Background and family; studies at Harvard University, associations with Edwin C. Kemble and William D. Coolidge; Ph.D. thesis incorporating hydrogen and lithium calculations, 1934; the approximation method; pre- and post-World War II work on rubber; Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in pre-World War II Europe; radar development at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory, editing of Rad Lab notebooks, movement of Swoboda from Czechoslovakia to United States by CIA, work on crystal detectors. Purdue University years; publications on semiconductors, starting 1949; head of physics department, following Karl Lark-Horovitz; activities since 1974 retirement.