True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen: The Only Winner of Two Nobel Prizes in Physics (2002)

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7 Engineering for National Defense T he news that crackled across the radio was not good in June 1941. Bardeen listened as he drove across Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and the Appalachian Mountains on his way to Washington, D.C. He was not happy to be heading off to the nation’s capital, leaving Jane and Jimmy behind, but he considered it his patriotic duty. More than a year earlier Jane had written to her mother, “John and I both feel it may be only a short time until this country is involved—heaven forbid—but we certainly couldn’t go on living without protest in a world dominated by Nazis and Commu- nists.” Americans had looked on in fascinated horror as Britain took a brutal pounding from Germany’s Luftwaffe in 1940. By July, Hitler had conquered Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. The only European country still standing firm was Britain. Led by Winston Churchill, the new prime minister, Britain pledged to resist Hitler no matter the consequences. Addressing the nation on May 19, 1940, he proclaimed, “Now one bond unites us all—to wage war until victory is won, and never to surrender ourselves to servitude and shame, whatever the cost and agony must be.” Week after week, month after month, German planes bombed British cities, killing thousands, displacing thousands more, and wreaking havoc on the British economy. But there would be no surrender. British scientists set aside their own research to develop tech- 99 

100 TRUE GENIUS nologies useful in war. British radar allowed intelligence to track enemy planes and mount an offensive, thereby minimizing damage. With its excellent communications system, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) could send its Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes at just the right moment to confront German bombers in the air. The RAF destroyed more than twice the number of German planes that it lost itself. The Battle of Britain was a decisive air victory for Churchill’s forces, but the island nation’s resources were more limited than Germany’s. Then in June 1941 Hitler suddenly gave Britain some breathing space by turning his attention to the east. He unleashed a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt became increasingly certain that the U.S. would have to become involved in the war. He encouraged a shift in public opinion to support interventionism and accelerated the steps that had already begun toward U.S. rearmament. Although many scientists had been isola- tionists, by the time the Nazi Blitzkrieg overran Poland in Septem- ber 1939, the belief that Hitler had to be stopped was widespread. The German-Jewish scientists who had fled to the United States or Great Britain encouraged military preparedness. Einstein, a social- ist and a pacifist, declared publicly that the democracies ought to prepare for German aggression. American aid to the Allied forces, reduced now to Great Britain and the French resistance, flowed freely but informally until March 1941, when the arrangement was formalized by the Lend-Lease program. Federal support for laboratories engaged in military research entered a phase of unprecedented expansion. Vannevar Bush, an MIT professor of electrical engineering, became a crucial link between scientists and the government. On becoming president of the Carnegie Institute of Washington in 1939, he took over the chair of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Based on the NACA model, he and other scientists devel- oped a plan for organizing research within the armed forces and for mobilizing civilian science in the service of the military. Bush gained Roosevelt’s authorization for the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), established in June 1940 to coordinate research with the needs of the army and navy. Through the new organization, Roosevelt released emergency funds for research, but the amounts proved inadequate. In May 1941 Bush secured a commitment from Roosevelt to 

Engineering for National Defense 101 create a more powerful organization funded directly by Congress. The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) could award contracts to universities and industrial laboratories, as well as coordinate their activities with military labs. Bush took charge of the OSRD, while James Conant became chair of the NDRC. Out of these committees grew the government network that coordi- nated America’s wartime research. The Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL), into which Bardeen landed, was part of this network. In 1929 the Bureau of Ordnance’s Mine Laboratory, a small experimental unit founded in 1919 and housed in the Gun Factory of the Washington Navy Yard, was com- bined with the Experimental Ammunition Unit to form the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. Not until the Second World War, however, did the NOL become a prominent research facility. By 1939 the navy was desperate for new technology to defend against the magnetic firing mechanisms of German mines and tor- pedoes, which were devastating supply lines across the Atlantic. This need obliged the Bureau of Ordnance to expand the NOL, which, in January 1942, became an entity separate from the Gun Factory. Bardeen’s call to Washington was part of this expansion. Lynn Rumbaugh had been brought to the NOL by Ralph Bennett, a craggy engineer with whom Rumbaugh had once worked at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. Bennett was at the NOL because he had volunteered as a reserve naval officer after examining a British ship whose magnetic field had been “degaussed” (neutralized). He believed he could improve the degaussing technology. The process involved surrounding a ship with a circular network of coiled cables. High currents generated on board would pass through the cables, turning the coiled system into an electromagnet. By appropriately selecting the current, one could make the ship’s mag- netic field either so strong that mines would explode too far away to cause damage or so small that even nearby mines would not explode. In the summer of 1940 the navy called Bennett to Washington for a six-week assignment, which stretched to seven years, during which, as technical director, he transformed the NOL into a first- rate laboratory. Focused not only on its original agenda of degauss- ing ships but also on more than a hundred related projects, the NOL aggressively recruited scientists and engineers against stiff competition from other laboratories. Bennett recruited Rumbaugh in the fall of 1940. The following spring Bennett and Rumbaugh persuaded Bardeen to join. 

