- Raymond Thayer Birge
Raymond Thayer Birge (
March 13 ,1887 -March 22 ,1980 ) was aphysicist . Born inBrooklyn, New York , into anacademic scientific family, Birge obtained his Doctor's Degree from theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison in 1913. In the same year he married Irene A. Walsh. The Birges had two children, Carolyn Elizabeth (Mrs. E.D. Yocky) and Robert Walsh, Associate Director of theLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1973-1981. After five years as an instructor atSyracuse University , he became a member of the physics department atUniversity of California, Berkeley where he remained until he retired, as chairman, in 1955.On his arrival at Berkeley, Birge sought collaboration with the
Berkeley College of Chemistry , then under the leadership ofGilbert N. Lewis . However, Birge's championing of the Bohr atom led him into conflict with the chemists who defended Lewis' earlier theory of thecubical atom . Birge was unafraid of scientific controversy and persevered with his course on atomic structure, attracting futureNobel Laureate s inchemistry William Francis Giauque andHarold Clayton Urey . His work ultimately led to the development of the discipline ofphysical chemistry . His work on molecularspectra included the development of theBirge-Sponer method .Birge's later work arose from his initial bewilderment at the variety and inconsistency among measurements of the fundamental
physical constants . His interest led to a broad mastery of all branches of the physical sciences and gave fruit with many publications, in particular, a 1929 paper in "Reviews of Modern Physics" that recommended a standard set of values for the constants based on earlier published results. There ensued a frustration with the conventional methods ofstatistics as applied inphysical science which led to a collaboration withW. Edwards Deming . Following their 1934 joint paper in "Reviews of Modern Physics", their approaches diverged with Deming following the work ofWalter A. Shewhart while Birge became interested in the more conventional statistical approaches ofleast squares andmaximum likelihood . Birge's interest instatistics led him to the investigation ofparapsychology in which he conducted many experiments without finding any conclusive results.Birge was an active administrator and was the architect of the Berkeley department's prestige, seeking out physicists such as
Robert Oppenheimer andErnest Lawrence and guiding the department through its golden years of the 1930s and through the changes brought on byWorld War II , theManhattan Project , and the birth of "Big Science ." However, during theMcCarthy era in 1949, theRegents of the University of California enforced an anti-communist oath to be signed by all employees. Though an outspoken critic of the oath, after much searching of conscience, Birge decided that his loyalty to the department and the university demanded that he sign and fight from within forfreedom of speech . Many of his colleagues did not sign and were dismissed.Birge died in
Berkeley, California . His honors include:* President of the
American Physical Society ;
* Member of the National Academy of Sciences; and
* Honorary degree of LLD from theUniversity of California, Berkeley .External links
* [http://www.quantum-chemistry-history.com/Birge1.htm Berkeley biography]
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