Re: Music with a Nuclear Flavor`

["H.B. Knowles" <hbknowls@ix.netcom.com>]

At 09:27 PM 7/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
>In a message dated 98-07-12 00:28:22 EDT, you write:
>
><< 
>
>The comment about a physicist "refusing large sums of money for big
>accelerator construction" being imaginary should be reconsidered vs. an
>interesting bit of history about Stanford Linear Accelerator reviewed as I
>recall in the book: "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". During the final
>negotiations on funding by the individual who would become the initial SLAC
>director [Wolfgang Panofsky?-I'm going by memory] there was a major dispute
>about the old AEC wanting SLAC's research results to be subject to
>restrictions on publication and with rights of review by the AEC before new
>research result might be made public.
>
>Panofsky refused to accept this restriction on open publication of all
>research results and as the Richard Rhodes wrote in effect pushed several
>hundered millions of dollars back across the table to the AEC.
>
>I haven't dug out my copy of  "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" to check exact
>details but believe the above to be a general summary of a physicist in the
>person of Wolfgand Panofsky showing a great sense of academic and
intellectual
>freedom..
>
>
>Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
>Consulting Scientist
>Public Health Sciences
>19 Stuart St.
>Pawtucket, RI 02860
>
>Phone: (401) 727-4947   Fax: (401) 727-2032   E-mail: radproject@usa.net
>
Mr. Farber:

As it happens, I was around at the time abd, whatever you read, it didn't
happen exactly like like-not even close. ( I was finishing my PhD at
Berkeley with Luie Alvarez, and heard quite a bit about Pief and the
then-nascent SLAC project). The original Mark III (about 1 GeV) linac was
an Office of Naval Research funded project. Pief needed more than the ONR
could provide for the proposed SLAC. He tired to have it funded by a troika
of agencies: ONR, the New NSF and the AEC (early precursor of DOE). THere
was no question about classification of research at that time, because that
battle had been fought with ONR and won earlier. What did occur was a big
brawl in which AEC refused to go into a partnership deal of the type judt
described with ANTYONE-but couldn't, at first come up with the whole tab.
It looked like the end for a while. Finally, the AEC dod agree to sponsor
the whole thing. No publication problem. I think this story is one of those
folk tales which is itself untrue but reveals a profound truth: if someone
had tried to restrict Pief's right to publish, he WOULD have refused the
money. After all, he left Berkeley when the infamous loyalty oath weas
imposed.

Yours for historical accuracy,


H.B. Knowles, PhD, Physics Consulting
4030 Hillcrest Rd, El Sobrante, CA 94803
Phone\Fax (510)758-5449
hbknowls@ix.netcom.com