102 TRUE GENIUS The physics chair at Minnesota, Jay Buchta was at first reluc- tant to release Bardeen, because like many American university physics departments, Minnesota’s was struggling to cover the classes of its drafted professors. Bennett and Rumbaugh persuaded Buchta to spare Bardeen for the summer—if Bardeen wanted to go. At first Bardeen resisted leaving his family and his academic life for the grueling work of a military laboratory. Nor had he for- gotten how bored and frustrated he had become during his final months at Gulf. That Jane was expecting a child also worried him. He suspected that if he worked at the NOL for the summer, he would end up staying for at least a year, leaving Jane with the entire burden of Jimmy, Glenis, and the new baby. Salary was another drawback. By hiring civilian scientists for a daily wage on personal service contracts, the navy could recruit technical help more quickly than it could through civil service channels. But the $16 per day contract rate that Bennett initially offered Bardeen did not cover the cost of uprooting the family. When Buchta wrote Bennett that Bardeen was due for a pay increase in the fall, the navy increased its offer to $17 per day. Bardeen finally realized that it could only be a matter of time before he would be drawn into some sort of war work. And he had just the right background for the work at the NOL. In terms of the science, many of the problems being investigated there, including magnetic, pressure, and gravity changes, were related to the pros- pecting work he had done at Gulf. He decided to go. As he had feared, his summer position grew into a one-year leave of absence and eventually into four years of research for the navy. Jane stayed behind with Jimmy, then not yet two, to arrange the family’s relocation. Dragging Glenis to the nation’s crowded and chaotic capital did not appear to be in the child’s best interest. After consulting with the rest of the family, Jane sent her to stay with John’s brother Bill and his wife Charlotte in Green Bay. When Jane told her doctor she would be moving to Washing- ton, D.C., he said, “You can’t have this baby there—it’s not a fit place.” The U.S. Public Health Service had identified the District of Columbia as deficient in health facilities even before the war. Now the influx of wartime workers critically overburdened the city’s hospitals and physicians. John and Jane decided that she should have the baby in Washington, Pennsylvania, where her father practiced medicine and where there was a good hospital. Six months pregnant, Jane packed up their household. With Jimmy 

Engineering for National Defense 103 she boarded the train to Pittsburgh. They were met by Jane’s family, who brought them to her parents’ home. On September 15, 1941, Jane telephoned John to announce the birth of his second healthy son. “Good,” he muttered. “I always liked having a brother.” They named him William, after John’s brother, and called him Billy. By November Jane was ready to travel with the two boys. This time the train ride felt completely different, for they were traveling to be with John. Until then, Bardeen had fended for himself in the District of Columbia, where thousands of men and women had swarmed to contribute to the war effort. Living conditions varied, but no one could avoid the ubiquitous rationing, from gasoline and food to housing. Special two-hour time changes saved lighting expenses. Automobiles crawled along on congested roads, and public trans- portation was inadequate. After a stay in a tiny apartment at 2910 Brandywine, John found a somewhat larger two-bedroom apartment at 3813 W Street S.E. It was part of Fairfax Village, one of many small apartment developments that sprouted up in the city to accommodate the influx of war workers. In an uncharacteristic act of domesticity, John went about fur- nishing the apartment after he received the shipment of household goods Jane had sent from Minnesota. Jane appreciated his effort to arrange furniture, dishes, and linens. When she and the boys ar- rived, they could just move in. The modest apartment felt even smaller when Jane’s sister Betty took up residence with the family after landing a job at National Geographic magazine. She slept on a cot in the boys’ bedroom; the boys slept in bunk beds after Billy outgrew his crib. Built on a reclaimed swamp, Washington, D.C. oozes a sticky, enervating heat in summer. Recalling his office at the NOL, Bardeen called the Navy Yard the “hottest place in Washington.” Technical professionals worked without air-conditioning in crowded labs and offices. If one had the good fortune to work near an open window, the view was most likely a surreal scene of weapons research. Nearly every day cannons fired test rounds that rattled the windows. Bardeen kept his office windows shut to avoid the fumes from a paint shop directly below, rendering his work- place stifling in the summer. The NOL was generally considered one of the more agreeable 

