John C. Slater

Early life and education

Professional career

Chairing the Department of Physics at MIT

• 1930: "The selection of Dr. John C. Slater as head of the Department will strengthen... undergraduate and graduate work... the limitation of space has retarded the development of graduate work... the total number of undergraduates being 53 and... graduate students 16."
• 1931: "This has been the first year of the Department in charge of its new Head, Professor John C. Slater... the subjects actively Spectroscopy, Applied Optics, Discharge of Electricity in Gases, Magneto-Optical Phenomena, Studies of Dielectrics, and various aspects of modern and classical theoretical physics."
• 1932: In the list of papers published by MIT faculty, items 293 to 340 are listed under Department of Physics.
• 1933: "The George Eastman Research Laboratory, into which the Department moved at the beginning of the year, provides for the first time a suitable home for research in Physics at the Institute". Slater states that outside recognition is shown by holders of six National, an International, and a Rockefeller Research Fellowship choosing to come to the Department. Slater describes the dedication of the Laboratory, the hosting of meetings of the International Astronomical Union, the American Physical Society, and a Spectroscopic conference, and ends: "In general the year has been one of settling down to work under satisfactory conditions, after the more difficult transition of the preceding year."
• 1934: "A number of advances in undergraduate teaching have been made or planned." Among the "most conspicuous events" in the department, "we acted as host" to meetings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and a national Spectroscopic Conference, where "the main topic was relation to biology and related fields." Advances in research have been "taking advantage of the unusual facilities" in the Department, and include the work of Warren on structure of liquids, Mueller on dielectric properties, Stockbarger on crystal physics, Harrison on automating spectroscopic measurement, Wulff on hyperfine structure, Boyce on spectra of nebulae, Van der Graaff on high voltage and nuclear research, and Stratton and Morse on ellipsoidal wave functions.
• 1935: Considerable attention is given to major improvements in undergraduate teaching. The extensive comments on research mention the arrival of Robley Evans and his work on a field new to the department—radioactivity, with special attention to nuclear medicine.
• 1936: "The most important development of the year in the Department has been the growing recognition of the significance of applied physics. There has been a tendency in the past among physicists to take interest only in the direct line of development of their science, and to neglect its applications." Slater develops this theme at length, and describes actions within the undergraduate, graduate and faculty work of the Department and at the national level to develop Applied Physics. The description of the flourishing basic research refers to ten different areas, including the upsurge in work on radioactivity..
• 1937 to 1941: These continue in the same vein. But world affairs begin to impact. The 1941 report ends: "The X-ray branch had as a guest Professor Rose C. L. Mooney of Newcomb College, who was prevented by the war from carrying on research in Europe under a Guggenheim Fellowship... As the year ends, the National Defense effort is beginning to claim the services of a number of staff members. Presumably the coming year will see a large intensification of the effort, though it is hoped that the interference with the regular research and teaching will not be too severe."
• 1942: This told a very different story. The defense effort had begun to "involve a considerable number of personnel, as well as a good deal of administrative work. With the opening of the Radiation Laboratory of the National Defense Research Committee at the Institute, a number of members of the Department's staff have become associated with that laboratory" followed by a list of over 10 senior faculty who had, and several more gone to other defense projects.
• 1943 to 1945: Slater took leave of absence as Chair, to work on topics of importance in radar. The American Mathematical Society selected him as the Josiah Willards Gibbs lecturer for 1945.
• 1946: Slater had returned as Chair. He starts his report: "The year of reconversion from war to peace has been one of the very greatest activity.... Physics during the war achieved an importance which has probably never before been attained by any other science. The Institute, as the leading technical institution of the country and probably the world, should properly have a physics department unequaled anywhere." He lists plans to meet this objective, that proliferate his administrative responsibilities.
• 1947: With the hiring of staff and building of laboratories well in hand, Slater begins: "The year in the Physics Department, as in the rest of the Institute, was one of starting the large-scale teaching of returned veterans and other students whose academic careers had been interrupted by the war." He goes on to discuss the needs of students, in the entire Institute, for Physics courses and laboratories, with particular mention of the upsurge in electronics and nuclear science, and he reports briefly on the developments following from his previous report.
• 1948: Slater begins "The current year is the first since the war in which the department has approached normal operation. No new major projects or changes of policy have been introduced." But the department that he has built is vastly different from what it was when he started. Sixteen master's degrees and 47 doctor's degrees were granted. Twenty-five Ph.D. recipients got academic appointments in MIT and other universities. Research flourished, and many scientists visited from European universities and elsewhere in the U.S.
• 1949: The new styled "normalcy" continued. "The approach to a steady postwar state continued with few unusual occurrences." The graduate curriculum has been revised and cryogenics enhanced. The continued growth of staff, research grants, industrial contacts and volume of publication are treated as matters of continuity, recognizing at the end, that: "The administrative load of the department has grown so much wise to appoint an executive officer". Nathaniel Frank, who had worked with John Slater for nearly two decades accepted the post.
• 1950: The future of the Department had been set. There were "few unexpected changes". And with the continued growth, "almost every research project in the Department has concerned itself with undergraduate research".
• 1951: Jay Stratton writes "Professor John C. Slater resigned as Head of the Department of Physics and has been appointed Harry B. Higgins Professor of the Solid State, the first appointment which will carry the title Institute Professor. Professor Slater has been granted a leave of absence for the coming year to carry on research at Brookhaven National Laboratory."

