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HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON
January 27, 1903-August 26, 1961
BY JESSE L. GREENSTEIN
HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON, one of the most original
workers in relativity and cosmology, was born to
George Duncan Robertson and Anna McLeod in Hoquiam,
Washington, January 27, 1903. He (lied of a pulmonary em-
bolism, after injury in a minor automobile accident, on
August 26, 1961. To his many friends he was, and still is,
"Bob," a warm memory of a goocl and great man, a patriot,
and a scientist. At the height of his scientific productivity in
1939, he turned his attention to the military application of
science ant! mathematics. He never fully cut his ties to such
national and international service. He served both as Chair-
man of the Defense Science Board and as Foreign Secretary
of the National Academy of Sciences, in his last year, while
still lecturing on general relativity as Professor of Mathe-
matical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. His
public service may have recluced his scientific output, but his
two lives together made him a complete and remarkable man,
both admirer! and lovecI.
On his death in 1961, DetIev Bronk sent the following
message to Bob's wife Angela:
Distinguished scientist, selfless servant of the national interest, coura-
geous champion of the good and the right, warm human being, he gave
343
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
richly to us and to all from his own great gifts. We are grateful for the years
with him. We mourn the loss of his presence but rejoice in the legacy of his
wisdom and strength.
BEGINNINGS
His family was middIe-cIass, ant! his father, clescended
from a Scottish family of MarylancI, became a well-Ioved
county engineer, builcling bridges in a wide area of rural
Washington. His mother, also of Scottish descent, attended
Johns Hopkins and became a nurse. She was widowed ant!
left with five children. Bob and his father hac! been very close,
ant! Bob remained close to his MacLeoc3 grandmother. Bob,
only fifteen, was the oldest. Bob's mother became the local
postmistress and was active in politics. Although Bob worked
to help his mother support the family, he graduated from the
University of Washington in 1922 and took a master's degree
in 1923. All the children attencled the University. He lived in
a small lumber town, Monteseno, somewhat excluded by
work from the normal youthful fun of university life. But in
that same year, 1923, he married Angela Turinsky of Sand-
point, Idaho, the daughter of a captain in the Austrian Army
who was by then a landscape architect in Idaho. She was born
in Budapest, worked her way through the Idaho State
Normal School, ant! hac] taught in a one-room schoolhouse
before she became a student of philosophy and psychology at
the University of Washington.
Bob's studies soon turner] from engineering to
mathematics ant} physics under the strenuous influence of
the mathematician E. T. Bell ant! the University of Wash-
ington physicists. His relation with Bell was, ant] remained, a
stormy one. Bell pressed him to take a graduate course by
correspondence from the University of Chicago and helped
him to fins! his real challenge by urging him to enter graduate
work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
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HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON
345
After a few years of Bob's Caltech career, Robert A. Millikan
brought his teacher, Bell, to Pasadena from Washington.
Throughout their lives, ant! in spite of intense anc! clashing
personalities, the relationship between them was deep. In his
old age and illness, Bell was cared for daily by Angela ant}
Bob, until Bell moved to his son's hospital. (Taine Bell was a
physician in Watsonville, California.)
CAREER POSITIONS
From 1927 to 1929, Bob held the position of Assistant
Professor of Mathematics. Between 1929 ant! 1947 he was
Assistant, Associate, and then full Professor of Mathematical
Physics at Princeton, with a sabbatical in 1936 at Caltech.
After World War IT, he became Professor of Mathematical
Physics at Caltech (1947-1961~. But as early as 1939, under
the urging of Richard Tolman, he began to concern himself
with what later became Divisions of the National Defense
Research Committee ant! the Office of Scientific Research
and Development (OSRD) (} 94~1943~. He was Scientific
Liaison Officer of the Lonclon Mission of the OSRD (1943-
1946) and Technical Consultant to the Secretary of War. In
1945 he was Chief of the Scientific Intelligence Advisory
Section of the Allied Forces Supreme Headquarters. He
receiver! the Medal of Merit in 1946 for his contributions.
