Foreword to Topics in Modern Physics, A Tribute to Edward U. Condon

Abstract

During the academic year of 1929–30, which was punctuated by a dramatic descent in the stock market, I was a sophomore at Standford University and decided to do my bit to reverse negative trends in society by becoming a professional physicist. While still enjoying the feeling of euphoria brought on by this decision, I read in the university newspaper that the visiting professor in theoretical physics for the summer quarter would be a brilliant young man, twenty-eight years old, who had discovered the Franck-Condon principle while a graduate student at Berkeley, had spent two years at the great centers of theoretical physics in Europe as a National Research Council fellow, and had held prominent posts at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Princeton University, and the University of Minnesota. Just a year earlier, he and Ronald Gurney had given an interpretation of spontaneous alpha disintegration of nuclei in terms of quantum mechanical tunneling. To top it all, the campus paper related that he had earned his way through Berkeley as one of the more worldly reporters for the Oakland Tribune. In this pursuit he had, among other things, stirred up a lively public discussion of whether a birdcage would weigh more or less when the bird was flying around inside instead of resting on its perch.