Lee DuBridge | |
|---|---|
 DuBridge in 1950 | |
| Director of theOffice of Science and Technology | |
| In office January 20, 1969 – August 31, 1970 | |
| President | Richard Nixon |
| Preceded by | Donald Hornig |
| Succeeded by | Ed David |
| Chairman of thePresident's Science Advisory Committee | |
| In office 1952–1956 | |
| President | |
| Preceded by | Oliver Buckley |
| Succeeded by | Isidor Rabi |
| 2nd President of theCalifornia Institute of Technology | |
| In office 1946–1969 | |
| Preceded by | Robert Millikan |
| Succeeded by | Harold Brown |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1901-09-21)September 21, 1901 Terre Haute, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died | January 23, 1994(1994-01-23) (aged 92) Duarte, California, U.S. |
| Education | |
| Awards | Vannevar Bush Award(1982) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Variations in the photo-electric sensitivity of platinum (1926) |
| Doctoral advisor | Charles Mendenhall |
| Doctoral students | |
Lee Alvin DuBridge (September 21, 1901 – January 23, 1994) was an Americanphysicist and academic administrator.
DuBridge's early research on thephotoelectric effect produced the standard text on the subject, and at theUniversity of Rochester he built one of the most powerfulcyclotrons in the United States. In 1940,Ernest Lawrence andAlfred Loomis recruited him to direct the newly establishedMIT Radiation Laboratory, which under his leadership grew from a few dozen physicists to a staff of approximately 4,000 and developed over 100 types of microwaveradar for the Allied war effort.[1][2]
After the war DuBridge served as president of theCalifornia Institute of Technology for twenty-three years, overseeing a period of rapid growth in which the campus, endowment, and faculty roughly tripled in size. He held senior science advisory positions under presidentsTruman,Eisenhower, andNixon, and was a prominent defender of academic freedom during theMcCarthy era.
Time featured him on its cover in 1955, calling him "the senior statesman of science."[3]Harold Brown andJohn D. Roberts, in their memoir for theAmerican Philosophical Society, described him as "one of the most influential American scientists of the 20th century."[4]
DuBridge was born on September 21, 1901, inTerre Haute, Indiana. His father held a series of jobs as a YMCA secretary, football coach, and physical education director, and the family moved frequently across Iowa, California, Montana, and Michigan.[5] His mother was a poet and writer who during theDepression wrote verse for greeting cards.[6]
DuBridge enrolled atCornell College inMount Vernon, Iowa, in 1918, supporting himself with a scholarship and the thirty dollars a month he earned as a waiter in a women's dormitory.[6] There he was drawn to physics by his professor O. H. Smith, later a recipient of theOersted Medal for physics teaching.[7] He graduatedPhi Beta Kappa in 1922.[7]
DuBridge then entered theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison, where his first assignment was Arnold Sommerfeld'sAtombau und Spektrallinien, read in the original German underCharles Mendenhall.[7] He received his M.A. in 1924[8] and his Ph.D. in 1926 with a dissertation on thephotoelectric effect in platinum.[9] During his graduate years he also worked a summer atBell Telephone Laboratories with the future Nobel laureateClinton Davisson.[7]
After completing his doctorate DuBridge held aNational Research Council fellowship at Caltech from 1926 to 1928, working underRobert Millikan on the relationship between thermionic and photoelectric emission.[10] He then joinedWashington University in St. Louis as an assistant professor, where he collaborated with Arthur Hughes onPhotoelectric Phenomena (McGraw-Hill, 1932), which became a standard reference in the field for many years.[1][11] A second volume,New Theories of the Photoelectric Effect, followed in 1935.[11] DuBridge spent fifteen years studying photoelectric processes, building all the apparatus required for experiments of increasing precision.[7]
In 1934, at age thirty-three, DuBridge was appointed full professor and chairman of the physics department at theUniversity of Rochester, which had recently been endowed byGeorge Eastman.[12] He brought inFred Seitz andMilton Plesset and helped rescueVictor Weisskopf fromHitler's Europe, making Weisskopf among the department's first Jewish faculty.[13][14]
DuBridge shifted the department's focus towardnuclear physics, leading construction of an 18-inchcyclotron with advice fromErnest Lawrence andCooksey at Berkeley. The team borrowed metal for magnets, obtained electrical equipment without charge, and raised $4,000 from local donors for cash expenses.[13] By 1936 the machine reached 5 MeV and eventually nearly 8 MeV, producing the most powerful proton beam in the United States at that time.[1][13] In 1938, DuBridge was additionally appointed dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.[15]
In the fall of 1940, as theNational Defense Research Committee organized the American response to the European war,Ernest Lawrence and financierAlfred Loomis sought a director for a new microwave radar laboratory to be established at MIT. Lawrence, who had declined the position himself, identified DuBridge on the basis of his demonstrated scientific and administrative abilities.[16][14] On October 15, Lawrence telephoned DuBridge from Loomis's apartment in New York. "I can't tell you about it, but I assure you it's very important," he said.[17] DuBridge took the train that evening and the next day, at a meeting at the Hotel Commodore with Lawrence and Loomis, accepted the post of technical director, a title soon changed to director.[18][17]
