after 10 pm unless he had “ladies late leave” for a party, which leave lasted till midnight. Ladies were not allowed to entertain a man in their rooms after 7 pm at all. Everyone had to be in college by midnight, or climb in “secretly”. In Rochester, no man could entertain a lady at all in his rooms! Of course that did not apply to me who rented an upstairs room in a private house. But neither the gentlemen nor the ladies had any special time they had to be back in their dormitory. It was suggested that I meet a young girl who was a freshman. I took her to the movies one Saturday night and we had a drink afterwards. I was scheduled to start a “run” on the cyclotron at 8 am and would have to stack a ton of lead bricks between the coils the hour before. I wanted to be home by midnight. But she protested. “If you take me back to the dormitory before midnight my reputation would be ruined.” I have always thought that was an unusual way of ruining a girl’s reputation, but I was adamant. I never saw her again. After I met Susie Willems at the ski trip in January I took her out a few times in my station wagon. That car, like most cars at the time, had a long bench seat in front rather than the two bucket seats that are now the norm. That made them suited for romance. This led naturally to the unsafe practice of one arm driving, with the right hand being otherwise occupied. Since the gear change lever was on the right hand of the steering column, either the right arm had to temporarily abandon its more interesting occupation, or the girl had to change gear in appropriate synchronism with the driver’s use of the clutch. Susie was good at this. But there was a defect in the car. The door on the passenger’s side would only open from the outside. That was a fine for any gallant driver who naturally got out and opened the door for his guest. But in the laboratory my car became known colloquially as Wilson’s woman trap.
Susie was an interesting girl. She was brought up in Marseilles, Illinois on the Illinois river, with the flat prairie on the north and south. As early as 10 years old she hung out at the airport and spent time washing airplanes. Soon she was taught to fly and got her pilot’s license at age 13 - before she would have been able to drive a car. So one day she suggested I join her and another couple and go to Niagara falls - a mere 100 miles away - for breakfast. But I already know my stomach and declined the small plane trip. In April vacation time I went to Chicago for the weekend. I had hoped to see Fermi at the physics department but no luck. So I took the elevated to the end of the line and hitch hiked toward Marseilles. I got as far as Joliet where Susie picked me up and I spent the night with her family. She planned to go to medical school the next year at the University of Rochester. I thought about staying in Rochester another year or so that we could be together and even proposed that she join me back in Oxford and go to medical school in Oxford. Professor Gardner, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford was a member of the Christ Church senior common room and was willing to arrange it. But Susie felt that being tied down was premature. So we parted on good terms.
When I had a group working in Fermilab, the large High Energy Physics Laboratory in Batavia, IL, 40 miles west of Chicago, some 25 years later, one of my research fellows had to go to the emergency room at the hospital in North Aurora. The 45 year old physician, Dr Willems, asked whether they knew a physicist called Richard Wilson. Of course he did and informed me of the encounter. But I did nothing at the time. A few years later in 1983, Susie wrote to the Department chairman, who happened to be me, and asked help in locating Richard Wilson. I wrote back. It transpired that she had married but her husband had recently died. Obviously she was wondering if any of her older male friends were available. I was not, of course, but on each of a couple of extended trips to Fermilab I did take her out to dinner (with Andrée’s approval) to discuss old times, and when I spent six months leave in Fermilab in 1987, Andrée and I invited her to dinner. She told us about her interesting life. The summer I left Rochester she and another girl took a job delivering cars to Alaska over the Alaska highway, and hitchhiking back. The other girl was pregnant and had a baby in Alaska, and when they got back to mainland USA, Susie took her home to Marseilles. When Susie’s father came home from work he found Susie, who he had not seen for 3 months, and a clothes line with baby clothes thereon. At first he suspected Susie was the mother. I was told later that her father was suspicious of my intentions when I arrived unexpectedly in April, and maybe this appeared to confirm his suspicions. Susie got her medical degree and for a couple of years became a flying doctor in the hinterland of North Africa She got back to Illinois, married an architect, and started the “trauma center”, (emergency room) at the North Aurora hospital. They had a child and a tragedy. The baby swallowed a toy which got stuck in the windpipe. It took several minutes to extricate the toy. The baby had lost oxygen and her brain was damaged. By 1983 she had had a baby herself by an unidentified father at age 15. This young granddaughter was the joy of Susie’s life. But since then Peter and Julie have been in Batavia, I have not been so much in Fermilab, and I have not taken the time to see Susie again. She did call me once for advice on buying water purification equipment for a camping trip in northern Minnesota, by which means I realized she was alive and well, but had not at that time found another male companion to share her life. Andrée and I have been lucky. We have reached the proverbial four score years (Psalm 90;10) and still have very little of the labor and sorrow that the psalm promises. But I must return to the main narrative.
