Pupin Hall was built in 1925-1927 to provide more space for the Physics Department which had originally been housed in Fayerweather Hall. In 1935, it was renamed after Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin, a Serbian-American scientist and graduate of Columbia. Returning to the university's engineering school as a faculty member, he played a key role in establishing the department of electrical engineering. Pupin was also a brilliant inventor, developing methods for rapid x-ray photography and the "Pupin coil," a device for increasing the range of long-distance telephones. After his death in 1935, the university trustees named the newly constructed physics building the "Pupin Physics Laboratories" in his honor. By 1931, the building which later became Pupin Hall was a leading research center. During this time Harold Urey discovered deuterium and George B. Pegram was investigating the phenomena associated with the newly discovered neutron. In 1938, Enrico Fermi escaped fascist Italy after winning the Nobel prize for his work on induced radioactivity. In fact, he took his wife and children with him to Stockholm and immediately emigrated to New York. Shortly after arriving he began working at Columbia University with Dr. John Dunning. His work on nuclear fission, together with I. I. Rabi's work on atomic and molecular physics, ushered in a golden era of fundamental research at the university. One of the country's first cyclotrons was built in the basement of Pupin Hall by John R. Dunning, where it remained until 2007. The building's historic significance was secured with the first splitting of a uranium atom in the United States, which was achieved by Enrico Fermi in Pupin Hall on January 25, 1939, just 10 days after the world's first such successful experiment, carried out in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Advances in research
The building is a landmark due to the advances in nuclear research made there during the Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear weapon. It is connected to the university tunnels, from which one can occasionally access the Manhattan Project's leftover cyclotron and other historic research facilities. Sadly, many of these have been sealed off since the 1980s, when Ken Hechtman wrought havoc with nuclear materials he stole from Pupin's basement. Other discoveries and breakthroughs achieved in Pupin include:
The discovery of deuterium by Harold Urey
The investigation of neutron phenomena by George Pegram
The construction of one of the country's first cyclotrons
January 25, 1939: the first splitting of a uranium atom in the United States, by Enrico Fermi
Features and layout quirks
The current main entrance to Pupin is on the 5th floor from the plaza above Dodge Physical Fitness Center. This means that many of the seminar rooms in Pupin on floors 2-4, while above ground, are below campus level and, therefore, windowless. The original entryway was on the first floor from the Grove, but got blocked by the construction of Dodge in the 1960s. The entryway smells like chlorine because Uris Pool has an exit stairway leading into Pupin's entry. The Rutherfurd Observatory is on top of Pupin. The Astronomy Department hosts bi-monthly Public Observing Nights, and serves the Tri-State area in hosting people interested in observing with an optical telescope.
