- Shelter Island Conference
The first Shelter Island Conference on the was held from June 2-4, 1947 at the Ram's Head Inn in Shelter Island, New York. The most famous participant,
J. Robert Oppenheimer , deemed it the most successful scientific meeting he had ever attended. A relatively youngRichard Feynman would later observe, "There have been many conferences in the world since, but I've never felt any to be as important as this." The conference cost $850.Shelter Island was the first major opportunity since Pearl Harbor and the
Manhattan Project for the leaders of the American physics community to escape the paranoia of war. AsJulian Schwinger would later recall, "It was the first time that people who had all this physics pent up in them for five years could talk to each other without somebody peering over their shoulders and saying, 'Is this cleared?' "Organization
The conference was conceived by
Duncan MacInnes , a scientist studyingelectrochemistry at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Once the president of theNew York Academy of Sciences , MacInnes had already organized a number of small scientific conferences. However, he believed that the later conferences had suffered from a bloated attendance, and over this issue, he resigned from the Academy in January 1945. That fall, he approached the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) with the idea of a series of 2–3 day conferences limited to 20–25 people.Frank Jewett , the head of the NAS, liked the idea; he envisioned a "meeting at some quiet place where the men could live together intimately", possibly "at an inn somewhere", and suggested that MacInnes focus on a couple of pilot programs. MacInnes' first choice was "The Nature ofBiopotential s", a subject close to his own heart; the second would be "The Postulates of Quantum Mechanics", which later became "Foundations of Quantum Mechanics".K. K. Darrow , a theoetical physicist atBell Labs and secretary of theAmerican Physical Society , offered his help in organizing the quantum mechanics conference. The two decided to emulate the success of the early Solvay Congresses, and they consulted withLéon Brillouin , who had some experience in that area. In turn, Brillouin suggested consultingWolfgang Pauli , the recent Nobel medalist at theInstitute for Advanced Study at Princeton.In January 1946, MacInnes, Darrow, Brillouin, and Pauli met in New York and exchanged letters. Pauli was enthusiastic about the topic, but he was primarily interested in bringing together the international physics community after the ordeal of the war. He suggested a large conference, including many older, foreign physicists, much to MacInnes' chagrin. With Jewett's encouragement, MacInnes asked Pauli for suggestions of "younger men" such as
John Archibald Wheeler , explaining that theRockefeller Foundation would support only a small conference. Pauli and Wheeler replied that MacInnes' conference might be merged withNiels Bohr 's conference on Wave Mechanics inDenmark in 1947; they pointed out that theNiels Bohr Institute had close ties with the Rockefeller Foundation anyway. Darrow wrote to Wheeler that Bohr's conference was a poor replacement because it would draw few Americans. Finally, Shelter Island was explicitly an American conference.Lamb shift
The muon
Participants
*
Hans Bethe
*David Bohm
*Gregory Breit
*Karl K. Darrow
*Herman Feshbach
*Richard Feynman
*Hendrik Kramers
*Willis Lamb
*Duncan MacInnes
*Robert Eugene Marshak
*John von Neumann
*Arnold Nordsieck
*J. Robert Oppenheimer
*Abraham Pais
*Linus Pauling
*Isidor Isaac Rabi
*Bruno Rossi
*Julian Schwinger
*Robert Serber
*Edward Teller
*George Uhlenbeck
*John Hasbrouck van Vleck
*Victor Frederick Weisskopf
*John Archibald Wheeler ee also
*
Solvay Conference References
;Primary sources
*cite journal | author=Bethe, Hans | title=The Electromagnetic Shift of Energy Levels | journal=Phys. Rev. | date=August 15, 1947 | volume=72 | issue=4 | pages= 339–341 | url=http://link.aps.org/abstract/PR/v72/p339 | doi=10.1103/PhysRev.72.339 | format=subscription required
*cite journal | author=Lamb and Retherford | title=Fine Structure of the Hydrogen Atom by a Microwave Method | journal=Phys. Rev. | date=August 1, 1947 | volume=72 | issue=3 | pages= 241–243 | url= http://link.aps.org/abstract/PR/v72/p241 | doi=10.1103/PhysRev.72.241 | format=subscription required
*cite journal | author=Marshak and Bethe | title=On the Two-Meson Hypothesis | journal=Phys. Rev. | date=September 15, 1947 | volume=72 | issue=6 | pages= 506–509 | url= http://link.aps.org/abstract/PR/v72/p506 | doi=10.1103/PhysRev.72.506 | format=subscription required
*cite journal | author=Weisskopf, Victor | title=On the Production Process of Mesons | journal=Phys. Rev. | date=September 15, 1947 | volume=72 | issue=6 | pages= 510 | url= http://link.aps.org/abstract/PR/v72/i6/p510/s1 | format=subscription required;Reviews
*cite book | author=Robert Crease and Charles Mann | year=1996 | title=The second creation: Makers of the revolution in twentieth-century physics | publisher=Rutgers UP | id=ISBN 0-8135-2177-7
*cite conference | first = Silvan | last = Schweber | year = 1985 | title = A Short History of Shelter Island I | booktitle = Shelter Island II: Proceedings of the 1983 Shelter Island Conference on Quantum Field Theory and the Fundamental Problems of Physics | editor = R. Jackiw, N. Khuri, S. Weinberg, E. Witten | publisher = MIT Press | location = Cambridge, MA | pages = 301–343 | id = ISBN 0-262-10031-2
*cite journal | first = Silvan | last = Schweber | title=Feynman and the visualization of space-time processes | journal=Rev. Mod. Phys. | year=1986 | volume=58 | issue=2 | pages= 449–508 | url=http://prola.aps.org/abstract/RMP/v58/i2/p449_1 | doi=10.1103/RevModPhys.58.449 | format=subscription required
*cite book | first = Silvan | last = Schweber | year=1994 | title=QED and the men who made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga | publisher=Princeton UP | id=ISBN 0-691-03685-3
*cite web | author=Smith, Richard | year=1996| title=Notes on the 1947 Shelter Island Conference and Its Participants | url=http://www.sherryart.com/nano/shelter.html | accessdate=January 17 | accessyear=2006External links
* [http://www7.nationalacademies.org/archives/shelterisland.html The Shelter Island Conference] from the National Academy of Sciences
* [http://feynman.physics.lsa.umich.edu/~mduff/talks/1983%20-%20Shelter%20Island%20Conference/1983%20-%20Shelter%20Island%20Conference.pdf Excerpt from 1983 issue] of Physics Today
* [http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0600/060006.cfm This Month in Physics History, June 2000] from TheAmerican Physical Society
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3622/is_199707/ai_n8765069/print Shelter island conference] from Issues in Science and Technology Summer 1997, provided byProQuest
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