I left Rochester in mid July 1951, and drove along the old Trans-Canada Highway to the Canadian Rockies. I had bought a 1939 Ford station wagon (woody wagon) for about $400, loaded it with all my worldly goods and set off for the Canadian Rockies. But the engine overheated almost at once. I tried what I could but continually had to fill up the radiator and check the oil level. At Hearst, Ontario, on the trans Canada highway, where the paved road ended at that time, a gas station attendant put water in the radiator while I was in the toilet, and the engine was switched off. I went on forty miles, began to camp and checked the water and oil. The oil sump was overfull - but it was full of water, not oil! I, or rather the gas station attendant, had cracked the cylinder block.. At first I figured that I would have to abandon the car, sell what I could not carry, and hitch hike. After beginning to do so a passing Cornishman took pity on me. A reconditioned truck engine was available in Hearst - at a cost of $300. He took me to the local lumber camp, where he was engineer, for the night, after a stop back in Hearst for a night’s drinking with the Ukrainian crew manager and another couple. The police raided the front room, but I was told to keep quiet because they were well paid and they did not need to come to the back of the restaurant unless we obtruded ourselves on their attention.
But I only had $200 in my pocket, and the new engine would cost $300 plus a little more for anything else wrong.. I cabled Bob Marshak from the CP station in Hearst and at my request he cabled my July salary and my one month's vacation salary within 24 hours. In retrospect I was asking a lot of Bob; but he gave of himself unstintingly in such matters. It was a sign of Bob's greatness as a man that I had such confidence in him. I doubt whether I would know how to get the Harvard administration to act as quickly Then I drove steadily west, driving through two nights, with the help of two hitch hiking truck drivers. After a change of oil at Medicine Hat and a few more miles across the plains I saw the Rockies for the first, unforgettable, time. I saw a line of mountains all the way from left to right. Driving alongside these from Lethbridge to Calgary was a fantastic experience. At Calgary I had a 99 cent meal of steak, blueberry pie and coffee. I never had a better deal. Then to the Kicking Horse Pass where I parked the car and hiked the 14 miles to the Canadian Alpine Club Camp at Lake O’Hara, British Columbia. Then began the finest mountain trip of my life.
The club arranged climbs of the surrounding mountains in groups of 4 or 5. The first few days I climbed Mt Shaeffer, a fairly simple mountain with no snow or ice; although ropes were desirable. Then I joined a group led by Jack Cade, and climbed Mt. Oderay where we had to cross a glacier, and finally I joined a party led by Dr Alexander Fabergé which had three ropes of four climbers each I believe, to climb Mt Victoria. Victoria is on the continental divide above Lake O’Hara, and can be seen from Lake Louise in Alberta. It is easily climbed by walking up to the hut at Abbott’s pass, staying the night, and then walking along the ridge two or three miles to the summit These three miles were glorious. Mountains to left of us, mountains to right of us, mountains in front of us (with apologies to Lord Tennyson). We were roped in case an overhang on which were walking collapsed or we went through thin snow into a crevasse. In my photograph collection I have some photographs of that climb which I scanned and are available on my website.
It was at Abbott’s pass hut that I first met Alexander Fabergé. Alexander was the last son of the Fabergé family who had made jewelry for the Tsars. I am not sure whether he was born in Leningrad, and came to England as a child or born in England. It turned out that he had lived around the corner from us in Mostyn Road, in Merton Park. He was a geneticist in the University of Texas. I agreed to join him for some further climbing - wilderness climbing this time and hopefully a first ascent. So we set off. We bought supplies at Golden down the valley from Kicking Horse pass. We drove north to Big Bend - the most northerly point on the Columbia River now under the water of Mica Lake. We had hoped to get the ranger at Big Bend to take us across the Canoe River in a boat, to climb a mountain the other side, but that was not available, and after a futile attempt to cross by an overhead cable, (again that can be seen in a photograph) we decided to try Mt Chapman on the other side of the Columbia river.
