I came back to Hamilton after graduate school having done my dissertation on the scattering of pi mesons from protons at the 130" Cyclotron at Rochester. There being no cyclotron here I began collaborating with a physical chemist doing research on H-bonded liquids and investigating them by measuring their viscosity and dielectric constants. This work was supported by Research Corporation and by N.S.F. In 1960 Don Potter from Geology and I received a grant from Smith, Klein and French for a X-ray laboratory and In 1963 I received a grant from N.S.F. to set up a nuclear physics lab here with counting equipment and a neutron generator. These two grants provided the equipment for student laboratory experiments in fields which previously had not been possible at Hamilton.
Winning a N.S.F. Faculty Fellowship in 1965, I went to England to learn the then new technique of neutron scattering as a way of finding out more about liquids and, in particular, the H-bonded ones I had already been working on. This study of liquids continued into the 70's and I returned to England again in 1973 to do some more neutron scattering.
In 1974 the oil embargo and the ensuing oil shortage made me stop and think about the energy problem and what I as a physicist could do about it. I began to teach a course on energy and the environment and planned the Solar Classroom here at Hamilton. This building came into use in 1977 and I began monitoring its behavior as a solar heated space. It also has provided the material for several student projects on solar energy and was the laboratory for a Winter Study course on solar energy which I taught for many years. In 1980 The Academy of Educational Development awarded me a Certificate of Achievement and a $10,000 prize for this work. My sabbatical at Princeton in 1981 got me started on the Radon problem, and that in turn got me into the environmental problems of the indoor climate. The Solar Classroom still served as an experimental building where such things as infiltration could be measured and where various devices for measuring such variables could be tried out.
Continuing with this indoor environment interest I went to Denmark in 1987 to work with a professor known to be an expert in this field. One of the interests I developed there was in doing climate chamber experiments during which human subjects are asked to give their assessment of the temperature, drafts , humidity, etc. that they are experiencing in these chambers. This work has continued here at Hamilton and several students have worked with me recently on psychophysics experiments. I have also applied this expertise to ancient Roman baths and have found that the Romans designed and built these baths in a way that demonstrates real knowledge of solar energy and its technology.
In the meantime my colleague and friend, Phil Pearle, has been developing and refining his theory which offers an alternative to the standard theory of quantum mechanics. This theory has now got to the point where experimental tests of it may be possible. Because of my experience with the equipment and problems of experimental nuclear physics I can understand and analyze the results of several new experiments that are looking for neutrinos or WIMPS and in this way, working with Phil, help to see if we can find evidence one way or the other about his theory: does standard quantum theory have all the answers we're going to get or, after all, was Einstein right when he said that," God doesn't play dice."?
Last modified 8/10/2000.