Robert
F. Bacher
1905 – 2004
Robert F.
Bacher, Caltech’s first provost, who had headed the experimental
physics division of the Los Alamos Laboratory, died November 18 at the
age of 99.
Bacher was
born August 31, 1905, in Loudonville, Ohio, but grew up in Ann Arbor,
Michigan, where he knew his later-to-be wife, Jean Dow, from childhood.
He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1926, to which, after
a year of graduate school at Harvard, he returned to earn his PhD in 1930,
under Samuel Goudsmit, with a thesis on hyperfine structure in atomic
spectra. He and Jean married right after graduation and embarked on a
cross-country drive to Pasadena; it was Bacher’s first encounter
with Caltech—as a National Research Council Fellow. He didn’t
know much about what went on here, he said in his oral history (recorded
by the Caltech Archives in 1981), but it had one of the larger graduate
programs in physics at the time. And he admired Ira Bowen as the best
spectroscopist in the country. During that year he attended Robert Oppenheimer’s
lectures, “but I must say, they were extremely difficult to understand.”
Nevertheless, they later became close friends and colleagues.
After another
NRC year, at MIT, Bacher returned to the University of Michigan, then
went to Columbia as an instructor in 1934, where he worked with I. I.
Rabi. A year later he followed Hans Bethe to Cornell, where he started
doing experimental work in nuclear physics with Bethe and left theoretical
work behind. He was quickly promoted to full professor and director of
the Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. Early on, he had felt that the United
States needed to start doing war work, and when Lee DuBridge, head of
the Radiation Lab working on radar at MIT, summoned him there in 1941,
he went.
Then, late
in 1942, Oppenheimer approached Bacher about a new lab for nuclear weapons
work that was just starting up and the following spring asked him to join
the Manhattan Project. Bacher declined initially, telling Oppenheimer
that what he needed was engineers. Ultimately, when Oppenheimer made a
commitment to hiring more engineers and made him head of the experimental
physics division, Bacher signed on. From the beginning, Bacher was firmly
opposed to making Los Alamos a military lab and persuaded Oppenheimer,
who had agreed to take a commission as lieutenant colonel and had already
ordered his uniforms, to keep it under civilian control, at least until
they had enough fissionable material for a bomb.
When the
project was reorganized in July 1944 to speed work on implosion, Bacher’s
experimental physics division was split, and he was put in charge of the
G (for “gadget,” the code name for the bomb) division. Bacher
personally escorted the first bomb to the test site in July of 1945. In
1946 he was awarded the President’s Medal for Merit for his work
on the Manhattan Project.
Bacher returned
to Cornell (he had taken a leave of absence during the war), hoping to
get back to high-energy physics, but the bomb’s aftermath continued
to involve him. He felt strongly that there should be some sort of international
control of atomic weapons and worked hard on negotiations with the Soviet
Union. He admitted in his oral history that this was perhaps idealistic,
but thought that getting this technology out in the open might have avoided
the subsequent Cold War. When the Atomic Energy Commission was established,
Bacher served as the only scientist among its members; he had tried to
decline the post but took it on when he learned that there would be no
scientist at all if he didn’t accept. While a member of the AEC,
he pushed for the development of nuclear submarines and breeder reactors
for commercial power.
In the meantime,
Lee DuBridge, now president of Caltech, offered him a position as chairman
of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy—or as just
a professor, whichever he preferred. “The decision I came to was
a fateful one and probably illustrates a major failing in my makeup,”
Bacher said in the oral history. “I saw what was needed in the division
at Caltech and felt some real confidence that I could do a respectable
job, so I agreed to take the division chairmanship—at least to get
some new fields started and make some additions.” What he saw as
a “major failing” in his makeup was, in fact, a superb talent
for envisioning the future and leading the Institute into it. After getting
a commitment that the Institute would support a program in high-energy
physics, both theoretical and experimental, Bacher arrived in 1949.