104 TRUE GENIUS military laboratories. R. H. Park, chief physicist at the time Bardeen arrived, singled out the NOL as the one laboratory within the Bureau of Ordnance that was free of such “objectionable condi- tions” as poor access to information, “invidious distinctions” between the higher officers and civilian workers, and “poor esprit de corps.” The NOL also suffered less interference from outside agencies than did other labs. William Anspacher, an engineer in Bardeen’s group, shared a cramped office with John and four or five other physicists. Two desks away, in a different group, but also in the “unaired loft” of the Gun Factory, sat the physicist Charles Kittel, with whom Bardeen struck up a friendship. Kittel and Bardeen would overlap again later at Bell Labs. Bardeen sat at a corner desk facing the wall, often with his feet propped nonchalantly on his desk. Tables crowded the tiny room. Anspacher wondered why Bardeen never complained, because as a supervisor he might have requested more space. Anspacher could not imagine how Bardeen managed to get so much work done. A casual observer “would swear he was sound asleep,” yet he was always alert when he needed to be. To Kittel it appeared that “everything John’s group worked on was done quietly, correctly, and with a strong imagination.” The mathematician David Gilbarg, who worked a few build- ings away, stopped off regularly in Bardeen’s office to discuss tor- pedo design. Gilbarg and his team were building torpedoes about a foot long, scaled to one-twentieth the size of a working torpedo. They tested the scale models by measuring the impact against a wall or by taking high-speed motion pictures of the action in a huge tank of water designed to simulate field conditions. Bardeen’s analytical and pragmatic approach to problems made him a valued member of the NOL staff. He did not hesitate to probe if something perplexed him. He also developed a reputation for answering questions at whatever level the inquirer could under- stand. According to Anspacher, if Bardeen found that his explana- tion was pitched above someone’s head, he would reformulate his answer in progressively simpler terms until his meaning became clear. “There was no intellectual snobbery about him at all.” The members of Bardeen’s group worked on whatever projects required their expertise. For example, they analyzed the feasibility of different mine designs. In one design they studied during the 

Engineering for National Defense 105 summer of 1941, the mine detonated when it detected gravity changes associated with a ship passing above it. The group found the design useless in actual field conditions because the available LaCoste-Romberg gravity meter was not sensitive enough to detect the feeble gravitational fields of ships. A more promising design, which Bardeen analyzed during 1942, involved pressure-sensitive detonation. He also analyzed the target areas of submarines—the projec- tion on a vertical plane of the regions where a submarine’s magnetic field is greater than or equal to the mine’s magnetic sensitivity—as well as the firing areas for particular mines and exploder mecha- nisms. He directed the preparation of a catalogue of ships’ magnetic fields for use in naval planning. His report in August 1942 offered a way to classify the magnetic signatures of various ships, with an eye toward setting mines targeted at particular classes of enemy ships. Bardeen often consulted with experts at other institutions. For example, during March 1942 oceanography problems brought him to New York to speak with scientists at the New York Academy of Sciences and then to Princeton to interview theoretical physicist John Wheeler, who was being considered for recruitment at the NOL. The following month Bardeen traveled to New York to confer about oceanography with scientists at the American Museum of Natural History. His visits to naval stations took him to Newport, Rhode Island; Norfolk and Cape Charles, Virginia; Seattle, Wash- ington; and Mayport, Florida. In May and July 1943 his work on torpedoes brought him to the Westinghouse plant in Sharon, Pennsylvania, where torpedoes were manufactured, and to stations in Seattle, where torpedoes were tested. That summer he also visited Einstein and “spent a very enjoy- able afternoon with him in his study on the second floor of his modest frame house in Princeton.” Einstein had come to the navy with an idea for an induction coil placed inside a torpedo. When a warhead passed under a steel ship, current would be induced in the coil, indicating the presence of the ship. Bardeen reported, “We had thought of the idea but did not pursue it because of the attenuation of the signal by the steel covering of the warhead.” Bardeen proceeded to ask Einstein about this problem. Einstein “suggested using a plastic warhead or a plastic window. He had carried out calculations which indicated that the methods 

