Alfred L. Loomis’ Scientific Publications
1927
Wood, R. W., and Alfred L. Loomis. “The Physical and Biological Effects of High-Frequency Sound-Waves of Great Intensity.” Philosophical Magazine 4, no. 22 (September 1927).
Richards, William T., and Alfred L. Loomis. “The Chemical Effects of High Frequency Sound Waves.” I. A Preliminary Survey. Journal of the American Chemical Society 49 (1927).
1928
Hubbard, J. C., and A. L. Loomis. “The Velocity of Sound in Liquids at High Frequencies by the Sonic Interferometer.” Philosophical Magazine 5 (June 1928).
Loomis, A. L., and J. C. Hubbard. “A Sonic Interferometer for Measuring Compressional Velocities in Liquids: A Precision Method.” Journal of the Optical Society American Review of Scientific Instruments 17 (October 1928).
Harvey, E. Newton, Ethel Browne Harvey, and Alfred L. Loomis. “Further Observations on the Effect on High Frequency Sound Waves on Living Matter.” Biological Bulletin 55, no. 6 (December 1928).
1929
Richards, William T., and Alfred L. Loomis. “Dialectric Loss in Electrolyte Solutions in High Frequency Fields.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 15, no. 7 (July 1929).
Harvey, E. Newton, and Alfred L. Loomis. “The Destruction of Luminous Bacteria by High Frequency Sound Waves.” The Journal of Bacteriology 17, no. 5 (1929).
Christie, Ronald V., and Alfred L. Loomis. “The Relation of Frequency to the Physiological Effects of Ultra-High Frequency Currents.” Journal of Experimental Medicine 49, no. 2 (February 1929).
Harvey, E. Newton, and Alfred L. Loomis. “A Chronograph for Recording Rhythmic Processes, Together with a Study of the Accuracy of a Turtle’s Heart.” Science 70, no. 1823 (December 1929).
1930
Loomis, Alfred L., E. Newton Harvey, and C. MacRae. “The Intrinsic Rhythm of the Turtle’s Heart Studied with a New Type of Chronograph, Together with the Effects of Some Drugs and Hormones.” Journal of General Physiology 14, no. 1 (September 1930).
Harvey, E. Newton, and Alfred L. Loomis. “A Microscope-Centrifuge.” Science 72, no. 1854 (July 1930).
1931
Loomis, Alfred L. “The Precise Measurement of Time.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 140, no. 5 (1931).
Harvey, E. Newton, and Alfred L. Loomis. “High Speed Photomicrography of Living Cells Subjected to Supersonic Vibrations.” Journal of General Physiology 15, no. 1 (September 1931).
1932
Loomis, Alfred L., and W. A. Marrison. “Modern Developments in Precision Clocks.” Bell Telephone Technical Publications B656 (January 1932).
Loomis, Alfred L., and George Kistiakowsky. “A Large Grating Spectrograph.” Review of Scientific Instruments 3 (January 1932).
Christie, Ronald V., and Alfred L. Loomis. “The Pressure of Aqueous Vapour in the Alveolar Air.” Journal of Physiology 77, no. 1 (December 1932).
1933
Loomis, A. L., and H. T. Stetson. “An Apparent Lunar Effect in Time Determinations at Greenwich and Washington.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 93, no. 6 (June 1933).
1935
Loomis, A. L., and H. T. Stetson. “Further Investigations of an Apparent Lunar Effect in Time Determinations.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 95 (March 1935).
Loomis, Alfred L., E. Newton Harvey, and Garret Hobart. “Potential Rhythms of the Cerebral Cortex During Sleep.” Science 81, no. 2111 (June 1935).
———. “Further Observations on the Potential Rhythms of the Cerebral Cortex During Sleep.” Science 82, no. 2122 (August 1935).
1936
Loomis, Alfred L., E. Newton Harvey, and Garret Hobart. “Brain Potentials During Hypnosis.” Science 83, no. 2149 (March 1936).
———. “Electrical Potentials of the Human Brain.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 19, no. 3 (June 1936).