DuBridge and Lawrence immediately began recruiting physicists. They visitedLouis A. Turner at Princeton, and DuBridge attended a seminar atIndiana University to sound out researchers includingIsidor Rabi andF. Wheeler Loomis.[18][17] A conference on applied nuclear physics at MIT in late October 1940, attended by some 600 physicists, provided a broader recruiting opportunity. At luncheon meetings at theAlgonquin Club in Boston, hosted by Loomis andKarl Compton, select invitees signed secrecy agreements and received a briefing on the new laboratory's mission.[19][17] By mid-December 1940 the Laboratory consisted of about 30 physicists, three guards, two stockroom men, and one secretary.[20]
The Radiation Laboratory grew rapidly under DuBridge's direction. By early 1942 it had roughly 500 employees but needed, by DuBridge's estimate, to expand sixfold to fulfill its expanding mission of research, engineering development, small-scale production, field installation, and training.[21][22] To manage this growth DuBridge devised a reorganization in March 1942 that synthesized competing proposals for purely "vertical" (systems-based) and "horizontal" (component-based) structures. The resulting divisional organization grouped related component and research work into divisions while keeping systems groups under single divisional heads. The number of divisions and the scope of their activities were determined not by abstract principles but by the available leadership talent. DuBridge and the Steering Committee identified the "top people" and built the structure around them.[23]
The Laboratory operated with what its official historianHenry Guerlac called "militantly defended autonomy" from both the NDRC and MIT. Guerlac wrote that it "came close to realizing a scientist's dream of a scientific republic, whose only limitation was the supply of scientists."[24] At its peak the Laboratory employed approximately 4,000 scientists and engineers, with an annual budget of $50 million, and developed over 100 types of microwave radar.[1][2] Its products included theSCR-584 gun-laying radar, airborne bombing radars such asH2X, theLORAN navigation system, and theMEW early-warning set.[2] DuBridge managed an unprecedented partnership between civilian scientists and the armed services, coordinating research with industrial production across hundreds of subcontractors and dispatching field teams to combat theaters around the world.[25][1]
DuBridge's leadership style was characterized by contemporaries as understated and cooperative. He later summarized his own contribution as "largely administrative" and claimed not to have understood the complex electronic circuitry involved, though his colleagues credited his enthusiasm, clarity, and personal influence.[26] Brown and Roberts called the Radiation Laboratory "the first laboratory that could be described as 'big science' by present-day standards," and DuBridge's management of it established a model for subsequent large-scale partnerships between civilian science and the military.[1][22]
DuBridge commuted to Washington almost weekly to coordinate with the military services and the NDRC.[3] He was instrumental in establishing a regular transatlantic exchange of radar expertise with Britain, building on the foundations laid by theTizard Mission.[27] The Laboratory operated overseas branches that grew substantially as the war progressed: theBritish Branch of the Radiation Laboratory, headquartered near theTelecommunications Research Establishment atGreat Malvern, expanded to roughly 100 workers after D-Day, and a small Australian branch provided microwave expertise to GeneralDouglas MacArthur's forces in the Pacific.[28]
DuBridge himself flew to Europe in 1943, 1944, and 1945.[3] In early 1945, a few months before Germany's surrender, he toured the continent behind the advancing Allied lines. Flying into the Reich on military transports, he passed over cities that the Laboratory's radars had helped to flatten, and visited the recently liberatedBuchenwald concentration camp.[29] On this trip he laid plans for closing the Paris and British Branch operations while the war against Japan continued.[29] He also visitedLos Alamos, where he had close friends among the physicists he had released from the Radiation Laboratory as its mission wound down, and saw the first nuclear weapons.[26]
After thesurrender of Japan, DuBridge addressed the assembled staff in August 1945. "Few, if any of us, will ever again have the experience of working in such an exciting, fast-moving undertaking," he told them. He concluded by noting the responsibilities of the atomic era: "We must see that in coming generations science serves to better the condition of mankind and not lead to its destruction."[30] The Laboratory closed in an orderly fashion, with its responsibilities transferred to industry, and its staff of 4,000 dispersed to universities and companies.[3] The Rad Lab eventually counted among its alumni and consultants ten Nobel laureates, nearly as many university presidents, and three presidential science advisers.[31]