106 TRUE GENIUS should be feasible.” Bardeen was impressed that Einstein “had thought deeply about the problem and had answers to all my ques- tions.” The NOL’s interest in the induction coil mechanism was revived “largely as a result of this conversation.” However, a production model for Einstein’s torpedo could not be built in time for it to have wartime use. These forays offered Bardeen interesting breaks from his routine, but they could not quell his uneasy feeling that he was just marking time at the NOL. He was weary of working on projects that were not his own and chafed to return to fundamental physics. On top of that, the chaotic and inflexible nature of the military bureaucracy rattled his nerves. He much preferred working in groups smaller than those typically found at the NOL. And he liked focusing on only one or two problems at a time. As a supervisor he was forced to manage dozens of people working on many different projects. Bardeen’s assignments and titles changed several times during his four years at the NOL. When he first arrived, he headed a group working on degaussing methods under Rumbaugh. Next he was put in charge of the Field Analyst section of the Mine Counter- measures Unit, where he and his group of twenty-one men analyzed data on ships’ fields. In the fall of 1942 the Research Division under- went a major overhaul, in which the focus of its Mine Counter- measures Unit (renamed the Mine Research Unit) tightened to deal only with underwater phenomena and degaussing. Bardeen headed one of five sections in Mine Research, with fifty-one men under his direction. The work in the Mine Research Unit was monotonous for a highly trained scientist. The unit also faced personnel problems because its technical people were constantly siphoned off into Mine Development. Adding to the frustration, the results of the Mine Research Unit typically did not interest any naval officer in a posi- tion to develop them. Many disgruntled employees left at the earliest opportunity. Bardeen also struggled with the inaccessibility of naval officers who could authorize research programs. As the layers of bureau- cracy thickened with time, Bardeen complained to Jane that he found it difficult to accomplish anything because every detail had to pass through a tedious process of approval. “If he wanted to send work, it had to go up the chain, stopping at every place. Then it had to come back down again. Took forever.” 

Engineering for National Defense 107 In a further reorganization that fall, the Mine Research Unit became simply the Research Division, with two large subdivisions— Engineering and Influence Field Measurements—formed to over- see the work of the smaller units. Bardeen became head of the Influence Field Measurements Division and was now responsible for ninety-three people working under his supervision in Acoustic, Magnetic, Graphical Analysis, and Detection units. He planned and directed the NOL’s research program on influence field measure- ments. Teams in his division collected and interpreted data for applications in devices such as mine firing units, torpedo exploders, and depth charges. The navy’s policy of compartmentalization was one reason for Bardeen’s unhappiness at the NOL. The navy considered it less of a security risk if each person worked without knowledge of other parts of the same problem, or of the project as a whole. Parceling out pieces of a project to different researchers meant that each would work on an isolated fragment of a larger problem. From the scientists’ viewpoint, this policy destroyed effective collaboration and resulted in false starts, repetition, and a good deal of misunder- standing. Not only did compartmentalization make the work more difficult, it reduced much of it to sheer tedium. The situation improved slightly in December 1942, when the NOL shifted its strategy from blind problem solving to “project orientation.” A project manager was assigned to each new incom- ing project. Then an administrative group would put together a team whose members would be the most qualified to work on the job as a whole, regardless of their positions within the hierarchy. Bardeen’s security clearance required him to keep technical details from anyone without an official “need to know,” even Jane. Not discussing his work at home was not a hardship for John. Like most of his colleagues, he welcomed the relief from shoptalk dur- ing his all-too-brief time at home. Many of the government scien- tists and engineers worked from early morning to late evening, six or seven days a week. Bardeen averaged fifty-three hours per week while at the NOL. John’s frustrations were amplified when he suddenly gave up smoking, not for health reasons but because of the difficulty of obtaining cigarettes, which were rationed during the war. He had been in the habit of smoking a pack per day. As Jane refused to let John smoke any of her cigarettes, he began rolling his own using an 

