Purcell, Edward M.
Oral history interview with Edward M. Purcell, 1976 November 23.
This interview is primarily focused on Purcell's life and work at Harvard University, which includes a description of his life there as a graduate student in the 1930s; recollections about older professors Black, Bainbridge, Bridgman, Hall, Kemble, Lyman, Saunders, and Van Vleck; work on new cyclotron with Bainbridge leading to Ph.D.; World War II years at MIT Radiation Laboratory leading to NMR work with Pound, Torrey and Bloembergen; description of 100,000 volt storage battery in the basement of Lyman Laboratory.
Edward Mills Purcell (1912-1997), an American physicist who shared the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for his independent discovery (published 1946) of nuclear magnetic resonance in liquids and in solids. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and became an instructor in Physics there until he joined the Radiation Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was organized in 1940. He later became a professor of Physics at Harvard and held the Gerhard Gade University Professorship.
Bainbridge, Kenneth T. (Kenneth Tompkins), 1904-1996.
Black, Newton Henry, 1874-
Bridgman, P. W. (Percy Williams), 1882-1961.
Hall, Edwin Herbert, 1855-1938
Kemble, Edwin C. (Edwin Crawford), 1889-
Lyman, Theodore, 1874-1954.
Purcell, Edward M.
Saunders, Frederick A. (Frederick Albert), 1875-1963.
Van Vleck, J. H. (John Hasbrouck), 1899-1980
Harvard University. Dept. of Physics -- History.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Radiation Laboratory -- History.
Nuclear magnetic resonance -- Research -- History.
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Oral histories. aat
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Sopka, Katherine Russell interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA