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National Research Council (U.S.). Division of Physical Sciences
NRC Division of Physical Sciences records, 1919-1974.
Collection includes correspondence, reports and meeting minutes. Important topics: American Institute of Physics, neutron measurements, nuclear constants, nuclear geophysics, nuclear reactors, radioactivity measurements and standards, radiobiology, radiochemistry.
The National Resarch Council (NRC), Division of Physical Sciences was established from the NRC Committee on Physics during the 1918 wartime reorganization of the Research Council, Division of Physical Sciences, with Charles E. Mendenhall as its chairman, and was retained under the Research Council's peacetime reorganization in 1919. After World War I, the Division continued its function of forming research committees in various areas of physics, and publishing reports of their findings. The focus of the postwar Division was on promoting research in physics by conducting and publishing surveys in order to assist investigators and suggest problems. The Division did not see its task as encompassing pure research, which it felt was best left to the initiative of individual investigators. In 1924, under the chairmanship of Joseph S. Ames, the Division acted to stimulate interdisciplinary activity in fields bordering on physics such as mathematics, chemistry, biology, and especially geology. Shortly after World War II, the Division in 1948 was renamed the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, though a separate Division of Mathematics was formed, and it reverted back to the name of Division of Physical Sciences. Like the Research Council as a whole, the Division during the postwar years set out to take a more active role of leadership in its field. In the 1946 the reorganization of the Committee on Standards of Radioactivity into the wide-ranging Committee on Nuclear Science. This Committee addressed a highly diverse set of issues in the field of nuclear science through the 1970s. During the post- WW II period, the Division also turned its attention to the education and training of physicists.
American Institute of Physics.
National Research Council (U.S.)
Isotope geology.
Nuclear physics.
Nuclear reactors.
Radioactivity -- Measurement.
Radiobiology.
Radiochemistry.
Minutes. aat
Reports. aat
AIP-ICOS
National Academy of Sciences. 2101 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20418, USA
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