One of his
first hires in high-energy physics was Robert Walker, whom he had known
at Los Alamos and Cornell. (Walker died January 4; see page 41.) Another
of Bacher’s early recruits was Richard Feynman, who was reportedly
feeling “unsettled” at Cornell; Bacher persuaded him to sign
on at Caltech with a sabbatical year in Brazil in between. Feynman then
settled in Pasadena in 1951 for the rest of his career. Now, with Feynman
and Robert Christy, who had come in 1946, Bacher felt he had the two most
outstanding theorists from Los Alamos. Then in 1955 he also hired Murray
Gell-Mann.
On the experimental
side, he presided over the construction of Caltech’s electron synchrotron,
one of the first high-energy particle accelerators in the country. Bacher
was nominally director of the synchrotron, but Walker supervised much
of the research. Although it wasn’t shut down (after almost 20 years)
until 1969, Bacher had come to the conclusion in the early ’60s
that if Caltech were going to continue in high-energy physics, “we’d
better get started sending people away to work on some of the really big
machines.” Big Science had arrived, and Bacher was urging Caltech
physics into it.
Next to Robert
Millikan, Bacher was the person most important to the early growth of
Caltech’s reputation in physics and astronomy, says Christy, now
the Institute Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus. “He was
responsible for building Caltech physics after the war and for making
Caltech physics what it is today.”
Bacher stands beside the magnet of the synchrotron in 1955. At that time the electron accelerator had a peak energy of about 300 MeV; Phase 2, which began operation in 1957 had a peak energy of just over a billion volts.
Bacher remained
division chair until 1962. During that time he reformed the undergraduate
curriculum to make it less rigid, broke up large classes, expanded the
teaching staff, and lowered the faculty teaching load. Another field that
he helped get started at Caltech was radio astronomy, playing a key role
in founding the Owens Valley Radio Observatory in the mid ’50s.
He continued
to spend quite a bit of time on government work as advisor to the AEC
and a member of President Eisenhower’s Science Advisory Committee;
he served as chairman of a Defense Department committee on nuclear problems
and on numerous other committees. In 1958, he was a member of the U.S.
delegation to the nuclear test ban negotiations. He was president of the
American Physical Society in 1964 and of the International Union of Pure
and Applied Physics from 1969 to 1972.
As Bacher
was looking around for new challenges, DuBridge decided he needed someone
to be responsible for academic coordination and planning. So, in 1962
Bacher became the Institute’s first provost, welcoming the chance
to learn about other Caltech divisions. He recruited and hired top social
scientists and supported the establishment of graduate programs in the
Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
“He
was a hands-on provost. He didn’t just wait for things to happen;
he was a man who got things done,” said Tom Tombrello, currently
chair of Bacher’s old division (and Kenan Professor and professor
of physics). “He was a man of strong opinions, who knew what he
wanted.” But he also had a sense of humor and loved bad puns, said
Tombrello. “You didn’t laugh; you groaned.”
Said Christy,
who succeeded him as provost: “He was kind of particular about how
things were done. He liked to have things done his way.” As an example,
Christy remembers, before he took over from Bacher as provost, how he
insisted that Christy occupy the office next door for six months as a
sort of understudy. Bacher wanted to be able to tell him how to do things.
Bacher retired
as provost and vice president (incoming president Harold Brown had added
the second title in 1969) on his 65th birthday, in 1970, but remained
on the faculty exploring new interests in sources of energy. He became
professor of physics, emeritus, in 1976. In the late ’80s, the Bachers
moved into a retirement community in Montecito, where he lived until his
death.
His wife,
Jean, died in 1994. He is survived by their son, Andrew Dow Bacher, PhD
’67; daughter, Martha Bacher Eaton; and two grandchildren.
A memorial service is being planned, but not the usual sort of memorial service. When Tombrello broached the idea to Bacher’s family, Andrew Bacher (who happens to have been Tombrello’s first graduate student) said his father wouldn’t like the idea of a bunch of old guys talking about him, and wouldn’t want to be there. According to Tombrello, he said his father liked new things, what was going to happen next. So, early next fall, the “memorial service” will be a celebration of Bacher’s 100th birthday; topics for discussion will be “new things” that have their roots in what Bacher started. —JD
