Sidney Weinbaum Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Mary Terrall

Interview Sessions from 1985
  • August 15, 1985
  • August 22, 1985

Abstract

An interview in August 1985 with Sidney Weinbaum, Caltech PhD (1933), a mathematician who was a research fellow in Linus Pauling’s laboratory in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in the 1930s and worked from 1946 to 1949 with Pol Duwez at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1950, Weinbaum was arrested for perjury (regarding his alleged membership in the Communist Party) and for “abetting” Party activities. He was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison. In this interview, he recalls his childhood in the Ukraine; his undergraduate years at Caltech (1922-1924); and his work for Pauling. He recalls various friends in the Caltech community, his interests in chess and music, his political activism. He discusses his war work for Bendix Aviation and Curtiss-Wright Research Laboratory; his return to Pasadena after the war to work for JPL; his interrogation by the FBI; his arrest and trial; the support or lack of it from various friends and Caltech faculty; his life in prison; and his release and subsequent happy life with his second wife, Betty.

Archival record in collection guide

PDF version of transcript [1.66 MB]

Preferred Citation

Sidney Weinbaum Oral History Interview, interviewed by Mary Terrall, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, August 15, 1985, August 22, 1985, http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Weinbaum_S.

Note to Readers

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.