108 TRUE GENIUS inefficient rolling device. The trouble was not worth its limp and leaky products, so he stopped smoking altogether. At one point Bardeen had the chance to leave the NOL and work for the Manhattan Project. In the fall of 1943 both he and Fred Seitz were invited to join Eugene Wigner’s nuclear reactor group at the University of Chicago. Seitz recalled, “Eugene got worried about whether the reactors would hold up under the intense radia- tion bombardment they had in the graphite reactors.” John and Fred discussed their invitation on the train to Chicago. Although tempted, Bardeen eventually decided to turn it down. “John felt he was tied down to Washington,” recalled Seitz. He remembered John mentioning, “kids in school.” Seitz “was free,” however, and spent the next two years working with Wigner on the plutonium reactor. Bardeen thoroughly disliked organizing and supervising the dozens of prima donnas gathered at the NOL. Most of those in his group were accustomed to following their own lines of inquiry. Bardeen hated making them work on problems that were not of their choosing. He could be blunt when necessary, but he did not enjoy it. Years later William Whitmore sent Bardeen some “memories of the day at NOL in 1942 when you asked me if I knew anything about hydrodynamics.” Whitmore had replied to Bardeen, “Not particularly.” Bardeen then handed him the standard text- book, Sir Horace Lamb’s Hydrodynamics (1895), “and said ‘start learning.’” A letter from Bardeen to the chief of the Bureau of Ordnance shows that Bardeen tried at least once to break out of his bureau- cratic straightjacket and terminate his contract. He was not suc- cessful. His restlessness had increased so much that by the summer of 1944 his superiors noticed he was taking less initiative in his assignments. Because his work was unfulfilling, Bardeen’s recreation time meant more to him than ever. In good weather, he tried to hit the links with golf-playing colleagues. On winter evenings, he bowled with the NOL team. Bardeen was “one of the NOL’s low-score golfers and high-score bowlers.” He won a medal for having the highest average on the NOL bowling league. Bardeen’s greatest pleasure came from his family. He often sat with Jimmy or Billy on his lap, reading to them, or catching up on his own reading. Billy memorized one book that he especially loved 

Engineering for National Defense 109 about train engines. “John had to go through it very methodically,” Jane recalled. If he missed even a word, “he’d get scolded.” Not all the family news was happy. In December 1942 the Bardeens learned that Helen had passed away. As executor, John administered her small estate to preserve it for Glenis. Bill and Charlotte sent Glenis home to her father in Canada. On another family front, unbeknownst to John, his younger brother was devel- oping a drinking problem. Tom often visited John while on busi- ness travel to Washington, D.C. Security regulations prevented them from discussing their war-related work with each other; John learned later that Tom had modified Gulf’s airborne magnetometer to help detect enemy submarines. In the fall of 1943 Jane discovered that a third child was coming. This time everyone hoped for a girl. Jane’s brother Jim, a medical officer stationed in India, wrote, “I am thinking of you constantly and hoping it may be a girl.” In the spring, taking both boys, Jane traveled again to Washington, Pennsylvania, for the birth. With her family nearby she could rest assured that someone would look after the boys while she was in the hospital. She also wanted the best possible medical care, for at thirty-seven she knew she was at a greater risk of having pregnancy-related problems. “Is she pretty?” John asked when Jane phoned on April 25, 1944, to announce their new daughter. “Not very,” said Jane. The baby had come without much fuss, but her head had been bruised during the delivery. She quickly recovered. They named her Eliza- beth Ann and soon were calling her Betsy. John wrote a note to Billy, admonishing him to “help your mommy take care of Betsy.” Billy had been sick, and John tried to jolly him up with news of one of his D.C. playmates. Skipper had gotten “his hair cut short so that it sticks straight up in the air.” John explained to Billy that his baby sister would take a while to grow into a playmate for him, but before long she would “learn to smile and roll over and sit up,” and that soon she would be able to “walk and talk like other children. . . . Aren’t you lucky to have such a nice baby sister and such a nice big brother?” He told Billy that he would “be glad when you and mommy and Jimmy and Betsy are all home again, and you can do tricks with me.” On the tenth of June, John traveled to Pennsylvania “to help bring the family back.” Once they were all at the apartment, Betsy was installed in a crib in her parents’ bedroom. John took special 