From 1950 to 1952 he was Director of the Weapons Systems
Evaluation Group for the Secretary of Defense, while con-
tinuing to teach relativity at Caltech. Another stay in Europe,
as Scientific Advisor to the NATO Commander, occupied
1954 to ~ 956. After returning to Caltech he was Chairman of
the Defense Science Board and member of the President's
Scientific Advisory Committee. The strength of mind and
bocly this career required was matched by his versatility. His
wit, kindness, ant! ability to cleat with all kinds of people
survived the strain of these and the many other responsibili-
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
ties now buried in the history of the enlistment of science in
the art of war. ~ will discuss his scientific career separately,
but when we see that most of his publications considerably
predate our entry into the war, we must recognize how great
a loss to science was his career of public service.
MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS, AND THE UNIVERSE
Robertson's scientific contributions were largely clerivecI
from his interest and ability in differential geometry and
group theory, which he applied to atomic physics, quantum
physics, general relativity, and cosmology.
In 1925 Bob receiver! his Ph.D. from Caltech and a
National Research Council Fellowship to Gottingen, 1925-
192S, which included a half-year at Munich. As a mathemat-
ical physicist in Germany, he met D. Hilbert, R. Courant, K.
Schwarzschilcl, J. van Neumann, E. Wigner, E. Schro(linger,
W. Heisenberg, and A. Einstein, and worked with some of
them. The transition from Bell, Brakel, ant] Utterbeck at the
University of Washington, through Caltech to Gottingen,
meant a transition from engineering through pure mathe-
matics to applications of mathematics in the "new" atomic,
quantum, and relativistic physics. In this pursuit Bob had
energy without bounds and a sense of involvement with the
history of philosophy and science. Although capable of math-
ematical elegance, he worked through in detail solutions of
some of the first classic, difficult problems of relativistic me-
chanics. His scientific work evolved parallel to his career.
Although a student in mathematics, at Princeton he was in
both the physics and mathematics departments. As a Caltech
physicist he advised several generations of observing astron-
omers at the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories on
the critical tests of relativistic cosmology, as had Tolman.
Tolman and Robertson had the clarity of mind that per-
mittect them to translate abstract mathematical concepts into
terms physicists and astronomers could understand.
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HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON
347
At Caltech he hac! a wicle variety of friends such as Paul
Epstein, Graham Lang, Willy Fowler, Tra Bowen, Todor van
Karman, and, naturally, Bell. The early years in Gottingen
and Munich in the great period brought fruition to his gracI-
uate study of differential geometry. Much influencer! by
Wey1, with whom he worked, he translated Weyl's Theory of
Groups and Quantum Mechanics in ~ 93 ~ . His bibliography from
1924 to 1929 includes differential geometry, the theory of
continuous groups, atomic anal quantum physics, and
general-relativistic cosmology. In Gottingen he was a good
enough mathematician to impress Courant anti, to quote
Bob, "even Hilbert." American science and scientists had not
yet attainer! international prestige, but Bob learner] German
well enough for student life and conic! even make a suf-
ficiently elegant German pun to be printed in Simpl?c~ssimus.
As if this was not enough the student's life, he rollect a barrel
of beer through cobbled Munich streets at 2:00 A.M. and
thus earned a police citation for "disturbing the citizenry."
About this time he became friends with von Neumann ant!
with Martin Schwarzschild (son of the relativist KarI) and
later was instrumental in bringing von Neumann and Wigner
to Princeton University.
Along with physicists like Heisenberg and Max Born, Bob
had a short but important involvement with the growth of
quantum theory, especially in the relation of quantum
mechanics to the theory of groups, their representations, and
commutation operators. The Gottingen period gave him an
excellent knowledge of quantum physics, but relativity theory
and its applications had the stronger, longer impact. At
Princeton he hac! a long contact with Einstein. Bob's realistic
philosophy, in spite of his mathematical skill, made him skep-
tical of those who "thought they conic! invent the universe out
of their own head." Bob loved mathematics mainly for its
application to physical problems.
In relativity he found his life work. He lectured on it for
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
years; ~ have seen and studied some of his lecture notes,
continually revised, modernized, and made more elegant.