1937
Harvey, E. Newton, Alfred L. Loomis, and Garret A. Hobart III. “Cerebral Processes During Sleep as Studied by Human Brain Potentials.” Science 85, no. 2210 (May 1937).
Davis, H., P. A. Davis, A. L. Loomis, E. N. Harvey, and G. Hobart. “Changes in Human Brain Potentials During the Onset of Sleep.” Science 86, no. 2237 (November 1937).
Loomis, Alfred, E. Newton Harvey, and Garret A. Hobart III. “Cerebral States During Sleep, as Studied by Human Brain Potentials.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 21, no. 2 (August 1937).
1938
Loomis, Alfred L., E. Newton Harvey, and Garret A. Hobart III. “Distribution of Disturbance-Patterns in the Human Electroencephalogram, with Special Reference to Sleep.” Journal of Neurophysiology I (September 1938).
1939
Davis H., P. A. Davis, A. L. Loomis, E. N. Harvey, and G. Hobart. “A Search for Changes in Direct-Current Potentials of the Head During Sleep.” Journal of Neurophysiology II (March 1939).
———. “Analysis of the Electrical Response of the Human Brain to Auditory Stimulation During Sleep.” American Journal of Physiology 126, no. 3 (July 1939).
———. “Electrical Reactions of the Human Brain to Auditory Stimulation During Sleep.” Journal of Neurophysiology II (November 1939).
PATENTS
Patent No. 1,376,890, issued May 3, 1921, to Alfred L. Loomis, Paul Klopsteg, Paul G. Agnew, and Winfield H. Stannard, for “Chronographs.”
Patent No. 1,734,975, issued November 12, 1929, to Alfred L. Loomis and Robert Williams Wood, for “Methods and Apparatus for Forming Emulsions and the Like.”
Patent No. 1,907,803, issued May 9, 1933, to E. Newton Harvey and Alfred L. Loomis, for “Microscope-Centrifuge.”
Patent No. 2,884,628, issued April 28, 1959, to Alfred L. Loomis, for “Long Range Navigation System.”
Author’s Note on Sources
ARCHIVES AND COLLECTIONS
The recollections of the early days of the Rad Lab, including those of Alfred Loomis, Luis Alvarez, Kenneth Bainbridge, Taffy Bowen, Karl Compton, Lee DuBridge, Donald Kerr, Frank Lewis, Ernest Pollard, and others quoted in the book, were taken from the interviews conducted by Henry Guerlac for the official history and belong to the Series: Records of the Office of the Historian; Subgroup: MIT Radiation Laboratory, RG 227, National Archives New England Region, Waltham, MA.
All letters written by Henry L. Stimson, as well as those written to him by Alfred L. Loomis, Ellen Farnsworth Loomis, and Julia Stimson Loomis, along with all the diary excerpts of Henry L. Stimson, are courtesy of the Henry L. Stimson Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following:
Luis Alvarez: transcript of interview courtesy of the Center for History of Physics, the American Institute of Physics, New York.
Edward L. Bowles letters courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Vannevar Bush: oral history interviews courtesy of the Niels Bohr Library, the American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland. Letters courtesy of MIT and the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Karl Compton: letters and papers courtesy of MIT.
James B. Conant: letters to Loomis courtesy of Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Donald Cooksey: letter and papers courtesy of the Bancroft Library, the University of California, Berkeley.
Paul Klopsteg: transcript of interview courtesy of the Center for History of Physics, the American Institute of Physics, New York.
Ernest O. Lawrence: letters and papers courtesy of Ernest Orlando Lawrence Papers, the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Also transcripts of taped interviews of Luis Alvarez and Alfred Loomis by Herbert Childs for his biography of Ernest O. Lawrence, An American Genius, published 1968.
John Lawrence: letters courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Alfred Lee Loomis: Tuxedo Park laboratory guest book, letters, and papers courtesy of the Institute Archives and Special Collections, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Letters also courtesy of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
William Richards: family letters and papers courtesy of Theodore R. Conant.