110 TRUE GENIUS delight in his new daughter. Jane suspected that had she had a third boy, she would have been “invited to have another child.” As the war drew to a close in the spring of 1945, Bardeen planned his return to academic life. In May he wrote to Jay Buchta, who was still the chair of Minnesota’s physics department, and proposed returning with a salary higher than the $3,200 he had been earning when he left. “With my present family responsibilities, I don’t see how I could get by on that salary.” Arguing that “my experience here will be of great benefit to my teaching,” he asked for a raise and explained that “my value to the University will be at least as great as if I had stayed on and obtained the normal salary increases.” He also mentioned that he had been approached by Bell Labs regarding a position in solid-state research. Bardeen was bitterly disappointed by Buchta’s response. Although the physics department enthusiastically supported his request for a raise, university administrators could only be per- suaded to raise his salary to $4,000. It was considerably higher than his former Minnesota salary, but not comparable to what Bell was offering. According to Al Nier the university did not yet recognize the importance that solid-state physics would soon have in the nation’s economy. Certain industries were now willing to invest heavily in basic science, which had received a boost of confidence during World War II because of the dramatic success of radar and atomic weapons. Physicists of Bardeen’s caliber were in great demand. Solid-state physics was growing rapidly. The field mushroomed after the war with the advent of new research materials, like pure samples of silicon and germanium, or pure mercury isotopes, and new research technologies, such as nuclear magnetic resonance and the helium liquefier developed by Samuel Collins. New sources of funding were attracting many workers to solid-state physics. The field grew so rapidly that in 1947 the American Physical Society added a Divi- sion of Solid State Physics. Bardeen described to Buchta the Bell Labs offer that “Bill Shockley and Jim Fisk have been trying to interest me in”: The plans are to set up a section of about 50 people to work on problems of the solid state, with emphasis on electronic processes in crystals (semi-conductors, varistors, thermistors, etc.), magnet- 

Engineering for National Defense 111 ics, piezo-electricity, and related problems. The research is to be of a fundamental nature, the practical applications being carried out by other groups. It sounds very attractive, but I am doubtful whether really fundamental work can be carried out in an indus- trial laboratory. Mervin J. Kelly, the new executive vice-president, who in 1936 had hired Shockley from MIT, had created the new solid-state department partly in response to the wartime study of crystal detectors. He had noticed that cutting-edge research on semi- conductors was being exchanged freely throughout a network of research institutions that included potential competitors, such as General Electric, Sperry, Westinghouse, Sylvania, and DuPont. “All of this art has been made available to a large sector of the radio industry,” he wrote in 1943. He recognized that Bell Labs would soon have to confront strong competitors armed with state-of-the- art electronics knowledge. Kelly modeled his new solid-state department on wartime labs such as Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, which Kelly had visited toward the end of the war. The semiconductor subgroup to which Bardeen would be assigned was a small unit of the solid-state department. Kelly wanted each of its subgroups to function as a multidisciplinary unit. Bardeen later told an interviewer about Kelly’s vision. “He thought that getting all these people together working would add something more than the individuals could do and I think that turned out to be true.” Bardeen would be the second theorist with Shockley in the semiconductor subgroup. Shockley, the head of the subgroup as well as co-head of the larger solid-state department, needed a theorist who understood surfaces. Bardeen’s doctoral thesis on metallic work functions made him one of the world’s experts in this area. The team would also include two experi- mental physicists, Walter Brattain, John’s old bridge enemy, and Gerald Pearson; a chemist, Robert Gibney; a circuits expert, Hil- bert Moore; and two technicians, Philip Foy and Thomas Griffith. Bardeen learned more about the position when he visited Bell Labs to explore the opportunity on May 19, 1945. Kelly made him a verbal offer, emphasizing that the focus of Bardeen’s work would be on basic research, although there would always be an eye toward practical applications of potential importance to the communica- tions industry. With no teaching load, Bardeen would have twice as much time to devote to basic physics research as at Minnesota. 

