^ ■

iSfefws Office Columbia University New York, New York 10027 UNiversity 5-4000, Ext. 886

John Hastings, Director

FOR USE ON SUNDAY, DECEMBER 26

^^he ^pin Phvstcs Labor-aj-nW «ac- building at Colmbia University

has been selected to become a national landmark.

Its selection refers specifically to the building's history­

making cyclotron, which was taken to the Smithsonian Institution

earlier this month. But Federal officials who helped pick the Pupin

building said they were thinking of far more than the cyclotron.

The bronze plaque which will be placed on the building will also

be a tribute to the atomic research that has gone on in Pupin since

its construction in 1925.

The official who recommended Pupin's selection to the United

States Department of the Interior said the entire building deserves

a place among the nation's treasures.

There is hardly a spot in the Columbia building that hasn't

made scientific history.

Dr. Richard G. Hewlett, historian of the Atomic Energy

Commission, said:

"l didn't even mention the cyclotron in my recommendation

because I think the other work done there is perhaps more significant.

The cyclotron was a research instrment. It was incidental to the

basic work done there."

-more-

1

. : :;s

-2-

The cyclotron itself was believed before its dismantling to be

the oldest operating atom smasher in the world. It was used by Dr.

John R. Dunning and fellow Columbia scientists in January, 1939, in

the experiments that split the uranium atom and recorded the release

of its tremendous energy for the first time in America. It was used

later to establish the first proof that the rare Uranium 235 isotope

was the fissionable material. That proof opened the way to the

creation of the atomic bomb and the development of atomic energy.

But Dr. Hewlett said he thought of other things when he recom­

mended the honor for the building. He said in his recommendation of

the 13-story red brick building at Broadway and 120th Street on

Columbia's Morningside Heights campus:

"in this laboratory Enrico Fermi conducted his initial experi­

ments on the nuclear fission of uranium. Here also John R. Dunning

and his associates performed the initial experiments on the separation

of Uraniiun 235 from natural uranium by the gaseous diffusion process.

The first prototypes of the equipment later used for Uranium 235

production were developed in this laboratory."

This work was done in a building named for Professor Michael

Idvorsky Pupin, a Hungarian immigrant who became a professor at

Columbia and the inventor who helped make possible the long-distance

telephone.

Here are a few of the building's products in addition to the

cyclotron:

It was in Pupin that heavy hydrogen was discovered by Nobel Prizf

winner Harold C. Urey in 1931. The discovery, made on Thanksgiving-more-

) . -3-Day, became the stimulus for new research in chemistry, biology and

physics throughout the world.

It was there on February 24, 1939, that two speakers -- Niels

Bohr and Enrico Fermi -- met with 200 physicists in Lecture Hail

301 of Pupin. The discussion was on the splitting of uranium atoms.

That meeting has been called "one of the most momentous in the history

of the American Physical Society and of science in general."

A week later, on March 3, 1939, Columbia scientists Leo Szilard

and Walter Zinn performed a nuclear experiment suggesting that large-

scale liberation of atomic energy was possible. The two men turned

on a switch in a seventh floor room of Pupin and watched flashes of

light on a screen, meaning that neutrons were being emitted in the

fission process of uranium. The flashes provided the first experi­

mental evidence that the vast energy released in the fission of

uranixim could be utilized either in an atomic power plant or in an

atomic bomb equal in destructiveness to thousands of conventional

bombs of the same size.

The nation's first grant for atomic research — $6,000 from the

Army and the Navy — was made to Columbia in 1940 so Nobel laureate

Enrico Fermi and other scientists at the University could construct

;the first atomic pile on the seventh floor of Pupin. The pile soon

outgrew its Pupin space and was moved to another building on the

Columbia campus and later to the University of Chicago.

Also in the Pupin building, Columbia physicist I. I. Rabi

probed deeply into the atom, revealing subtle magnetic properties

of the nucleus that were masked and lost in the sledge-hammer

-more-

» ►

-4-blows of cyclotrons and other atom smashers. Professor Rabi's precise

measurements of the spinning nucleus were essential for the develop­

ment and testing of nuclear theory. For this work he received a

Nobel Prize in 1944.

It was in 1947 that Columbia Professors Willis Lamb and Robert

Retherford completed experiments in the noted Coliimbia Radiation

Laboratory on the eleventh floor of Pupin which changed fundamental

ideas about the nature and motion of electrons. This classic work was

viewed as the most significant advance in fifteen years in knowledge

of the atom.

In 1950 the brilliant Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa, then

teaching at Columbia, announced in the Pupin building the development

of a new general theory on the nature of elementary particles in the

nuclei of atoms. His theory led to a better understanding of the

fundamental structure of matter and cosmic forces. While at Colvnnbia,

Dr. Yukawa was awarded a 1949 Nobel Prize for his earlier formulation

of the meson theory.

Two Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1955 for work accomplished in

Pupin. They went to Drs. Polykarp Kusch and Willis Lamb. With a

passion for precise measurement, these Columbia physicists measured

the electrical and magnetic forces of the electron more accurately

than ever before. Their determinations revealed discrepancies between

experiment and theory, forcing theorists to rethink the concepts of

quantum mechanics.

The scientific world was shaken again in January, 1957, when it

was announced in the Pupin building that teams of physicists,-more-

. ‘ n '-5-

including scientists from Colimbia, had devised theories and conducted

tests which resulted in the overthrow of the law of the conservation

of parity -- work which, observers have said, may in time prove as

important as Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The parity principle

had been one of the cornerstones of atomic physics.

In the missile age, a leading figure in America's Defense

Department began his career in Pupin. Harold Brown, a former Columbia

student, was until recently director of Defense Research and

Engineering under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Now Secretary of

the Air Force, he has been called "the man behind America's missile

program."

In all, five Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work done in

Pupin, this modest building on upper Broadway. They went to

Professors Rabi, Kusch, Lamb, Townes and T. D. Lee, the latter for

his work on the overthrow of the parity principle.

And although Pupin has historical significance, it is by no

means a museum piece. New researchers have moved into the space the

cyclotron vacated, and the work continues.

If Pupin could be moved to the Smithsonian, it still wouldn't go.

It's too valuable at Columbia.

12.22.65 11306