Pages of a detailed derivation in colored ink were refined to
a few lines. One of his last students, Thomas W. Noonan,
prepared these notes as a book, Relativity and Cosmology, pub-
lished in ~ 968. His discovery of the (first order) theory of the
linear cosmological recishift dates from 1928. The creators of
special and general relativity theory were faced not only by an
immediate hostile reception, but also by a fundamental
uncertainty intrinsic to the theory. Its application to the
enormous real universe (of which our knowledge was and still
remains so limited), required simplifications. Large-scale
homogeneity and isotropy of the unknown are postulates.
Progress requires some postulate of the uniformity of the
universe of matter and space-time, called the "cosmological
principle." A possible nonzero cosmological constant, which
Einstein introduced as a complication into the field equa-
tions, took the form of a cosmic repulsion of unknown
magnitude. In the theory of gravitation, the interaction of
matter with the geometry of space occurs in the form of
singular points (matter) imbecIded in a curved space-time
whose metric properties are to be determined. The propa-
gation of a photon in this is along a minimal path, a geodesic.
The solution for an empty universe conic! be static (W. cle
Sitter). In 1928 and 1929 Robertson clevelope(1 fully the "pos-
tulate of uniformity" so as to obtain the complete family of
line-elements from the theory of continuous groups in
Riemannian space. These Robertson-Walker cosmological
spaces are still fundamental; A. G. Walker rediscovered them
in 1936, and W. Mattig studied their further consequences in
1957 and 1958. These metrics have a line-element and a
geometry which is homogeneous and isotropic in space but
which changes in time at a rate to be determinec! from physi-
cal considerations rather than symmetry arguments.
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HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON
349
The early years of relativistic cosmology were marked by
a great uncertainty: was the universe static or expanding
(W. de Sitter, Hermann Weyl, A. Friedman, the Abbe G.
Lema~tre, K. SchwarzschilcI)? With a nonzero cosmological
constant the universe may be stationary but is not static.
Dynamic (expanding) universes, with zero cosmological con-
stant, were possible ant! could be finite or infinite, ant! of
positive or negative curvature. Knowledge, however, is
limited to a sphere of finite radius; i.e., there is an event
horizon. The Review of Modern Physics article in ~ 933 is a
classical presentation of the problem ant! its solutions. With
the assumed overall uniformity, Robertson's line-element de-
pencis on the local behavior of matter. "This rawest of all
possible approximations may be considered as an attempt to
set up an ideal structural background on which are to be
superimposer! the local irregularities due to the actual clistri-
bution of matter and energy in the actual worm." The
detailed! working out of the consequences requires the close
interplay of mathematics ant! physics. In 1933 he solved the
field] equations using the cosmological principle and mathe-
matical ingenuity. His exact solution of the two-body prob-
lem, including the advance of the perihelion of an eccentric
planetary orbit, has stood the test of time.
The final observational tests of Robertson's expressions
have not yet been made in the larger universe. Such cosmo-
log~cal tests (by AlIan Sandage and others) are major goals in
the observation of galaxies, radio galaxies and quasars by the
largest raclio and optical telescopes. The first observational
test involves the possible nonlinearity (after suitable correc-
tion) of the relation between the apparent brightness and
redshifts. At present, other less practical tests involve the
number of objects at a given brightness (the number-flux
relation found by radio astronomers) and the apparent-
diameter-redshift relation, all produces! by non-Euclidean
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
departures from the metric. For successful application, the
evolution of brightness and size of galaxies in earlier phases
of their history (at the "Iook-back time") is needed. For the
deceleration parameter, nonlinear effects couic3 appear sig-
nif~cant at observable values of the redshift when we
unclerstand all evolutionary effects.