112 TRUE GENIUS Bardeen’s formal offer described his position as “Member of Technical Staff associated with our Physical Research Department at our Murray Hill laboratory.” His official charge was “to carry on research work in the physics of the solid state.” The salary—“$550 per month for our normal five-day week,” $6,600 a year—was over 50 percent more than what Minnesota could offer. The letter also stated that the offer was not intended to interfere with war work but rather was meant as a postwar offer. Bardeen was given three months to decide whether he wanted to accept. Six weeks later Bardeen had his decision. “It was a difficult choice to make,” he wrote Buchta on June 11, “because I enjoyed my work and associations at Minnesota, and I like living in a Uni- versity community.” But “BTL appears to offer better opportunity for professional development.” For one thing, the Bell Labs job was in solid-state physics. He said he expected physics at the university to be centered on nuclear physics, a field in which he would be “at a considerable disadvantage competing with those who have been fortunate enough to have worked on nuclear physics during the war.” Bell was also offering ample research support and a generous salary. Remembering how he had had to struggle just to attend an occasional conference during his time at Minnesota, he told Buchta, “It might be a good idea for Minnesota, recognizing its relative iso- lation, to encourage (financially) attendance at meetings.” Bardeen then crafted a carefully worded memorandum to the officer-in-charge of the NOL, Captain W. G. Schindler, asking per- mission to leave the NOL. He explained that a release from mili- tary projects “which have little chance of being of any benefit in the present war” would allow him to apply his talents to research that would “be of greater long-term benefit.” Playing on the con- cern that Germany and Russia might become competitive with the United States in the area of communications technology, he hinted that his research on semiconductors, which “are becoming of increasing importance in both standard frequency circuits and radar,” would be more important for the country’s national secu- rity than his present work at the NOL. “The Navy, being a large consumer of electronic equipment, should be one of the chief beneficiaries of the research program” that he was joining at Bell Labs. He characterized Bell as one of the most important centers in the world for such research, being “far better equipped than any other research organization for fundamental work in these aspects of solid state physics.” 

Engineering for National Defense 113 Noting that he was one of only five or six theoretical physicists in the United States who were well trained in solid-state theory and that “no more will be trained for a long period of time” because of the war’s interruption in the education of physicists, he specu- lated that one reason for Bell’s generous offer was the “very limited supply of qualified personnel” available for solid-state research. He also expressed his concern that his four-year hiatus from research might already have dulled his ability to make first-rate contribu- tions to the new field. “Because of the long hours of work,” he had “not even been able to keep abreast of current developments.” Bardeen wrote Schindler that he “strongly felt that any unnecessary delay in his [Bardeen’s] return to his own field of work should be avoided.” Bardeen also used the opportunity of his resignation to make a gentle plea that the government respect its scientific resources. Because of the war, “the armed services have control of scientific talent in this country.” He said he hoped “this control will be used wisely, and that they will not jeopardize the scientific growth of the country in pursuit of narrow goals.” Rumbaugh, who was still Bardeen’s direct supervisor, rephrased his friend’s argument in a subsequent memo to Schindler on July 3. He outlined the bureaucratic steps toward Bardeen’s release—from the transfer of his duties to the completion of final reports for the NOL historical officer. Rumbaugh commented that “Dr. Bardeen’s decision to resign is especially regretted in view of his international reputation as a versatile theoretical physicist and in consideration of his many outstanding contributions over a period of four years at the NOL in acoustics, magnetism, oceanography, degaussing, simu- lation, mine sweeping, torpedo research, and other important phases of underwater ordnance.” Don Marlowe, assistant technical director of the NOL, “really worked on” Bardeen to persuade him to stay, but Bardeen would not be moved. Though sincerely sorry to see him go, Captain Schindler approved Bardeen’s request. “I consider Dr. Bardeen’s request [to resign] to be sound and reasonable and hope that he will find his new work pleasant, productive and most satisfactory. I feel that the Laboratory is losing one of its best men but that the Navy will continue to benefit from his work wherever he may be.” In November 1945, Captain Schindler recommended Bardeen for the Distinguished Civilian Service Award for “outstanding con- tributions to a large majority of the programs in which the Labora- 

114 TRUE GENIUS tory was involved,” noting his valuable study of pressures and acoustic fields in mine development, and judging his “exception- ally keen” analysis of the influence of magnetic fields to be of “inestimable value in the design of magnetic mines and magnetic mine sweepers.” Schindler added, “It would be hard to overestimate the value of the contributions that Dr. Bardeen has made to the Research Program of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, since there are few problems that have not benefited either directly or indi- rectly from his keen insight, sound judgment, and exceptional scientific ability.” James Forrestal, the secretary of the navy, did not, however, approve the award on the grounds that Bardeen’s “accomplishments are not considered sufficiently outstanding to warrant the Navy’s highest civilian award.” Forrestal offered instead the slightly less prestigious Meritorious Civilian Service Award. Bardeen was already established at Bell Labs by the time he learned of the honor.