Wait a minute! Now I am finding another Dr. Stanley Ruby

Wait a minute! Now I am finding another Dr. Stanley Ruby

• Jan 20, 2022
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Deeper searches for "Dr. Stanley Ruby" are returning some hits related to the Advanced Research Projects Agency.

ARPA was the Pentagon-led program that was established in 1958 in the wake of Sputnik to fund research and development in advanced technologies with military applications. In 1972, the initial D for Defense was added, forming DARPA.

One of the important things it did in this period was to create an information network connecting university labs and government sites. This ARPANET used packet-switching technology that became the basis of the Internet. 

Much less well known was ARPA's project Prime Argus, not to be confused with a series of earlier atmospheric nuclear tests called Operation Argus. That was in the late 1950s. In the early 1970s, Project Prime Argus was a nuclear test detection capability meant to monitor Soviet tests. 

As the clippings show, this other Stanley Ruby was an ARPA program manager involved with Prime Argus and other nuclear defense research programs. A couple of unclassified technical reports have him on a distribution list in the office of ARPA director at the Pentagon. 

So this Stanley Ruby is another plausible candidate for the Columbia graduate student who worked in the Brookhaven chemistry department in 1951-52 and who published research with Prof. M.D. Hassialis. 

If so, all my recent speculations about our Stanley Ruby taking a detour into chemistry, including the conclusion that he submitted a Ph.D. dissertation about surface chemistry, goes out the window. We go back to our basic narrative about Stan's physics and the continuing mystery of his interaction with Wu. 

In a way, I hope that turns out to be the case, since it eliminates a whole complicated additional storyline. However, it means that I would have put a good deal of recent work into barking up the wrong tree. 

To make certain, I want to find more evidence for the life and career of this other Dr. Stanley Ruby. Even if most of his professional work was military-related, and thus classified, he must have come from some place and should show up in genealogy records. 

I'll see what I can dig up.