Post WWII Physics
Higher Education
Probably the most significant indirect effect of second word war on physics, in this country, was in the area of college and university education. Mostly due to the GI bill, many educational institutions grew substantially in size of their student populations. This created a major demand for college professors. All those who were involved in research and development of war-time physics were able to became gainfully employed in the academe. Some did, and others were employed in research laboratories.
Industrial development also fueled the need for technical workers, especially engineers. Training of engineers required physics education, so there was a demand for physicists. Although the primary need for these scientists was to educate the huge population of GIs, the accompanying economics lead to better opportunities for research. Basically, the typical university physics faculty was given a lighter teaching load in order to allow time for research.
The net outcome has been a 400 fold increase in the number of Ph D physicists (as per membership in the American Physical Society).
The following graphs are courtesy of American Institute of Physics' Statistical Division. This division collects education and employment data for BS, MS, Ph D, and so called post doctoral (postdoc) candidates:
Number of physics Ph D conferred in US. Source: AIP
According to Statistics Research Center of AIP the data of last decade suggests a stable pattern of employment distribution: about 38% of US physicists work in academia, 36% in industry, 23% in Government, and 3% in non-profit institutions.
Compare these numbers with those from other desciplines in the 1997 data reported by NSF.
We have already seen, in our studies on radar, that war efforts lead to the development of Lincoln Laboratory associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This laboratory has remained active, though governmental funding, performing applied and pure research mostly on detection and imaging. Several other laboratory (research centers), also not directly under the military, but government owned and operated continue their active research. Most of these fall under the funding of the department of energy, but receive additional funding from the department of defense, National Science Foundation, and other government agencies. Some of these are: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Brooke Haven National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, etc. For a list of Government Lab web addresses see: US Government Labs. Perhaps one of the most interesting reseach hands of the government is DARPA. This agency provided funding opportunities for the type of research that other agencies may consider lack technical/scientific merit or unlikely to succeed!
It is difficult to judge the development of physics in terms of the technologies that it has helped create. But most people would agree that two technologies that have had major effects on our lives in the last century have been Lasers and the Transistor.
Laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. When an atom or molecule is given energy it is said to be excited. As a ball that is made to roll up a hill stops and rolls back down, all processes in nature prefer to go back to their less energetic state. So, excited atoms and molecules tend to de-excite, typically, by emitting electromagnetic radiation, or light. A collection of these excited atoms will radiate in arbitrary and random directions. In a laser, however, they are forced to do this in a preferred direction. So, lasers produce light output that is unidirectional, i.e. a pencil of light instead of a diverging cone. In addition, instead of random de-excitations at random times, lasers force the atoms to excite coherently and in unison though the process of stimulated emission. It is this property of laser light that makes it truly special. For more information on lasers please see the site at Bell Laboratories on the history of lasers.
Transistors are basically amplifiers made of semi-conducting material such as silicon and germanium crystals. Prior to this invention tube transistors were the only ones available. It is the small size of the crystal transistors that have lead to the developments in integrated circuits and today's telecommunication industries. For a primer on transistors please see the web site at Lucent Technologies, and for a recent breakthrough in transistor design see the news of November 15, 1999 announcements at Bell Labs.
A great deal of new physics has been worked on and discovered since the second world war. It is hard to list them all!
What's cool today? Quantum computers
Nanobiotechnology see Foresight Institute
String Theory see Prof. B. Greene's book: "The Elegant Universe"
Higgs Boson
Collapse of the Universe/Inflationary Universe
Dark Matter
Thanks to the American Physical Society we have a full summary of the physics covered in this course. This is a web site with a historical perspective that begins, as we did, with the "classical", follows into "modern physics", and ends up with how some of "today's physics" is evolving. Begin viewing the panorama (hard copy of the panorama posters hang on the hall way walls, opposite to my office, leading to our own physics department). Then look at the pages that covers the physics in decades.
Please see: a Century of Physics.
Questions on Post WWII Physics
Last Modified: November 7, 2007 malekis@union.edu
