Biographical Memoirs Volume 51 (1980) / Chapter Skim
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Alfred Lee Loomis
Alfred Lee Loomis
Pages 308-341
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his crucial wartime role as director of all NDR~OSRD radar research in World War IT, and (4) his exceeclingly close personal relationships with many of the leaders of American science and government in the mid-twentieth century.
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Stimson, who was Secretary of State uncler Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of War throughout WorIct War II. From Alfred Loomis' eclucational background, one would correctly judge that he came from a prosperous, but not exceedingly wealthy family.
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From page 311... ...
all intellectual challenges and most particularly, mathematical puzzles. He macle a serious attempt to learn the Japanese game of Go, so that he could share more fully in the life of his son Farney, who was one of the best Go players in the United States.
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Scientific School. He took the standard gentIemen's courses in liberal arts, anct without giving much thought to his career, felt he would probably engage in some kind of scientific work after he gracluatecI.
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Each one planned his own education, and decided what hobbies to pursue, after much consultation with, but no veto power from, Alfred. 'rhe oldest son, Lee (Alfred Lee Loomis, Jr.)
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From page 314... ...
to learn that he knew much more about modern field artillery than anyone they had ever met. He hacl made good use of the special communication channels available to Wall Street lawyers, and had accumulated a vast store of up-to-the-minute data on the latest orcinance equipment available to the warring European powers.
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From page 315... ...
It was a consequence of Wood's scientific zest and social strenuousness that fate brought him, about this time, the facilities of a great private laboratory backed by a great private fortune. He had met Alfred Loomis during the war at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and later they became neighbors on Long Island.
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From page 316... ...
'`As the scope of the work expanded we were pressed for room in the garage and Mr. Loomis purchased the Spencer Trask house, a huge stone mansion with a tower, like an English country house, perched on the summit of one of the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains in Tuxedo Park.
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From page 317... ...
The two partners also built a very innovative racing sloop of the }-class, which they hoped would win the right to race against Sir Thomas Lipton in one of his periodic attempts to capture the America's Cup from the New York Yacht Club. To cut clown on wind resistance, the partners arranged to have most of the crew below decks at all times, working levers in the fashion of galley slaves, rather than hauling on wet lines on the deck.
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From page 318... ...
When the Fortune article appeared, Altred was leading a double life; his days were spent on Wall Street, but his evenings and weekends were devoted to his hilltop laboratory in the huge stone castle in '[uxedo Park. The laboratory was abandoned in November 1940, so those who worked in it could join the newly established MIT Radiation Laboratory .
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From page 319... ...
A bound volume of the "Loomis Laboratory Publications" (l 927-}937) includes reprints of sixty-six scientific papers, of which twenty-one were on ultrasonics; Alfred was a co-author of the first four, and of four later ones.
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His admiration for the real professionals of this era is shown by the fact that he arranged a series of conferences in honor of visiting European physicists. Guests at the conferences were transported to ruxeclo Park in a private train, and entertainer!
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Alfrecl's interest in accurate timekeeping probably resulted from his seagoing background, and his fascination with the art and science of navigation. He installed the three Shortt clocks on separate brick piers that were isolatecI from the laboratory structure, and extended clown to bedrock.
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The Bell Telephone Laboratories hack recently been cleveloping quartz crystal oscillators with low temperature coefficients, and they came to surpass the Shortt clocks for short-term accuracy, but not for periods greater than a day. Alfred had a private line installec!
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323 Our communiIn typical Loomis fashion, Alfred's name appears on only the first of thirteen papers on the microscope-centrifuge that are to be found in the collected reprints of the laboratory. In the mid-thirties, Alfred turned his attention to the newly cliscovered brain waves.
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From page 324... ...
The Sperry Gyroscope Company had bought an interest in the klystron patents that were owned by the Varian brothers, who invented the klystron, and Stanford University, which had supported the development work. Sperry built a small klystron plant in San CarIos, near Stanford, and their first customer was Alfred Loomis, who appeared, checkbook in hand, as he had years before at the small plant making Shortt clocks.