Leo Szilard: letters to and from Bill Richards, courtesy of Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Many scientists and historians have written in much greater detail about the events covered here. Among the publications to which I am indebted are the following:
Alvarez, Luis W. Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist. New York: Basic Books, 1987.
———. “Alfred Lee Loomis.” Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, vol. 51, 1980.
———. “Alfred Lee Loomis—Last Great Amateur of Sciences.” Physics Today, January 1983.
Amory, Cleveland. The Last Resorts. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948.
———. Who Killed Society. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960.
Anonymous. “Markets: Bonbright & Co., Inc.” Fortune, February 1930.
———. “Niagara Hudson: Exhibit A of Superpower.” Fortune, June 1931.
———. “The American Brain Barrel.” Fortune, March 1945.
———. “Longhairs and Short Waves.” Fortune, November 1945.
———. “The First Public Account of Radar.” Bureau of Naval Personnel Information Bulletin, June 1943.
———. “Radar—The Industry.” Fortune, October 1945.
———. “Alfred Lee Loomis: Amateur of the Sciences.” Fortune, March 1946.
Baxter, James Phinney, III. Scientists Against Time. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1947.
Blackett, P. M. S. Tizard and the Science of War. Tizard Memorial Lecture, delivered to Institute for Strategic Studies, February 11, 1960.
Bowen, E. G. Radar Days. Bristol, Eng.: Hilger, 1987.
Brown, Louis. A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives. Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1999.
Buderi, Robert. The Invention That Changed the World. New York: Touchstone, 1996.
Burns, Russell, ed. Radar Development to 1945. London: Peter Peregrinus/Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1988.
Bush, Vannevar. Science—The Endless Frontier. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945.
———. Pieces of the Action. New York: Morrow, 1970.
Chernow, Ron. The House of Morgan. New York: Touchstone, 1990.
Childs, Herbert. An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Father of the Cyclotron. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968.
Churchill, Winston S. The Gathering Storm. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948.
Clark, Ronald W. Tizard. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1965.
Clarke, Arthur C. Glide Path. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1963.
Cockcroft, J. D. “Memories of Radar Research.” IEEE Proceedings 132, pt. A, no. 6, October 1985.
Colton, Roger B. “Radar in the United States Army.” Proceedings of the IRE 33, 1945.
Compton, Arthur Holly. Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.
Conant, James B. My Several Lives: Memoirs of a Social Inventor. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
Davis, Nuel Pharr. Lawrence & Oppenheimer. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968.
Douglass, Paul F. Six upon the World. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1954.
Dowd, J., and George Lee. “A Scientist of Wall Street.” Popular Science Monthly, August 1928.
DuBridge, L. A. “History and Activities of the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” The Review of Scientific Instruments 17, no. 1 (January 1946).
DuBridge, L. A., and L. N. Ridenour. “Expanded Horizons.” Technology Review 48, no. 1 (November 1945).
Goodchild, Peter. J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
Greenberg, Daniel S. The Politics of Pure Science. New York: New American Library, 1967.
Greer, Margaret. The Sands of Time: A History of Hilton Head Island. SouthArt, 1989.
Guerlac, Henry E. Radar in World War II. Los Angeles: Tomash Publishers; New York: American Institute of Physics, 1950.
Hartcup, Guy, and T. E. Allibone. Cockcroft and the Atom. Bristol, Eng.: Hilger, 1984.
Harvard College. “William Theodore Richards, 1900–1940.” Decennial Report, Class of 1921. Cambridge, Mass., 1941.
Harvey, Natalie, ed. Hilton Head Island: Images of America. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 1998.
Haskins, Caryl P. “Alfred Lee Loomis.” Year Book of the American Philosophical Society, 1975.
Heilbron, J. L., and Robert W. Seidel. Lawrence and His Laboratory: A History of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Hershberg, James. James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Bomb. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Hewlett, Richard G., and Oscar E. Anderson Jr. The New World, 1939/1946: Vol. 1, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962.
Hodgson, Godfrey. The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson, 1867–1950. New York: Knopf, 1990.
Holmgren, Virginia C. Hilton Head: A Sea Island Chronicle. Hilton Head Island, S.C.: Hilton Head Island Publishing, 1959.
Holton, Gerald, ed. The Twentieth-Century Sciences: Studies in the Biography of Ideas. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.
IEEE Center for the History of Electrical Engineering. Rad Lab: Oral Histories Documenting World War II Activities at the MIT Radiation Laboratory. Piscataway, N.J.: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1993.
Johnston, Lawrence. “The War Years.” In Peter W. Trower, ed. Discovering Alvarez: Selected Works of Luis W. Alvarez. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Knopf, 1999.
———. The Second World War. New York: Viking, 1989.
Kerr, Donald E., ed. Propagation of Short Radio Waves. Vol. 13, Radiation Laboratory Series. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951.
Kevles, Daniel J. The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America. New York: Knopf, 1978.
Kistiakowsky, George B. A Scientist at the White House. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976.
———. Unfinished memoir. Courtesy of Elaine Kistiakowsky.
Lamont, Lansing. Day of Trinity. New York: Atheneum, 1965.
Lanouette, William, with Bela Silard. Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992.
Lescaze, William. “House at Tuxedo Park.” Architectural Review, November 1939.
Loomis, Manette Seeldrayers. From Belgium with Love. Unpublished memoir courtesy of Al Hobart.
Marrison, Warren A. “The Evolution of the Quartz Crystal Clock.” The Bell System Technical Journal 27 (1948).
Millar, D. A. “The Aberdeen Chronograph.” Army Ordnance 4, no. 22 (January–February 1924).
Morison, Elting E. Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960.
Newton, Charles, Therma E. Patterson, and Nancy Joy Perkins. Five Years at the Radiation Laboratory. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1946.
Office of Scientific Research and Development. “Radar: A Report on Science at War.” 1948.
———. “Military Airborne Radar Systems: Vol. 2 of Summary Technical Report of Division 14.” NDRC, 1946.
Pais, Abraham. Niels Bohr’s Times: In Physics, Philosophy and Polity. Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon Press, 1991.
Powers, Thomas. Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Randall, John T. “The Cavity Magnetron.” Physical Society of London, Proceedings 58, pt. 3, 1946.
Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1986.
Rich, Willard. Brain Waves and Death. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940.
———. “The Uranium Bomb.” Unpublished manuscript courtesy of Ted Conant.
Rigden, John S. Rabi: Scientist and Citizen. New York: Basic Books, 1987.
Robinson, Forest G. Love’s Story Told: A Life of Henry A. Murray. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Seabrook, William. Doctor Wood: Modern Wizard of the Laboratory: A Biography of Robert W. Wood. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1941.
Segrè, Emilio. A Mind Always in Motion: The Autobiography of Emilio Segrè. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Skolnick, Merril I. “Fifty Years of Radar.” Proceedings of the IEEE 73, no. 2 (February 1985).
Stimson, Henry L., and McGeorge Bundy. On Active Service in War and Peace. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947.
Susskind, Charles. “Who Invented Radar?” In Russell Burns, ed., Radar Development to 1945. London: Peregrinus/Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1988.
Trower, Peter W., ed. Discovering Alvarez: Selected Works of Luis W. Alvarez. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Varian, Russell H., and Sigurd F. Varian. “A High Frequency Oscillator and Amplifier.” Journal of Applied Physics 10 (May 1939).
Winslow, Albert Foster. Tuxedo Park: A Journal of Recollection. New York: Tuxedo Historical Society, 1992.
Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts. A History of the Law Firm. New York, 1980.
Zachary, Pascal G. Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century. New York: Free Press, 1997.
INTERVIEWS
Walter Alvarez
William J. Bozzuffi
George Boynton, Tuxedo Park
Lynn Chase, New York
Arthur Compton Jr.
Theodore R. Conant, New York
Martha H. Coolidge, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Tuxedo Park Page 39
