Publication: A Princeton Companion
Physics, The Department of. Was it good advice or inspiration that prompted the trustees of the College of New Jersey to appoint Joseph Henry to the Professorship of Natural Philosophy in 1832? Whichever it was, they appointed the greatest, perhaps the only, American research physicist of his time. Henry was the only American whose name was adopted for one of the principal international electrical units. Moreover, he was a great teacher, first exemplifying in physics the Princeton ideal of the teacher-scholar .
After Henry's departure in 1848 to become the first head of the Smithsonian Institution, physics at Princeton had an arid period until the appointment of Cyrus Fogg Brackett in 1873 and of William Francis Magie in 1882. Both men brought distinction to the teaching of physics and prepared the way for the transition into a great department. In the 1890s they, with Henry B. Fine, concluded that both mathematics and physics had to be strengthened if Princeton was to become a real university. Consequently, they began, under Woodrow Wilson, to build up both departments by appointing promising young men.
In 1905 and 1906, the trustees brought to Princeton two brilliant young Englishmen, James H. Jeans in applied mathematics and Owen W. Richardson in physics. At that time there was no Palmer Laboratory and physics lectures were given in the old John C. Green School of Science. Richardson described the research facilities he found there in a letter written nearly fifty years later:
``I remember getting quite a shock when I was first introduced to the part where I was expected to set up a research laboratory. This was a kind of dark basement, ventilated by a hole in the wall, apparently accidental in origin, and inhabited by an impressive colony of hoptoads which enjoyed the use of a swimming pool in one corner. However, with the help of the Clerk of Works these visitors and their amenities were got rid of and a lot of good work was done in it. Looking back on those days, I think they were in many ways the most satisfactory of my life.''
Professor Richardson lived up to his high reputation, and when he went back to England in 1914, he left an enthusiasm for research that has never faltered to this day. The quality of the training under him and his successors is evidenced by the Nobel laureates who have been members of the faculty or graduate students. In the chronological order of their awards they are: Arthur H. Compton, Owen W. Richardson, Clinton J. Davisson, Edwin M. McMillan, John Bardeen, Robert Hofstadter, Eugene P. Wigner, Richard P. Feynman, and Philip W. Anderson. Bardeen is the only person who has ever received the physics prize twice. Wigner is also a recipient of the Fermi Prize and the Atoms for Peace Award.
William F. Magie was chairman of the department from 1908 to 1929. He was a man of firm character but gentle manners, and the influence of his personality on the department still endures. He was blessed with a wife of equally strong personality and a quick wit. She was the source of the often quoted aphorism ``A physicist is a man who knows what is wrong with the electric bell but can't fix it,'' and also of the answer to Professor Cooke's hope that his son would become a scientist: ``Oh no, Lester, think of the scientists you know.''
The expansion of the department under Dean Magie included the appointment in 1925 of four new assistant professors, Henry D. Smyth, Allen G. Shenstone, Louis A. Turner, and Charles Zahn. Smyth became well known as the author of Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (the ``Smyth Report''). For his service as the United States representative, with rank of ambassador, on the International Atomic Energy Agency he was given the Atoms for Peace Award. Smyth and Shenstone, between them, served for 25 years as chairmen of the department.
Following those appointments came several in the field of theoretical physics, notably Eugene P. Wigner and John von Neumann, the first of the remarkable group of Hungarians whose effect on physics in the United States has been so very great. With that start, the field of theory became more and more important in the University. The combination of the Institute for Advanced Study and the University made the town of Princeton, at one time, the greatest center for theoretical physics in the world.
In the thirties, Princeton became part of the nuclear age when Milton G. White was brought to the department and the decision was made to build a cyclotron. Such a decision was much more difficult to make then than now. No government grants were then available, and the University and the department had to find the necessary support from the University Scientific Research Fund. To save money, the machine had to be built in Palmer Laboratory, and the only room large enough was the ventilating room in the basement, which had not been in more than partial use for some time. The cyclotron, until the acquisition of the 3 Bev accelerator in the late fifties, was the most important single piece of apparatus in the department's history.
The years of World War II found most of the physics faculty engaged in war research either in Princeton or at some national laboratory. A considerable number went to the new Radiation Laboratory at M.I.T., which was founded to exploit the magnetron, the short wave transmitter tube invented in England. Professors White and Turner headed large sections of that very important laboratory. Other faculty members were involved in the highly secret atomic bomb development, especially Professor Wigner, whose theoretical and practical abilities were of the greatest importance. Despite a decreased physics faculty, teaching of physics had to be expanded to include all the servicemen being trained at Princeton. This was accomplished by bringing in from other sources every available teacher who could master enough elementary physics to keep one step ahead of the students. A teaching force of over seventy was assembled in that way.
The period between 1945, when the department started to renew itself, and the 1970s was one of continuous expansion in many directions. That was the era of enormous support of fundamental research by various government agencies. Princeton received grants in many fields, involving many millions of dollars. The largest acquisition was the 3 Bev accelerator.
That kind of affluence for departments of physics is now much reduced, so that many physicists are turning toward other fields of research, such as biophysics or astrophysics. Theoretical work is much less affected than is experimental, and Princeton, with its extremely powerful theoretical group, is in an excellent position.
The transformation of Princeton from a college to a university required an increasing emphasis on research and therefore on the assessment of every new Faculty member as a research scholar as well as a qualified teacher. It might seem that the emphasis on research could militate against the teaching of undergraduates. That is not in general true in Princeton and particularly in an advancing science such as physics, where an understanding of the philosophy of modern research is necessary even in the teaching of elementary physics; and the upperclass courses would lack all vitality if they were not under the influence of a research faculty. Even the most research-minded faculty members teach not only advanced courses but the highly important elementary courses as well. John A. Wheeler, one of the department's most eminent professors of theoretical physics, lectured in the largest freshman course for five years and found it so exhilarating that he was loath to give it up.
The teacher-scholar tradition, initiated by Joseph Henry and later developed by Brackett, Magie, and their successors, is now carried on by a department of physics that has grown to about sixty faculty members with twenty teaching assistants and over a hundred graduate students. Nor has size diminished the quality of the faculty. In fact it has frequently been said that it is one of the best departments, if not even the best, in the country.
The contrast between the faculties of 1905 and the present day is equalled by the improvement of physical facilities. Instead of the ``dark basement,'' the department enjoyed sixty years of that magnificent building, Palmer Laboratory. In 1970 the faculty's size and the increased room needed for research compelled the two departments, mathematics and physics (which have always had a close relationship and had to remain together), to move into the new complex of buildings comprising the new Fine Hall and Jadwin Hall. Here the two departments live in amity separated only by their joint library.
Allen G. Shenstone
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).