William Ralph Smythe Oral History Interview
Interviewed by Mary Terrall
Interview Sessions from 1978
- February 13, 1978
- February 15, 1978
Abstract
An interview in two sessions, February 1978, with William Ralph Smythe, professor of physics, emeritus, in the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy. He recalls his youth in Colorado and Santa Fe, NM, and his father’s career as a civil engineer. Undergraduate physics at Colorado College; six months’ graduate work at Dartmouth. Enlists as U.S. enters WW I; sent to officers’ training camp, Plattsburgh NY, and thence to France as artillery officer. Recollections of the war.
Returns to Dartmouth; moves to University of Chicago to complete PhD. Works with A. A. Michelson. Two-year instructorship at the University of the Philippines. Comes to Caltech as a research fellow, 1923. Isotope separation. His recollections of early physics dept. faculty and teaching his course in electricity and magnetism. Joins C. C. Lauritsen’s Caltech rocket project; works with Navy in Key West on the anti-submarine “Mousetrap” rocket. Invents yaw camera. Caltech in postwar era. His work on heavy-carbon separation.
Archival record in collection guide
PDF version of transcript [0.77 MB]
Preferred Citation
William Ralph Smythe Oral History Interview, interviewed by Mary Terrall, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, February 13, 1978, February 15, 1978, http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Smythe_W.
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.