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Francis Jenkins of the Berkeley Physics Department had spent a summer at Tuxedo as Alfrec3's guest, and he had toIcl me in wide-eyed amazement about the fantastic laboratory at Tuxedo Park, and about the mysterious millionaire-physicist who owned it. Everyone who had submitted an article to the Physical Review in the depression years had received a bill for page charges together with a note saying that in the event the author or his institution was unable to pay the charges, they would be paid by an "anonymous friend" of the American Physical Society.
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a lot about physics, and found we were simpatico. He taught me an important lesson that I have put to good use in my life; the only way a man can stay active as a scientist as he grows ogler is to keep his communication channels open to the youngest generation the front line soldiers.
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From page 327... ...
But Alfred considered it worth a clay or two of his time to see if he could cut the cost of the magnet windings by $50,000. Ernest once told me of spending some time with Alfred in New York, after the Rockefeller Foundation had allocated $2.5 million to build the IS4-inch cyclotron; Earlier, Alfred had been instrumental in securing the virtually unanimous backing of the "scientific establishment" for the proposal, thus relieving the Rockefeller Foundation of any necessity for acting as a judge between factions competing for the largest funds ever given to any physics project.
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From page 328... ...
Since the outsiders were the real professionals in radio engineering, they were the ones who could have developed American radar into the useful military too! that the insiders didn't manage to achieve.
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From page 329... ...
Alfred Loomis was included in the briefings not only because of his unique position in the scientific establishment, but because his laboratory had built one of the two microwave radar sets then existing in the United States. Both were based on the klystron tube recently invented by the Varian brothers at Stanford University, and both were "continuous wave Doppler radars" of the type now used by police departments to apprehend speeders.
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Alfred was chairman of the Committee which took the responsibility for establishing the MIT Radiation Laboratory, one of the worId's most successful scientific and engineering undertakings. Alfred maple the arrangements with industry for equipping the laboratory with the necessary hardware to make several flyable night-fighter Intercept racIar sets, and Ernest Lawrence took the responsibility of staffing the laboratory, mostly with young nuclear physicists.
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From page 331... ...
When the operators notec! that the arrival time of the master pulses was drifting from its correct value, relative to the transmitting time at that particular "slave station," the phase of the slave's quartz crystal oscillator was changed to bring the two stations back into proper synchronization.
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It occurred to me that if a radar set could track a plane accurately enough in range, azimuth ant! elevation to shoot it down, it could use that same information to give landing instructions to a friendly plane caught up in bad weather.
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The seconc! reason that Alfrecl orderecl the ten preproduction sets, using NDRC-OSRD funds, was that the Army and Navy as well as the RAF had all said, inclependently, that their pilots would "never obey lancling instructions from someone sitting in comfort on the ground," and that they wouIcl con
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From page 334... ...
none to MIT or to the NDRC. The meeting was about to break up when Alfred said quietly, "Gentlemen, there seems to be some misapprehension concerning the ownership of these radar sets; it is my understanding that they belong to NDRC, and ~ am here to represent that organization." Ilis training as a lawyer was immediately apparent, and after he had shown in his gentle manner that he held all the cards, an allocation that was satisfactory to all concerned was quickly worker!
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In my opinion, this smooth sailing was due in large part to the mutual trust and respect that Secretary of War Stimson and Alfred had. Alfred was in effect Stimson's minister without portfolio to the scientific leadership of the Manhattan District- his old friends Ernest Lawrence, Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi, and Robert Oppenheimer.
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As in the old Loomis Laboratory days, the invitations incluclecl first class round trip transportation, plus luxurious living at the resort hotels where the meetings were held. Alfred enjoyed introducing his scientific friends to the pleasures that are normally known only to the very wealthy.
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Stratton. Had Ernest Lawrence and Rowan Gaither outlived Alfred, they would have continues!
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Director, Loomis Laboratories President, Loomis Institute for Scientific Research Vice President, Bonbright and Company
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With E Newton Harvey and Ethel Browne Harvey.
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1935 With E Newton Harvey and Garret Hobart.
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Hobart, III. Cerebral processes during sleep as studied by human brain potentials.
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