DuBridge briefly returned to Rochester after the war but found that the passage of time had put him behind in nuclear physics research. Within six months his old acquaintance Max Mason, a Caltech trustee, telephoned to offer him the presidency of the California Institute of Technology.[32] DuBridge accepted and took office in 1946, succeeding Millikan, who had been his mentor two decades earlier. Millikan's official title had been chairman of the executive council; DuBridge became Caltech's first to hold the title of president.[33][1]
DuBridge led Caltech through a period of postwar expansion sustained by heavy federal support for science. During his twenty-three-year tenure the campus grew from 30 acres to 90, the endowment from $17 million to over $140 million, the faculty from 260 to 550, and the number of buildings from 20 to more than 60.[34][35] He oversaw the dedication of the200-inch Hale Telescope onPalomar Mountain and the conversion of theJet Propulsion Laboratory from a military rocketry center into the premier facility for unmannedspace exploration.[1][34] He recruitedRobert Bacher, his former Radiation Laboratory colleague, as chairman of physics, mathematics, and astronomy; Bacher later became provost.[1] Under DuBridge's presidency Caltech attractedRichard Feynman andMurray Gell-Mann in theoretical physics,Max Delbrück andRoger Sperry in biology, and maintained its strength in chemistry underLinus Pauling and in low-energy nuclear physics underWilliam Fowler andC. C. Lauritsen.[1][36]
DuBridge was a vocal defender ofacademic freedom during theMcCarthy era. When several Caltech trustees joined calls to fire Linus Pauling, who had been denied a passport over allegations of Communist Party membership, DuBridge and Bacher stood their ground. DuBridge offered to resign rather than exert pressure on Pauling; the trustees instead resigned.[37] In 1954 he testified in Washington on behalf ofJ. Robert Oppenheimer during thesecurity hearing that resulted in the revocation of Oppenheimer's clearance. DuBridge later called it "a rigged hearing" and said he "regarded the charges against him as trivial, if not false."[38][39]
DuBridge's involvement in science policy extended across three decades and three presidential administrations. He served on the Scientific Advisory Board of theU.S. Air Force (1945–1949) and the Naval Research Advisory Committee (1945–1951) before PresidentTruman appointed him in 1951 to the newly createdPresident's Science Advisory Committee.[40] PresidentEisenhower made him chairman the following year, a post he held until 1958.[1][35]
DuBridge had planned to retire from Caltech at sixty-five but remained for a final fundraising campaign. In November 1968 he flew to New York to meet President-electRichard Nixon at theHotel Pierre and agreed to serve aspresidential science advisor.[38] Harold Brown and John D. Roberts noted that DuBridge was "somewhat out of place among the hardball political operatives of the Nixon Administration" and did not enjoy the access to the president that some predecessors had.[1] He resigned after eighteen months. DuBridge later told friends he found the Nixon administration lacking in interest in science and technology because of their "only slight political importance."[41] In reluctantly accepting the resignation, Nixon praised DuBridge for his "skill, wisdom, and seasoned judgment."[39]
As an undergraduate at Cornell College, DuBridge met Doris May Koht; they married on September 1, 1925.[42] They had two children, Barbara Lee (born 1931) and Richard Alvin (born 1933).[42] Doris died of spinal cancer in November 1973, after forty-eight years of marriage.[41]
In 1974 DuBridge married Arrola Bush Cole, the widow of a Cornell College classmate who had served as president of the college for seventeen years.[41] During his undergraduate years DuBridge had once asked Arrola out, but she had refused, saying they had not been properly introduced; the two families had remained in periodic contact over the decades.[43] They honeymooned aboard theQueen Elizabeth 2 on its first round-the-world cruise.[44]
DuBridge died ofpneumonia on January 23, 1994, at a retirement home inDuarte, California. He was 92.[35] Arrola died later the same year.[45]
DuBridge served on boards for:RAND Corporation (1948–1961),National Science Board (1950–1954),Western College Association (president, 1950–1951),[46]Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1951–1957), Air Pollution Foundation (1953–1961), Institute for Defense Analysis (1956–1960),Rockefeller Foundation (1956–1976), National Science Board (vice chair, 1958–1964), board of governors for the Los Angeles Town Hall (1959–1963), Edison Foundation (1960–1968),KCET (1962–1968),Huntington Library (1962–1968), andNational Educational Television (1964–1968).[40]
DuBridge received twenty-eight honorary degrees from institutions includingColumbia University, theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison, and theUniversity of Rochester.[47]
Oral history interviews at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | 2nd President of theCalifornia Institute of Technology 1946–1969 | Succeeded by |
| Government offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chairman of thePresident's Science Advisory Committee 1952–1956 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Director of theOffice of Science and Technology 1969–1970 | Succeeded by |
