Frank B. Estabrook Oral History Interview
Interviewed by Shirley K. Cohen
Interview Sessions from 2007
- February 28, 2007
Abstract
An interview on February 28, 2007, with Frank B. Estabrook, Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Estabrook received his MS (1947) and his PhD (1950) in spectroscopy at Caltech. He joined JPL in 1960, becoming senior resarch scientist there from 1979 to 2006 and Distinguished Visiting Scientist in 2006. In this interview, he discusses his youthful fascination with general relativity and his later research, with H. D. Wahlquist, J. W. Armstrong, and B. Bertotti, on the development of proposals to detect gravity waves by means of the Doppler tracking of spacecraft. He discusses the involvement of Caltech theoretical physics professor K. S. Thorne in these efforts, and the inclusion of gravity-wave experiments in the Galileo, Mars Observer, Ulysses, and Cassini missions.
Archival record in collection guide
PDF version of transcript [1.56 MB]
Preferred Citation
Frank B. Estabrook Oral History Interview, interviewed by Shirley K. Cohen, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, February 28, 2007, http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Estabrook_F.
Oral history interviews provide valuable first-hand testimony of the past. The views and opinions expressed in them are those of the interviewees, who describe events based on their own recollections and from their own perspective. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Caltech Archives and Special Collections or of the California Institute of Technology.