The nature of the interaction
Do human interactions follow their own laws of physics?
Franklin's career path from particle physics to philosophy of science
The AIP Oral History interview with science philosopher Allan Franklin
Rustad studied under nuclear pioneer Alfred Nier in Minnesota—that’s what brought him to Columbia in 1942
Rustad came to Columbia to work on a classified research project involving uranium isotope separation.
Allan Franklin Oral History
Publication
American Institute of Physics Oral History Archive
Publication Date
May 12, 2020
Publisher
American Institute of Physics
Citation
Interview of Allan Franklin by David Zierler on May 12, 2020, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA
Source Link
Comment(s)
Focus on Franklin’s early career and highlights of his later writings. Includes anecdotes about his undergraduate experience working with Gene Commins on RR-related experiment. There is one great quote but not enough depth about experimental error.
Abstract
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, Interview Allan Franklin, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Colorado. Franklin recounts his childhood in Brooklyn and his decision to attend Columbia University as an undergraduate where he worked with Charlie Townes and Eugene Commins. He describes his decision to pursue graduate work at Cornell with Al Silverman, who at the time was working on photo production of pi-meson pairs, and his budding interest in the philosophy of science. Franklin discusses his post-doctoral research at the Princeton-Penn Accelerator and his career at the University of Colorado where, in the mid-1970s, he more fully focused on history of physics and philosophy of science matters. Franklin describes bubble and spark chambers, the significance of the Duhem-Quine problem, and his contributions on the Bayesian confirmation theory. In the last portion of the interview, Franklin discusses some of the philosophical issues surrounding the concept of a grand unified theory.
Excerpt(s)
When I first worked with him, [Gene Commins] was a grad student, and then he was an instructor. He worked under—with Polykarp Kusch. It was Kusch’s lab. But Gene just liked doing it. And they made you feel a part of the lab. I made use of my experience there. I’ve written chapters about [laugh] some of them in my later work. It was just very formative, if you will. I was sorry, in some sense that when—after I graduated, they wouldn’t let me work in the lab anymore. They needed the spaces for other students.
Zierler: And I’m curious, Allan, how did you develop an interest in the theory of weak interactions? Where did that come from? ....
Franklin: Well, what got me interested in looking at it, well, there were a couple of things. Parity violation was a big thing, made a [laugh] big impression on me. I was an undergraduate at Columbia when it was announced....They stopped classes.
Zierler: [laugh]
Franklin: They stopped physics classes to announce the experimental results. That always had a big effect on me. And also, when I learned more and started working in history and philosophy, there was a problem. When the V-A theory was proposed, there were three experiments that disagreed with it. And I was interested in why did they do that. Why did they propose a theory that was known to be refuted?
And so then I had to—then I went into—I had to do the history of how did we get to V-A, that there were good reasons for believing V-A, so there were reasons for questioning the experimental results. And they all turned out to be wrong, which was suggested interestingly by the theorists, Feynman and Gell-Mann and Marshak and Sudarshan. So, you know, it was an interesting historical question and philosophical—why do you propose a theory that’s known to be refuted?
Zierler: Yeah. So what’s the answer?
Franklin: ....Well, when you have a disagreement between theory and experiment, theory could be wrong, experiment could be wrong, or they both could be wrong.
Zierler: Sure. [laugh]
Franklin: And they can’t both be right. And so in this case, it turned out of course that the experimental results were incorrect.... [I]n the case of V-A, there were lots of things that V-A had going for it. And so people said, “Well, maybe we ought to redo those experiments.” Now that leads you to my current work, or my most recent work, [which] is, do experiments need to be replicated?
Selected
No
Citation type
Walter's take: Fumigate the basement, but don't neglect Stan's achievements
Whatever happened back then matters so much less than all the wonders that came later.
The doctorate that wasn't to be
Stan Ruby was not awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Physics by Columbia University.
My reasons for posting CU-173, the Wu-Schwarzchild report, as a public download
Open publication of scientific results is integral to the scientific process. Why was CU-173 published secretly?
Brookhaven scientist Brice Rustad's untimely death in 1965 at age 43
Rustad was also denied his Columbia doctorate in the aftermath of the experiment
POST-CONFERENCE SUMMARY OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN BETA-DECAY
Publication
Proceedings of the Rehovot Conference on Nuclear Structure
Publication Date
January 1, 1958
Publisher
North-Holland Publishing Co.
Citation
Proceedings of the Rehovoth Conference on Nuclear Structure, Held At the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovoth, September 8-14, 1957. Edited by H.J. Lipkin.
Source Link
Comment(s)
Lipkin's Editor's Note added in proof describes the yet-unpublished Brookhaven experiment on helicity of neutrinos.
Abstract
Results presented at the conference indicated the need for further experiments involving measurement of the direction of neutrino emission in order to distinguish between the ß-interactions S–T and V–A. Within a few months the new "non-classical recoil experiment" has been developed, in which the polarization of radiation following ß-decay is measured relative to the direction of the recoil. The principal difficulty of recoil experiments, namely that of determining the direction of the recoil, has been overcome in a very ingenious way, using the Doppler effect required for resonance scattering of nuclear γ-rays. The result of a cominbined measurement of the polarization and resonance scattering of the γ-ray emitted after K– capture in Eu152m indicates a left-handed helicity for the neutrino, assuming the reasonably well-established spin-zero assignment for Eu152m.
Excerpt(s)
The implications of these results can now be combined with the conclusions of Adler's summary (Session VI) by adding to his list of experiments: V. Non-classical recoil experiments.
This in combination with the polarization results (Alder I), indicates that the G-T interaction is A, in direct contradiction with results of classical recoil experiments for He6 and Ne19. The observed interference between the Fermi and GT-parts of the interaction in ß-γ polarization correlation experiments (Alder II) leads to the consulsion that if the FT-interaction is A, the Fermi interaction must be V.
The A and V assignments are in agreement with two-component theory and also with other new theories. [Sudarshan-Marshak and Feynman-Gell-Man are cited.]
Selected
Yes
Citation type
Brice Rustad remained at Brookhaven before and after the experiment reversal
He collaborated with Wu and her associates in the 1950s and '60s.