Robertson's interest in the prediction of these effects led
him (1928) to predict a linear redshift-apparent magnitude
(i.e., brightness) relation and even to plot the first such dia-
gram from the sparse available data. Edwin Hubble, in 1929,
inclependently discovered this relation, central to the obser-
vational approach to cosmology. Later followecl cooperation
between Tolman anct Hubble in the early days of the observa-
tion of the expanding universe. With the lOO-inch telescope
and ordinary galaxies, Hubble was active when the observa-
tions reached out to 13 percent redshift; Milton Humason
founc! objects at 20 percent, with the 200-inch. In 1956
Robertson took an active interest in the discussion of the
redshift results of Humason, Nicholas Mayall, and Sanciage
at Mount Wilson, Palomar, and Lick. The discoveries of radio
astronomy further enIarge(1 horizons, and a galaxy at 46
percent re(lshift was found by R. Minkowski. Galaxies to over
60 percent redshift have since been cletectecI. Sandage and
others are searching for still more distant galaxies. The qua-
sars (perhaps themselves symbols of a relativistic collapse or
singularity) have been traced to over 350 percent redshift,
but seem too variable in intrinsic luminosity to be as useful in
determining cosmological parameters.
In 1953, Bob's paper (discussing tests of cosmology on an
"elementary" level characteristically issued from the Califor-
nia Institute of Technology and Supreme Headquarters
Allied Powers in Europe. When Bob was working in
Washington and Paris and also teaching in Pasadena, he still
discussec} consequences of evolutionary changes and pro-
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HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON
351
posed new tests of cosmolog~es and the still very weak
eviclence for nonlinearity in the brightness-redshift relation
with observers at Mount Wilson and Palomar.
The complexity of the evolution of the brightness and
colors of stars is compoundec! in predicting the global bright-
ness and color of a hundred billion stars, as they are born ant!
evolve. Galaxy observations look back halfway in time to the
"beginning," and quasars to 90 percent. When the universe
was younger and denser, galaxies probably interacted more,
i.e., have not always been closed systems but may have grown
in mass. The stellar part of galaxy evolution can be modelecI,
but the mocle! for galaxy growth is new and only partly
studied. A major novelty in observational cosmology that
wouIcl have given Bob a special pleasure is the raclio-
frequency discovery of the 2°7 K all-pervading isotropic,
background radiation, greatly redshiftec! evidence of the cos-
mic fireball soon after the beginning. This radiation was
implicit in the work of Bob's friends, the Abbe Lema~tre, ant!
George Gamow; Gamow, R. A. Alpher, anti Robert Herman
predictec! a nearly correct value, but it then seemed
unobservable. The other major problem that has surfaced in
relativity is the existence of singularities, discussed by Karl
Schwarzschild. Now we are beginning with some confidence
to study less-than-cosmic-scale singularities black holes—by
their effect on nearby matter. Galaxies, quasars, globular
clusters, ant! even stars seem to be scenes of violent energy
releases connected with fall into a singularity. Such complica-
tions make the straightforward answer to the "cosmological
question" more remote, but present fascinating byways. A
central question for observational cosmology is whether the
second-orcler term in the expansion is positive, zero, or nega-
tive. This depends fundamentally on the density of matter; if
the expansion is to be stopped, we must find some twenty
times the matter that we now know. If the origin of inertia is
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
the existence of an external universe, the latter must also be
more massive than we think. Theoretical general relativity
and cosmology are in full flower (partly based on the evi-
dence of the violence of events) and in many areas still rest on
Robertson's work. Among his unpublished works Noonan
lists: rigid body motion in special relativity, a study of Godel's
model, orbits around a variable mass, oscillation through a
Schwarzschild singularity, ant! second-order plane gravita-
tional waves.
Robertson's attention was not limited to tests of general
relativity at the cosmological level. He was equally interested
in solar-system tests of general relativity. Following the 1922
work of Arthur Eciclington, no one had more to do in the
early clays than Robertson with developing a so-called "pa-
rametrization" of the spherically symmetric geometry about
a center of attraction, to test general relativity by comparing
its predictions with those of conceivable alternative theories
of gravitation. In contrast to the line-element derived by Karl
Schwarzschild from Einstein's standard general relativity for
this geometry, Robertson analyzed a generalization of this
geometry characterized by three disposable parameters. In
Robertson's time ant! subsequently, and especially actively
today, with the help of satellites and radar limits of greater
and greater stringency are being placed on the (departures of
these three parameters from their Einstein values. One type
of test has to do with the advance of the perihelion of an
eccentric planetary orbit, especially the advance of the peri-
helion of Mercury. A seconc! has to do with a precession of
the local inertial frame of a small body in free orbit arounc!
the sun; this precession is predicted! to have approximately
three times the Newtonian value. It could be measurer! by a
gyroscope in an artificial satellite. A third conceivable depar-
ture from Einsteinian predictions can be tested by the gravi-
tational redshift of the photons of a light-ray. The accuracy
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HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON
355
expansion; and another seconcI-orcler term representing the
space curvature.
