Midday’s Gary Eichten interviews Marvin Marshak, chairman of the Physics Department at University of Minnesota, about impactful scientific life of the late professor Al Nier. Marshal also discusses what lies ahead in the study of physics for the next generation of scientists.
Nier was a key member of developing the atomic bomb during WWII, perfected procedures to determine the age of the Earth. He taught at University of Minnesota for almost 60 years.
SPEAKER: of Minnesota Physicist Alfred O.C. Nier, who developed or helped develop the atomic bomb, has died. He was 82 years old. He died yesterday, two weeks after being involved in a serious auto accident.
Professor Nier was credited, among other things, with perfecting procedures to determine the age of the Earth and for determining that uranium 235 could be used to help develop the atomic bomb. Marvin Marshak is the chairman of the University of Minnesota's Physics Department. He joins us now. Good morning, Professor.
MARVIN MARSHAK: Good morning.
SPEAKER: Professor, Nier, was he as influential as it appears that he was?
MARVIN MARSHAK: Oh, I think so. Al Nier was a physicist here at the University for almost 60 years. In physics, that time span is incredibly long. And he had an influence on physics here and nationally and internationally for several generations.
Going back to the pre World War II years, the whole development, as you mentioned, of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, and spanning now into the post-war years and up to the current time, he was, in fact, active. Even though he retired from the faculty almost 10 years ago, he was active every day. And when he had his accident two weeks ago, he was on his way home from working in the laboratory here.
SPEAKER: Is the University still attracting that caliber of scientists?
MARVIN MARSHAK: Well, I think we are. We have some very, very bright people here. I think the University is internationally known in physics. We have people who come to visit here from all kinds of different countries and bring all kinds of different perspectives.
I think among universities in the United States that offer programs in physics, we're clearly in the top 10%. Although it's hard to say-- to point-- given Al Nier's stature and his character, it's really hard to point to anyone and say, well, there's another Al Nier. There'll never be another Al Nier. But I think the University is still a very attractive place to do physics.
SPEAKER: Tell us, sir, what are the big issues now that the young scientists are working on? Professor Nier, of course, was focused on, as we heard, things about finding out the date of the Earth and the atomic bomb and so on. What are physicists at the cutting edge working on these days?
MARVIN MARSHAK: Well, the interesting thing about physics is that people have been doing it for a long time. And that has the implication that things which are sort of obvious, really were studied a long time ago. And now, as we near the end of the 20th century, physicists around the world are interested in things which are very, very big or very, very small, last a very, very long time or last a very, very short time.
So we've pushed out from ordinary human experience to frontiers, which seem so very far away that it's often hard to imagine how it is they will have consequences for ordinary human life. And I think that's part of the challenge that we face today.
Physicists-- physics and physicists have been motivated for a long period of time by what we call curiosity, to do curiosity-driven research, to ask questions about the universe in which we live, and really try to understand the universe, mostly for reasons of curiosity, of scientific questioning, of culture. We are human beings. We can ask questions about the universe.
On the other hand, doing this kind of research requires resources. And when you go looking for resources, people in the 1990s asked, well, what effect is this going to have on me? What am I going to get out of this? What's the bottom line? There is a tremendous bottom line from physics research historically. Physics is responsible for things like computers, transistors, radio, communications, all sorts of things which do affect our lives.
But that's all in the past. And the question today is, what are you going to do for me today or tomorrow? And I think that our big challenge as a field is to reconcile this curiosity-driven research with the technological applications that some of our sponsors want to see. I think that can be done, but it's not going to be as easy as it's been in the past.
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