I had an appointment in May of 1996 with the Assistant Archivist at the National Academy of Sciences, Daniel Barbiero, to review the information the Academy had on the Nobel Laureate, Richard Feynman. Since Feynman had been a member, we both thought that there would be a wealth of information.

To Daniel's chagrin and my dismay, a current academy member had taken all files related to Feynman to his out-of-town home to work on a forthcoming book. There was no Feynman to be had. Daniel, not wanting to disappoint me, had found what he called "a little jewel" that he thought might make my trip worthwhile.

He gave me a file with a few pictures, a draft report, a few pages of notes, and a few letters typed on onionskin paper and copied on old-style mimeograph machines. In order not to disappoint me, he had instead given me a window on history. I held in my hands original correspondence from the men who made the first atomic bombs about what to do next. Just think! Oppenheimer in his own words and by his own hand.

Here, then, is what I learned about the Shelter Island meeting. Although this was not the in-depth history of Feynman I had sought, this information offers an even deeper feel for the times than I had expected. A jewel indeed. Thanks, Daniel.

In the period between the fall of 1945 and the beginning of 1947, the theoretical physicists in America were in the doldrums. Having recently saved the world for democracy by inventing, building, testing, and manufacturing the atomic bombs used to defeat the Japanese in World War II, they seemed almost to be despondent because their great work was finished.

Athletes, public speakers, actors, writers, virtually everyone who completes an achievement with the adrenaline rush of a tour de force performance, experiences such a let-down. Physicists are not immune to the syndrome. According to James Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, "the scientists contemplating the state of theoretical physics descended into a distinct gloominess; in the aftermath of the bomb, their mood seemed postcoital" (Gleick, 1992: page 232).

Gleick quotes I. I. Rabi as having said that except for the bomb, "the last eighteen years (since the birth of quantum mechanics) have been the most sterile of the century" and Murray Gell-Mann as saying that "theoreticians were in disgrace" (Gleick, 1992: page 232).

It was at this time that Duncan MacInnes, a physical chemist at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and a former President of the New York Academy of Sciences, wrote to Frank B. Jewett of AT&T Bell Labs and President of the National Academy of Science. MacInness' letter pursued the suggestion he and Victor Weisskopf, the Hans Bethes former deputy in the theoretical division of the Manhattan Project, had made for a conference of a few eminent physicists to get together to discuss the current state of physics theory.

This was, MacInnes had suggested, far superior to the conventional gathering of dozens of scientists who were able to spend very little time discussing or creating science. In his post-conference report, MacInnes said, "There is a need for such gatherings because the meetings of larger scientific societies have become so large that the key men cannot readily get together and since the programs are crowded there is little time for discussion. Furthermore the papers and the discussions cannot be of high intellectual calibre or they will not be intelligible to most of the large audiences assembled." (Archives NAS ; A Report on Two Conferences Under the Auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, November 7, 1947.) MacInnes thought that such a restricted gathering could result in the production of an important monograph. (Archives NAS; D. MacInnes to F. Jewett, January 14, 1947)

In fact, it was decided not to publish a monograph but the conference was held and it was extremely successful nonetheless. The June 2-4, 1947 meeting resulted in four substantial papers; established what would become the standard for meetings of the leadership of the American theoretical physics community; and set the stage for later, equally momentous meetings (Pocono, Oldstone-on-the-Hudson, and the Rochester series.) Many of the participants of these conferences were the wise older generation of physicists. Others were the young Turks not quite at the top, but ready to become the elite.

At the Shelter Island Conference in June,1947. Willis Lamb and John Wheele, standing; Abraham Pais, Richard Feynman, and Herman Feshbach, seated; Julian Schwinger, kneeling. Original photo in the archives of the National Academy of Science.

The invited participants for the Shelter Island conference included:

• Hans A. Bethe: head of the theoretical physics division at Cornell University; division head on the Manhattan Project; member of the National Academy of Science; Nobel prize winner for explanation of the suns thermonuclear processes.
• Felix Bloch: Stanford University; Nobel Prize (1952) for methods of measuring the magnetic fields of atomic nuclei (invited but could not attend).
• David Bohm: Princeton University; Fellow of the Royal Society of London; a former student of Oppenheimer. Bohm declined to testify at Oppenheimer's hearing before Senator Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s for fear that his words might be twisted against his former mentor and he emigrated to England.
• Gregory Breit: Yale University; member of the National Academy of Science; co-author of the paper entitled "Effect of nuclear motion on the hyperfine structure of the ground term of hydrogen," which resulted from the Shelter Island meeting.
• K. K. Darrow: Bell Telephone Laboratories; popularizer of science; Secretary of the American Physical Society.
• Albert Einstein: Princeton University; Nobel Prize (1921) for the theory of relativity and the photoelectric effect; (invited but could not attend).
• Enrico Fermi: University of Chicago; Nobel Prize (1938) for the discovery of radioactive elements; creator of the nuclear chain reaction; (invited but could not attend; did attend Pocono meeting).
• Herman Feshbach: MIT; later Institute Professor Emeritus and editor of the Annals of Physics; moderator of a 1995 MIT conference on "Complexity, Life at the edge of Chaos."
• Richard P. Feynman: Cornell University; Nobel Prize (1965 with Schwinger and Tomonaga) for work on defining basic theories of quantum electrodynamics (QED); first theorist in molecular nanotechnology.
• H. A. Kramers: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University; worked with Weisskopf on solving crucial renormalization problems in QED.
• Willis E. Lamb: Columbia University; discoverer of the gap between two energy levels that should have been identical (the Lamb shift); Nobel Prize (1955 with P. Kusch) for his discoveries concerning the structure of the hydrogen spectrum and his work on QED.
• Duncan MacInnes: the Rockefeller Institute; original proponent of the Shelter Island conference; former President of the New York Academy of Science; member of the National Academy of Science.
• Robert E. Marshak: University of Rochester; worked on British atomic bomb project in Montreal, Canada, then on the Manhattan Project; established the Rochester Conference series; first theorist of a second meson particle; proposed theory of V-A Theory of Weak Interactions; nominated several times but never received the Nobel Prize; also targeted by McCarthy but exonerated; his papers reside at Virginia Tech archives .
• C. Molle: Purdue University (invited but could not attend.) John von Neumann: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University; mathematician and early computer scientist; game theorist; member of the National Academy of Science.
• Arnold Nordsieck: Bell Telephone Laboratories; later a specialist in the mathematics of computation; the University of California at Santa Barbara named an award for excellence in physics after him.
• J. Robert Oppenheimer: University of California; head of the Manhattan project; member of the National Academy of Science; renowned as a leader but less so as a physicist; never received a Nobel Prize; accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of selling atomic bomb to the Soviets; eventually cleared of all charges.
• Abraham Pais: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University; his later work on strangeness and isospin at Brookhaven preceded and set the stage for Gell-Manns Nobel Prize winning efforts.
• Linus Pauling: California Institute of Technology; member of the National Academy of Science; Nobel prize winner in chemistry and competitor of Crick and Watson for discovery of the structure of DNA.
• Isidor Isaac Rabi: head of the physics program at Columbia; member of the National Academy of Science; Nobel Prize (1944) for his resonance method of recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei.
• Bruno Rossi: MIT; pioneer in cosmic ray research; one of the first researchers into X-ray astronomy and interplanetary plasma; worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project; member of the National Academy of Sciences.
• Julian Schwinger: Harvard University; first proponent of unification of weak and electromagnetic interactions; noted for work in renormalization of QED; Nobel Prize (1965 with Feynman and Tomonaga) for work on defining basic theories of quantum electrodynamics.
• Robert Serber: University of California; aide to Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project; first to work on "critical mass" problem in nuclear bomb-making.
• Edward Teller: University of Chicago; leader of the hydrogen bomb project.
• George E. Uhlenbeck: University of Michigan; discoverer (with S. A. Goudsmit) that the electron has an intrinsic spin; co-authored (with Lamb and Nordsieck) a paper on the theory of cosmic ray showers.
• J. H. Van Vleck: Harvard University; Nobel Prize (1977 with Philip Anderson and Sir Nevill F. Mott) for contributions to solid-state electronics, solid-state circuitry, and the use of silicon in the development of computers; member of the National Academy of Science.
• Victor F. Weisskopf: MIT; Bethes deputy on the Manhattan project; early theorist in gluons, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), and renormalization of QED (with Kramers).
• J. A. Wheeler: Princeton University; former faculty advisor to Feynman; "a man who had the courage to look at any crazy problem, a fearless and intrepid explorer"(Robert Wilson).

This illustrious group of attendees arrived in Manhattan and was taken by bus to Long Island under police escort with sirens blaring, not even stopping for lights. During their trip, a banquet was served for them by a local Chamber of Commerce official who had served in the U. S. military in the Pacific and who felt that they had saved his life. After dinner, they were taken by ferry to the Rams Head Inn on Shelter Island, a relaxed, country setting, far away from the urban bustle most of the scientists inhabited.