In this memoir ~ have not attempter! to separate Bob's
contributions at Princeton from those at Caltech. His greatest
contributions to general relativity were made at Princeton
University, and his greatest impact on astronomy at Caltech.
~ first met him when ~ was a Harvard graduate student at-
tending his series of lectures at the Harvard College Observa-
tory summer school in 1937. The lectures were unforget-
table, as was his personality. One hot summer Sunday my
wife and ~ managed to buy him bathing trunks still many
inches too small for his massive frame. He talked our way into
a private beach club on the North Shore. There we enjoyed
a picnic, drinking wine which was a sudden gift from new-
found friends. Bob later invited us to Princeton, where like so
many people my wife and ~ were immersed in the Robertson
household, near-neighbors of whom were the Johnny von
Neumanns, and others of the influx of scientists from HitIer's
Europe. Professor Hubert Alyea of Princeton recalls one
such evening party at the Robertson home where Herman
Weyl, John Wheeler, and Eugene Wigner were present, and
the conversation turned to the analogies and differences
between computers and brains. As the talk went on, van
Neumann got more interested in analyzing the philosophy of
a computer. When the party broke up at a late hour and he
said goodbye, he stated that he was going to look into the
matter further. That was the beginning of a famous chapter
in history. Bob's distaste for pretense made parties with such
stars comfortable for a graduate student and wife. Angela
was full of stories about her work for the office of the over-
seer of the poor in the city of Princeton and as referee for the
juvenile court. She has always remained enormously inter-
estecl in people.
Bob took me to see Einstein. ~ completely failed, however,
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to communicate my small observational discovery about gal-
axies to that great, kind man. He shook his head and said the
equivalent of "very complicated." It was in this important
sense that Bob's approach clifferec! from that late phase of
Einstein's work. Things might be complicated but he would
work them through.
He had become close friends with van Neumann ant] a
diverse group from Moe Berg to Solly Zuckerman, Stanislaus
Ulam, and Todor van Karman. An evening might be spent
creating limericks or variants of known limericks ant! telling
stories about the struggle between mathematicians and en-
g~neers. Bob once said, "I left Princeton because someone
came better at limericks than I." He taught engineering
mathematics, probably betraying both his pure-mathematics
and his engineering colleagues, but his students gave him a
bottle of Teacher's Scotch at his last lecture.
In 1947 Bob and Angela renewed our friendship by lend-
ing us their apartment in the Athenaeum (and a bottle of
Scotch), when we came to see Caltech. He told me ~ should set
up a department of astronomy, in connection with the com-
pletion of the Palomar 200-inch telescope. ~ obeyed.
We came to Caltech when Bob seemed! nearly free from
his responsibility to the military and to the nation. He hac!
been electecl to the National Academy of Sciences in ~ 951 and
Foreign Secretary of the Academy in 1958. In spite of his
difficult war experiences, he had cieveloped a number of
close friendships with Europeans, friendships which server!
him well after the war and in his position as Foreign Secre-
tary. He tracled birthday poems in German with Albrecht
UnsoIc! of Kiel. Sir Solly Zuckerman was a frequent visitor
from Englanc} to the house in Sierra Madre. Bob understood
European university and scientific life and worked to rebuild
it as Science Advisor to NATO. His service to the Academy is
memorialized by the H. P. Robertson Memorial Fund, estab-
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HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON
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fished in 1962 by a group of personal friends and companies
he advised. The fund is used for a lecture on any topic, at the
Academy meeting, every third year. The first Robertson
lecture was, suitably, by John Wheeler, of Princeton, on rela-
tivity and geometry. DetIev Bronk gave an eloquent personal
tribute. The next by Paul Doty, of Harvard, on "The Com-
munity of Science in the Search for Peace" was one that Bob
would have enjoyed, on a topic to which he had given his life.
