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Button-Shafer, Janice
Oral history interview with Janice Button-Shafer, 2020 Nov 3 & 10, 2021 Jan 20 & Feb 9.
Interview with Janice Button-Shafer, retired American physicist. Button-Shafer recounts her childhood in the Boston area, where her father worked as an engineer. She recalls the influence of her father on her interests in music, math and physics. Button-Shafer discusses her decision to study Engineering Physics at Cornell University, despite it being very uncommon for women to go into science. She discusses her summer jobs at MIT, Cornell Aeronautical Lab and Oak Ridge, as well as her experience writing for The Cornell Engineer magazine. Button-Shafer recounts her Fulbright Fellowship in Germany at the Max Planck Institute in Gottingen, focusing on neutron physics. She reflects on the political landscape during this time and how it affected science in Europe. Button-Shafer then recounts her decision to attend Berkeley for graduate school where she completed her thesis on parity violation while teaching courses such as quantum mechanics. She describes her research at the time at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and SLAC and discusses her work on thermonuclear energy and fusion reactors. She then turns to her move to University of Massachusetts Amherst and her eventual retirement and continuation of work at SLAC. Button-Shafer also talks about her marriage to mathematician John Shafer and the challenges of raising three children, one of whom battled cancer, during her demanding career as a scientist. Throughout the interview, Button-Shafer shares numerous anecdotes about the struggles of being a woman in a male-dominated field, including the discrimination and misogyny she endured throughout her career. She shares many stories of famous physicists she worked with over the years, including Owen Chamberlain, Emilio Segre, Luis Alvarez, Karl Heinz Beckhurts, and Edward Teller. Button-Shafer also shares her passion for the history of physics and relays many of her favorite historical tidbits involving scientists such as Lise Meitner, Marie Curie, Werner Heisenberg, and others. Her love of chamber music and classical music also comes up throughout the interview, as she reflects on her various musical accomplishments.
Janice Button-Shafer is a retired American physicist. She completed her graduate studies at UC Berkeley and studied on a Fulbright Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute in Gottingen, Germany. She conducted research at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and SLAC, and also served on faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Alvarez, Luis W., 1911-1988
Button-Shafer, Janice
Chamberlain, O. (Owen)
Curie, Marie, 1867-1934
Dresselhaus, M. S.
Goldhaber, Sulamith, 1923-1965.
Heisenberg, Werner, 1901-1976
Meitner, Lise, 1878-1968.
Segr,̈ Emilio
Teller, Edward, 1908-2003
Wu, C. S. (Chien-shiung), 1912-1997
Cornell University
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
University of California, Berkeley
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Cyclotrons
Electrical engineering
Nuclear arms control.
Nuclear physics
Parity nonconservation
Quantum theory
Synchrotrons
Women in physics
Interviews. aat
Oral histories. aat
Transcripts. aat
Behrman, Joanna interviewer.
AIP-ICOS
American Institute of Physics. Niels Bohr Library & Archives. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, USA
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