Physics, Movies, and the Columbia and MIT Radar Labs

In the comments to yesterday's post on the Lamb shift[1][2], +Bruce Elliott and I were discussing how physics history could make for great movie ideas . This morning, it occurred to me that several of the journal articles I've read recently share a common theme, the goings on in and around the MIT and Columbia radiation, (radar), labs circa World War II. The whole thing might make a great intertwined stories movie. So, without further ado, here's a brief summary of a few of the players, final exams are coming up, so I'll spread this out a bit over the next few weeks.

Schwinger
Schwinger (picture 1), Feynman,and Tomonaga are three of the biggest names in quantum electrodynamics, (QED). In addition to his QED work, Schwinger was apparently a pivotal figure at the MIT radiation laboratory where he did theoretical work on radar. The Swinger-Lippmann scattering theory[3], a sort of framework for building other scattering theories came out of waveguide work done by Schwinger and Lippmann as well as others during the war. He figures heavily in the MIT Radiation Laboratory Series volume on waveguides. He was of course present at the famous Shelter Island conference. He's also acknowledged by Israel Senitzky for 'helpful discussions' regarding coherent state work that Senitzky was doing.

Israel Senitzky[7]
The most prominent mentions I've found for Senitzky are found in Signal Corp and Radiation Laboratory history books which refer to him mostly as an administrator that served as the liaison to the Columbia Radiation Laboratory program for the Army. In the scientific literature however, he turns up as a maser scientist. He worked on coherent states before coherent states were cool[6]. In addition to being a physicist, Israel Senitzky was a childhood violin virtuoso[4]. His daughter went on to be an MD who pioneered testosterone treatments in the 1980s and was written up in People Magazine[5].

David Tressel Griggs[8]
Griggs would be the Indiana Jones/Tony Stark character of the movie. He turns up at the MIT radiation laboratory as the test pilot for their aircraft detection radar projects. He later went on to be a combat adviser during World War II flying on missions that utilized the radar systems he helped to develop. He almost fell from a the plane when he kicked open a stuck bomb bay door during a bombing run. After that he was grounded as the military brass felt he was far more valuable as a scientist than as a bomb.

A few years later Griggs turns up as the chief scientist for the Air Force. He was instrumental in convincing Teller to run Lawrence Livermore laboratory where he and Teller both influenced underground nuclear bomb testing. He was also friends with Agnew Bahnson Jr. who will turn up in a later post about the very cool sci-fi/history movie that could come out of the very real 1950's race for anti-gravity, (spoiler: nobody won the race as far as I know).

References:
1. Post on G+ with comment thread
https://plus.google.com/u/0/108242372478733707643/posts/fvUzcLu8Pr5

2. The Lamb shift post
http://copaseticflow.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-lamb-shift-and-science.html

3. Lippman Schwinger scattering
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103%2FPhysRev.79.469
Lippmann B. & Schwinger J. (1950). Variational Principles for Scattering Processes. I, Physical Review, 79 (3) 469-480. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRev.79.469

4. Senitzky as violinist
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r-1OAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XEwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3038%2C2841355

5. People on the other Dr. Senitzky
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20127693,00.html

6. Senitzky on coherent states
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103%2FPhysRev.95.1115
Senitzky I. (1954). Harmonic Oscillator Wave Functions, Physical Review, 95 (5) 1115-1116. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRev.95.1115

7. Copasetice Flows on Senitzky
http://copaseticflow.blogspot.com/2013/02/israel-senitzky-and-coherentglauber.html

8. The Cannonical Hamiltonian on David Tressel Griggs
http://chipdesignmag.com/carter/2012/12/29/the-adventurous-and-connected-life-of-david-tressel-griggs-part-vi-of-the-holiday-serial/

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Copasetic Flow

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