WORLD WAR II AND SCIENCE
The Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics spon-
sored a symposium on cosmology and relativity in his mem-
ory in 1962. A letter from General Lauris Norstad, Supreme
Allied Commander, Europe, in 1962 is quoted in A. H.
Taub's memoir in the Journal of the Society of Industrial and
Applied Mathematics (10:741-50~.
Dr. Robertson had a remarkable ability for getting to the crux of a
problem and presenting his conclusions in such a manner that all could
understand and appreciate them. He inspired the utmost confidence in all
those who were privileged to work with him, and after his departure we
frequently had occasion to call for his advice and assistance which was
always forthcoming, frequently at great personal inconvenience and sacri-
fice. His contribution to the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization was noteworthy and reflected his deep dedication to the
ideals of the Free World.
We at SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe] feel that
we have lost a true friend and are most grateful for what your society is
doing to keep his memory alive.
The great variety of national affairs to which Bob devoted
so much of his life after 1938 is hard to describe; the military
history of the contribution of science to World War IT and the
relation between British ant! U. S. operations research and its
aftermaths have not been written. He received the Presiden-
tial Medal for Merit in 1946 for "solving complex technical
problems in the fields of bomb ballistics, penetrations and
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
patterns, and enemy secret weapons." Sir Solly Zuckerman
mentioned Bob's work in England with R. V. tones on
scrambling racier beams and beacons. Bob was deeply in-
volved with British colleagues in understanding the V-2 at-
tacks and with the effectiveness (or lack of it) of large-scale
strategic bombing on military procluction. In spite of his ap-
parent ease and self-conficlence, those important issues
placed severe stress on what, underneath the jolliness, was a
sensitive, temperamental, anc! humane personality.
In addition, he had a warmth centered on a long, roman-
tic, ant! happy family life. Continuing her studies in philoso-
phy when she was with Bob in Germany, Angela had become
a psychological social worker for the city of Princeton ant!
raised their two children, George Duncan, who is a surgeon
in Arizona, and Marietta, wife of Caltech historian Peter Fay.
In spite of the strain of the continual family separations
forced by Bob's activities in Europe and Washington, Angela
was always ready with foocl, ([rink, and wise, goo(1 talk for
Bob's many and varied friends at home in Princeton and later
in Sierra Ma{lre. All became her friends and so remain. There
are now seven grancichilciren.
~ am fortunate in having an outline from Frederick Seitz
of the American side of Bob's career in defense, in the post-
WorId War IT clevelopment of military and basic research,
and of the federal support of science. This phase covered
over twenty-two years, longer than he hac} for his own funda-
mental contributions to science. Since his activities were so
long and complex, ~ quote below Frecl's letter to me (dated
August 27, 1975) with only minor (deletions. As all accounts
of Bob's life and work are, it is a personal, warm recognition
of the fullness of Bob's personality.
I first met Bob Robertson when I went to Princeton for graduate work
in January of 1932. He was already established as a distinguished mathe-
matical physicist, particularly for his work in cosmology. He was widely
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HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON
359
admired among the students as a gifted lecturer. Since we both came from
the West Coast he went out of his way to note my presence in a somewhat
bantering manner. I never worked closely with him on any research prob-
lem and in fact I do not think he ever had any thesis students at Princeton.
As you know he was always somewhat temperamental and could combine
humor with sharp disputations on matters scientific or political when the
spirit moved him. Although he liked to appear hail-fellow-well-met, and
even garrulous at times, later experience suggested to me that he had
strong aspects of the loner. His great forte in physics was mathematical
elegance and, unlike Johnny van Neumann, he rarely dabbled in a quan-
titative way with relatively mundane problems. Back-of-the-envelope cal-
culations were not his style.
I was at the University of Pennsylvania by the time World War II broke
out in 1939. Robertson was one of a small group at Princeton, which
included Harry Smyth and Walker Bleakney, which started work with the
government on problems of conventional ordinance. I was asked to join
them and we began by spending a certain number of days per month
worrying about problems related to the effectiveness of explosives, ballis-
tics and the like. This association eventually grew into Division 2 of NDRC
[National Defense Research Committee] and became headquartered on
the east side of the fountain court on the main floor of the Academy
[National Academy of Sciences].