Camping equipment was heavier in these days and we were going in for a week but prepared for emergencies. Alex’ pack weighed 80 lbs. Mine about 60. It was not a good pack; a UK “Boy Scout” pack low slung and more suited for skiing. We set off southwards up a steep creek where the water cascaded down between steep sides which we had to climb. The sides were full of Devil’s Club - a creeper with long vines which snaked down the sides so that if you stepped on them you would slip for 20 feet. You would save yourself by grabbing the vine, but it was prickly so you wore gloves. All the while there were insects so you had insect repellant and had a mosquito net over the head. After a grueling 8 hours we had advanced no more than 3 miles before we had to camp. I was absolutely exhausted as a photograph taken by Alex can attest. The next day was better. The creek was not so steep and we waded up it (water up to our waists) between alder scrub. In the afternoon we went up a side creek to a col beyond which, at the timber line, was a beautiful alpine meadow where we camped. After a day of relaxation we walked on over Mica Peak, which had been climbed once before as evidenced by a cairn at the top with a note in a Kodachrome can - the usual procedure at that time. We then set out for Mt. Chapman. Unfortunately bad weather stopped us doing the final stretch and time was running out. We wanted to allow 2-3 days to get down. So we abandoned the ascent and set off downhill. We went down Mica Creek, and after a wide circuit around the lair of a grizzly that we could smell we camped and reached the bottom much quicker than we had`thought - noon on the next day. We were at a surveyor’s camp where surveyors were surveying for the large dam (Mica Dam) that later flooded the whole area around Big Bend back to Lake Kinbasket.
I was ravenous. I wolfed down a couple of pork chops the surveyors offered, and Alex commented that I was like a cave man! Then the surveyors kindly drove us the 20 miles back to the car at Big Bend. We drove on to Revelstoke, spent the night and had a bath. I actually had two baths: the water was so dirty after the first I thought I needed a second attempt at getting clean. We called the ranger back at Big Bend to inform him that we were “out” and parted. Alex to take the train back home and myself to drive on to Vancouver. I thought about Alex later, but we never met again. But in 1963 when we presented the first results from the CEA at the APS meeting, and they were written up in the New York Times, he sent me a letter of congratulation.
In Vancouver I located Christopher Chaundy - eldest son of my tutor Theodore Chaundy - and a fellow student. He was working at a government lab. He told me that Theo and Hilda were visiting their daughter Deidre and her husband John Arthur at the lumber camp where he was manager at Youbou on Vancouver Island. So I resolved to go over and surprise them the next lunch time. They were agreeably surprised and welcoming. Deidre commented upon this meeting 55 years later when we met on the occasion of a memorial meeting for Heather Lund. At that later time she looked just like her mother.
Then I left for Victoria, and took the Princess Margaret, a new Canadian Pacific ferry to Seattle. This ferry ride was a four hour beautiful cruise in the late evening through the Sound. As we drove off the ferry in Seattle another small contretemps arose. The car would not start. The starter motor was shot. So I was pushed off the boat by the car behind, and the Ford V8 engine easily started. For the next 10 days I either parked on a slope or had to push the car, jump in quickly and then put the car in gear to start it. But when at Stanford I bought a new starter motor ($30) and installed it myself. I was reminded of this a few months ago when I had to have a new starter motor installed for $400. But the dollar was worth much less then.
The drive down the coast was comparatively uneventful. A brief stop in Portland to buy some spare tires to replace the 3 (or was it 4?) that had blown out on the long miles of dirt road. A roadside camp at the Oregon- California border (at the top of a hill!), then to the fine national park just north of San Francisco. I arrived at Stanford just at noon. My last little joke fell flat. I parked half a mile from the physics laboratory, took my bicycle out of the back and bicycled the last half mile saying that I had just come from Rochester. I looked bedraggled enough I might well have bicycled the whole way. But no one took notice. But other research fellows did call me an “Okie” for awhile since I and my car looked like one of the “Okies” in Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”. Thus began the year at Stanford.