Text 3.1. Physics: Its Recent Past and the Lessons to Be Learned. Part II

Physics: Its Recent Past and the Lessons to Be Learned. Part II

5.  The last 30 years have shown us, Princeton people, to be doing not so well as Bragg did. As for the 1st rule I can say with confidence that we score high on it. We have not since 1946 had a professor working in the field of general relativity. It seemed unreasonable to expect to find anybody in this particular field as good as Einstein. On the second rule we score middling. We have always had room for some unfashionable people, but a very high percentage of our output of papers turns out to be in the fashionable part of particle physics and seems to be quite indistinguishable from the papers produced by 20 other institutes of theoretical physics. On the third rule we score extremely bad. The most original, unfashionable and worthwhile thing done by the Institute after Einstein was the design and construction of Von Neumann's prototype electronic computer, the Maniac. In the ten years after World War II the group around Von Neumann was to lead the world in ideas concerning the development and use of computers. Bui the snobs at our Institute could not tolerate electrical engineers walking around with their dirty hands and spoiling the purity of our scholarly atmosphere.

Von Neumann was strong enough to override the opposition. But when he tragically died, they took advantage of the opportunity, and the project was given up.

6.I always thought the failure of our computer group to be a disaster not only for Princeton but for science as a whole. It meant that at that time no academic centre existed for computer people of all kinds to get together at the highest intellectual level. The field that was abandoned was to be taken over by IBM. Although it is a fine organization in many ways it cannot be expected to provide the atmosphere of intellectual fertility which Von Neumann managed to create here, at Princeton. We had the opportunity to do it, and we threw the opportunity away.

7.So much for the past. What about the future? Because our computer project appeared unique and ahead of its time, I was sorry at the news of its abandonment. But I am not equally sorry at the news that our accelerators to be abandoned next year. I believe the loss of the accelerator is likely to put Princeton into a position similar, in some respects, to that of Cambridge in 1938. We shall have an opportunity to do something different.

 


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