Research

Atoms, molecules and solids: research preceding World War II

• 1924: the theoretical part of his Ph.D. work, the Bohr-Kramers-Slater theory,
• 1925: widths of spectral lines; ideas that came very close to the electron spins principle,
• 1926 and 1927: explicit attention to electron spin, and to the Schrödinger equation;
• 1928: the Hartree self-consistent field, the Rydberg formula,
• 1929: the determinantal expression for an antisymmetric wave function,
• 1930: Slater type orbitals and atomic shielding constants,
• 1931: linear combination of atomic orbitals, van der Waals forces.
• 1932 to 1935: atomic orbitals, metallic conduction, application of the Thomas–Fermi method to metals,
• 1936: ferromagnetism, inelastic scattering, and, optical properties of alkali halides
• 1937 and 1938: augmented plane waves, superconductivity, ferromagnetism, electrodynamics,
• 1939 he published "only" a book: the definitive Introduction to Chemical Physics,
• 1940 the Grüneisen constant, and the Curie point,
• 1941 phase transition analogous to ferromagnetism in potassium dihydrogen phosphate.

Research during the war and the return to peace time activities

The Solid State and Molecular Theory Group

Activities

People

• Leland C. Allen †‡, ab initio molecular calculations, electronegativity, Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, Princeton University.
• Michael P Barnett ৳¶, molecular integrals, software, phototypesetting, cognition, later in industry, Columbia U. and CUNY.
• Louis Burnelle‡, molecular calculations, later Professor of Chemistry, New York University.
• Earl Callen †
• Fernando J. Corbató †, began the molecular calculations in the SSMTG; later a pioneer of time-sharing and recipient of Turing award.
• George Coulouris ৳, worked with MPB, later Professor of Computer Science at Queen Mary College of the University of London.
• Imre Cszimadia ‡, molecular calculations, later Professor of Chemistry, U. Toronto, ab initio calculations, drug design.
• Jens Dahl ‡, molecular calculations, later Professor of Chemistry, Technical University of Denmark, wrote quantum chemistry text.
• Donald E. Ellis ৳†, molecular calculations, later Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University, "real" materials.
• Arthur Freeman †‡, orthogonalized plane wave calculations, later Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University
• Robert P. Futrelle ৳, programming methods, later Professor of Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University.
• Leon Gunther †‡ lattice vibrations in alkali halides, later Professor of Physics at Tufts University, focus on condensed matter theory in many areas, including superconductivity and seminal papers on nanoscopic physics & quantum tunneling of magnetization.
• Malcolm Harrison ‡, co-developer of POLYATOM, later Professor of Computer Science, New York University.
• Frank Herman, band structure calculations, went into RCA then IBM Research Laboratories, wrote and edited major surveys.
• David Howarth ‡, solid state, later Professor of Computer Science, Imperial College, University of London.
• John Iliffe ৳, computer scientist.
• San-Ichiro Ishigura ‡, later Professor, Ochinamizu University
• Arnold Karo ‡, electronic structure of small molecules, later at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
• C.W. Kern ‡, molecular calculations, later Professor of Chemistry, Ohio State U., published extensively.
• Ryoichi Kikuchi ‡
• Walter H. Kleiner, solid state physics, continued at Lincoln Laboratory.
• George F. Koster †¶, became Chairman of the Physics Graduate Committee at MIT and wrote two books on solid state physics.
• Leonard F. Mattheiss †, augmented plane wave calculations, later at Bell Labs, published about 100 papers.
• Roy McWeeny ‡, valence theory, later held chairs at several British Universities and, since 1982, at the University of Pisa, Italy.
• Alvin Meckler, first major molecular calculation on Whirlwind, later National Security Agency,
• Donald Merrifield †, molecular calculations, later President of Loyola University, Los Angeles.
• Jules Moskowitz ‡, molecular calculations, later Chairman, Department of Chemistry, NYU, published 100 papers.
• Robert K. Nesbet ‡, molecular calculations, later at IBM Almaden Research Laboratories, published over 200 papers.
• Robert H. Parmenter, later Professor of Physics, U. Arizona, crystal properties and superconductivity.
• Russell M. Pitzer ‡, molecular calculations, later Chairman of Chemistry Department, Ohio State U, over 100 papers.
• George W. Pratt, Jr. †‡later Professor of Electrical Engineering and CMSE, MIT, solid state electronics.
• F.W. Quelle, Jr. augmented plane waves, later laser optics.
• Melvin M. Saffren †
• Robert Schrieffer wrote Bachelor's thesis on multiplets in heavy atoms, later shared Nobel Prize for BCS theory.
• Edward Schultz
• Harold Schweinler
• Hermann Statz ‡, ferromagnetism, later director of research at Raytheon and recipient of 2004 IEEE Microwave Pioneer Award,
• Levente Szasz, atomic structure, became Professor of Physics at Fordham University, published two books,
• Brian T. Sutcliffe ‡, co-developer of POLYATOM, later Professor of Chemistry, University of York.
• Richard E. Watson ‡៛, electronic properties of metal atoms, later at Brookhaven, published over 200 papers.
• E.B. White †
• John Wood †¶, augmented plane waves using Hartree–Fock methods, at Los Alamos National Laboratory, published extensively.

Slater's further activities at MIT during this time

Personal life and death

As an educator and advisor

Summary

Awards and Honors

• Irving Langmuir Award
• Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
• National Medal of Science

  Books

• Slater, J. C.. Microwave Electronics. New York: Van Nostrand.