In the very early war years Bob focused his research attention on the
mathematical theory of explosion damage. He reviewed the rather
voluminous literature available and tried to tie it together. After the fall of
France in 1940, however, he was asked to serve as a liaison scientist with the
U.K. and we saw less and less of him in the United States, although he did
occasionally attend the steering committee meetings of Division 2 chaired
by John Burchard. He was, of course, quite secretive about his official
activities but it was clear that he was deeply involved in most of the impor-
tant scientific issues connecting our government and the U.K. He moved
to the U.K. full time in 1943.
Although I remained on the steering committee of Division 2 through
most of the war, I joined the Chicago division of the Manhattan district in
1943 and gradually saw less and less of the group centered in Washington.
During the winter of 1944-45, when it was clear that the European
phase of the war was nearly over, the Secretary of the Army decided to
establish a field intelligence agency (FIAT) in Europe to study German
technology and I was asked to become part of the staff. Bob had agreed to
head the office and we met in France to pull the organization together. At
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
that time he was in a state near physical and nervous exhaustion since
among his numerous other activities he had headed the intelligence team
which focused on the V-2 problem. Our office, although relatively tiny, was
the focal point for an enormous amount of traffic as scientific intelligence
teams from the U.S. and U.K. surged across Europe. Bob himself was the
principle attraction for many of the visitors.
I returned to the United States at the end of the summer when it
became clear that academic life would begin to get started again but Bob
remained involved in Europe until well into 1946. Although he returned
to Princeton it was clear that his life had been radically changed by the
wartime experience. He continued to accept appointments for special stud-
ies usually at the Secretary's or Chief of Staffs level. Among other things
he helped set up the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group which was advi-
sory to the Chiefs of Staff on matters involving science and technology.
This organization eventually became a component of the Institute for
Defense Analysis. As a sequel to this he spent 1954 and 1955 in Paris as
Scientific Advisor to the Supreme Allied Command in Europe.
Conant, Bush and K. T. Compton had recommended the creation of
the Research and Development Board [RDB] with the Department of
Defense to replace the work of the Office of Scientific Research and Devel-
opment. When it became clear in the mid 1 950's that a large full time staff,
such as the RDB had, was really out of place in the Pentagon, a Defense
Science Board composed of part time advisors and representatives from
various agencies and organizations, including the National Academy of
Sciences, was created to take its place. Bob not only helped in the process
of pulling the DSB together but was its Chairman from 1956 to 1960. I
served on study panels of the DSB. Bob was quite remarkable as a chairman,
but not merely because he had a comprehensive understanding of large
areas of military planning, particularly those involving research and devel-
opment. He was also widely admired as an individual. In a sense he shared
the somewhat unusual type of position both von Neumann and von Kar-
man held in governmental circles. The roster of participants in his day
represented something in the nature of a Who's Who in the appropriate
circuit.
Following Sputnik and the agitation produced by it in the United States,
Bob spent an extended full period in Washington as one of the key White
House advisors, being attached to the PSAC staff.
I was appointed Science Advisor to NATO in 1959 when the head-
quarters were still in Paris. Bob not only came regularly to the quarterly
meetings of the Science Advisory Committee of NATO, but passed through
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HOWARD PERCY ROBERTSON 361
Paris on innumerable missions both for the Department of Defense and
other Washington based agencies. Looking backward I would judge that
the opportunity these jaunts gave him to see many of his old associates was
as much an incentive to travel as was his interest in the problems involved.
At the time I returned from Paris at the end of the summer of 1960, he
declared that he was going to give up his Washington connections and
remain in Pasadena. I am not certain whether he would have been able to
do this to the extent he hoped, but his unfortunate and premature death
closed the book on the issue.
~ WOULD LIKE to thank Mrs. H. P. Robertson and Professor
Frederick Seitz for their kind reminiscences and my wife for
editorial assistance.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
howard percy
