John C. Slater - Chairing The Department of Physics at MIT

Chairing The Department of Physics At MIT

When he became President of MIT, Karl Compton "courted" Slater to chair the Physics Department. "Administration (of the Department) took up a good deal of time, more time than he (Slater) would have preferred. John was a good chairman." The following items from the successive issues of the annual MIT President's Report trace the growth and visibility of the Department under Slater's leadership, before World War II, and the ability of the Department to contribute to defence during the war. The first two quotations are from chapters written by Compton in the successive Reports. The other quotations come from the sections about the department, that Slater wrote. These include statements affecting policies in physics education and research at large, and show his deep commitment to both.

• 1930: "The selection of Dr. John C. Slater as head of the (Physics) Department will strengthen ... undergraduate and graduate work ... the limitation of space has retarded the development of graduate work ... the total number of undergraduates being 53 and ... graduate students 16." (p. 21)
• 1931: "This has been the first year of the Department in charge of its new Head, Professor John C. Slater ... the subjects actively (researched include) Spectroscopy, Applied Optics, Discharge of Electricity in Gases, Magneto-Optical Phenomena, Studies of Dielectrics, and various aspects of modern and classical theoretical physics." (p. 42)
• 1932: In the list of papers published by MIT faculty, items 293 to 340 are listed under Department of Physics. (p. 206-208)
• 1933: "The George Eastman Research Laboratory, into which the Department moved at the beginning of the year, provides for the first time a suitable home for research in Physics at the Institute". Slater states that outside recognition is shown by holders of six National, an International, and a Rockefeller Research Fellowship choosing to come to the Department. Slater describes the dedication of the Laboratory, the hosting of meetings of the International Astronomical Union, the American Physical Society, and a Spectroscopic conference, and ends: "In general the year has been one of settling down to work under satisfactory conditions, after the more difficult transition of the preceding year." (p. 96-98)
• 1934: "A number of advances in undergraduate teaching have been made or planned." Among the "most conspicuous events" in the department, "we acted as host" to meetings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and a national Spectroscopic Conference, where "the main topic was relation to biology and related fields." Advances in research have been "taking advantage of the unusual facilities" in the Department, and include the work of Warren on structure of liquids, Mueller on dielectric properties, Stockbarger on crystal physics, Harrison on automating spectroscopic measurement, Wulff on hyperfine structure, Boyce on spectra of nebulae, Van der Graaff on high voltage and nuclear research, and Stratton and Morse on ellipsoidal wave functions. (p. 104-106)
• 1935: Considerable attention is given to major improvements in undergraduate teaching. The extensive comments on research mention the arrival of Robley Evans and his work on a field new to the department—radioactivity, with special attention to nuclear medicine. (p. 102-103)
• 1936: "The most important development of the year in the Department has been the growing recognition of the significance of applied physics. There has been a tendency in the past among physicists to take interest only in the direct line of development of their science, and to neglect its applications." Slater develops this theme at length, and describes actions within the undergraduate, graduate and faculty work of the Department and at the national level to develop Applied Physics. The description of the flourishing basic research refers to ten different areas, including the upsurge in work on radioactivity. (p. 131-134).
• 1937 to 1941: These continue in the same vein. But world affairs begin to impact. The 1941 report ends: "The X-ray branch had as a guest Professor Rose C. L. Mooney of Newcomb College, who was prevented by the war from carrying on research in Europe under a Guggenheim Fellowship ... As the year ends, the National Defense effort is beginning to claim the services of a number of staff members. Presumably the coming year will see a large intensification of the effort, though it is hoped that the interference with the regular research and teaching will not be too severe." (p. 129)
• 1942: This told a very different story. The defense effort had begun to "involve a considerable number of personnel, as well as a good deal of administrative work. With the opening of the Radiation Laboratory of the National Defense Research Committee at the Institute, a number of members of the Department's staff have become associated with that laboratory" followed by a list of over 10 senior faculty who had, and several more gone to other defense projects. (p. 110-111)
• 1943 to 1945: Slater took leave of absence as Chair, to work on topics of importance in radar.
• 1946: Slater had returned as Chair. He starts his report: "The year of reconversion from war to peace has been one of the very greatest activity. ... Physics during the war achieved an importance which has probably never before been attained by any other science. The Institute, as the leading technical institution of the country and probably the world, should properly have a physics department unequaled anywhere." He lists plans to meet this objective, that proliferate his administrative responsibilities. (p. 133-143)

Setting up interdepartmental laboratories, by restructuring existing laboratories using, as a model, the conversion of the Radiation Laboratory into the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) by Julius Stratton and Albert Hill.

Financing student assistantships and helping shape the role of government financing on an unprecedented scale.

Overseeing Robley Evans' Radioactivity Center (containing a cyclotron) and Van de Graaff's High Voltage Laboratory.

Recruiting physicists familiar with the Manhattan project to build the Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Engineering. This was directed by Jerrold Zacharias. Its first members included Bruno Rossi and Victor Weisskopf.

Setting up the Acoustics Laboratory, directed by Richard Bolt, and the Spectroscopy Laboratory directed by the chemist Richard Lord.

• 1947: With the hiring of staff and building of laboratories well in hand, Slater begins: "The year in the Physics Department, as in the rest of the Institute, was one of starting the large-scale teaching of returned veterans and other students whose academic careers had been interrupted by the war." He goes on to discuss the needs of students, in the entire Institute, for Physics courses and laboratories, with particular mention of the upsurge in electronics and nuclear science, and he reports briefly on the developments following from his previous report. (p. 139-141)
• 1948: Slater begins "The current year is the first since the war in which the department has approached normal operation. No new major projects or changes of policy have been introduced." But the department that he has built is vastly different from what it was when he started. Sixteen master's degrees and 47 doctor's degrees were granted. Twenty-five Ph.D. recipients got academic appointments in MIT and other universities. Research flourished, and many scientists visited from European universities and elsewhere in the U.S. (p. 141-143)
• 1949: The new styled "normalcy" continued. "The approach to a steady postwar state continued with few unusual occurrences." The graduate curriculum has been revised and cryogenics enhanced. The continued growth of staff, research grants, industrial contacts and volume of publication are treated as matters of continuity, recognizing at the end, that: "The administrative load of the department has grown so much (it became) wise to appoint an executive officer". Nathaniel Frank, who had worked with John Slater for nearly two decades accepted the post. (p. 149-153)
• 1950: The future of the Department had been set. There were "few unexpected changes". And with the continued growth, "almost every research project in the Department has concerned itself with undergraduate research". (p. 189-191)
• 1951: Jay Stratton writes "Professor John C. Slater resigned as Head of the Department of Physics and has been appointed Harry B. Higgins Professor of the Solid State, the first appointment which will carry the title Institute Professor. Professor Slater has been granted a leave of absence for the coming year to carry on research at Brookhaven National Laboratory." (p. 30)

Throughout his Chairmanship, Slater taught, wrote books, produced ideas of major scientific importance, and interacted with colleagues throughout the local, national and international scientific communities. At the personal level, Morse states: "Through most of (the 1930s) he looked more like an undergraduate than a department head ... he could render his guests weak with laughter simply by counting ... in Danish." Much later, S.B. Trickey wrote "While I got to know him reasonably well, I was never able to call J.C. Slater by his given name. His seeming aloofness turned out more to be shyness."