Oral history interview with Norman Ramsey, 1960

Biographical Note

Physicist

Scope and Contents

Education, Columbia; Depression; Cambridge University, England; research with I.I. Rabi, Enrico Fermi; National Defense Research Committee radiation laboratory; Massuchusetts Institute of Technology; England, 1941; security problems; radar; Manhattan Project, 1943; Los Alamos; discussions on use of bomb and possible targets; Trinity test; Tinian; estimates of damage, Hiroshima; Brookhaven; Harvard; Congressional investigations; Harold Velde and Joseph McCarthy hearings; area rule; appearance on "Meet the Press," subsequent meeting with Senator McCarthy; contempt citations; Kamen trial; Robert Oppenheimer case; Gray Board; science adviser, North Atlantic Treaty Organization; impressions of General Leslie Groves, Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, Edward Teller. Audio from the interview corresponds to pages 191-243 of the transcript, and there is also audio from a televised McCarthy hearing

Subjects

• Internal security--United States.
• Interviews.
• Manhattan Project (U.S.)
• North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
• Nuclear physics.
• Nuclear weapons.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Physicists--Interviews.
• Ramsey, Norman, 1915-2011--Interviews.
• Safford, Joan Bainbridge, interviewer.
• United States--Politics and government--1945-1989.
• World War, 1939-1945--Science.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1976