Stephen White of the New York Herald Tribune wrote about the beginning of the conference on June 2, 1947: "It is doubtful if there has ever been a conference quite like this one They roam through the corridors mumbling mathematical equations and eat their meals amid the fury of technical discussions." (Archives NAS) White described the local residents as, "reasonably confused about this sudden descent of science among them. The principal theory is that the scientists are busy making another type of atomic bomb, and nothing could be further from the truth." (Gleick, 1992: page 233).

S. S. Schweber of Brandeis University wrote a book chapter about the Shelter Island conference. The book apparently never made it into print, but it had interesting information about the ambiance of the conference. A draft of several chapters, including the one on the conference, can be found in the Archives of the National Academy of Science in Washington, DC. Schweber says that this meeting was "small, closed, elitist" and that it "marked the end of an era, that of the thirties, with its characteristic style of doing physics: small groups and small budgets" rather than the machine-oriented big physics that would follow. "These men," says Schweber, "were the physicists who gave us the atomic bomb and in many ways they continued the heroic efforts that had been demanded by the war."

Schweber describes how these giants of physics argued back and forth over ideas and hypotheses. Although Oppenheimer, around whose plans the meeting was scheduled, dominated the meeting, there were no wallflowers. The synergy must have been unbelievable and the results, stunning. "Shelter Island provided the initial stimulus for the post-World War II developments in quantum field theory: effective, relativistically invariant computational methods; Feynman diagrams, renormalization theory."

Some of the original feedback letters from participants can also be found in the archives of the National Academy. In one, John Wheeler writes to Duncan MacInnes, "The conference may not have any great progress to report at the moment, but it has brought about the closest meeting of the minds in physics in American (sic) which has taken place since 1941 and has brought theoretical physics to a starting point which, without the aid of the Rams Head conference, might not have been reached for many months to come." (Archives NAS; J. Wheeler to D. MacInnes, June 6, 1947)

Wheeler also wrote to Frank Jewett saying, "I consider the meeting was worthwhile even though there was no single advance which the conference could cite to its credit. The meeting may have served to shorten by a number of months, it seems to me, the time required for the physicists of this country to arrive at a point where it will first be possible to make advances. I know of no meeting of theoretical physicists since the war which has done more than this one to restore to us all a common appreciation and assessment of the deeper problems of elementary particle physics." (Archives NAS; J. Wheeler to F. Jewett, July 18, 1947)

Other participants were quick to recognize the conference's import without Wheelers caveat. Gregory Breit wrote to Frank Jewett, "The discussion was much freer and more to the point than is usually the case. I believe this was the result of having the group small enough and properly selected." (Archives NAS; G. Breit to F. Jewett, June 16, 1947)

Schweber quotes from a memo written in January of 1948 from K. K. Darrow to Duncan MacInnes: "I must quote you the words of warm commendation used yesterday by I. I. Rabi about the Shelter Island meeting. He said that it has proved much more important than it seemed at the time, and would be remembered as the 1911 Solvay Congress is remembered, for having been the starting point of remarkable new developments."

Oppenheimer sent a hand-written memo to Jewett expressing his feelings, "The three days were a joy to us, and perhaps rather unexpectedly fruitful; we had a long needed chance for clarification and exchange of views, and came away a good deal more certain of the directions in which progress may lie." He suggested that the Physical Review should be "full of praises" for the conference and recommended that it be repeated. (Archives NAS; J. R. Oppenheimer to F. Jewett, June 4, 1947)

Both of his recommendations were followed. Three papers were published in the Review and the Pocono meeting took place the next year.

In 1968 one of the participants of the conference, theoretician Abraham Pais, described the state of particle physics as "a state not unlike the one in a symphony hall a while before the start of the concert. On the podium one will see some but not all of the musicians. They are tuning up. Short brilliant passages are heard on some instruments; improvisations elsewhere; some wrong notes too. There is a sense of anticipation for the moment when the symphony starts" (Pickering, 1984: page 403).

Many believe that the symphony which we later came to call quantum electrodynamics (QED) started with the tuning-up and improvisations heard at a quaint little country inn near the Hamptons in the spring of 1947.

©1996, Richard H. Smith, II, Alexandria, Virginia, USA. Email rsmith@moon.jic.com

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