- Edward Condon
Infobox Scientist
name =Edward Uhler Condon
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birth_date =March 2 1902
birth_place =Alamogordo, New Mexico ,United States
death_date =March 26 1974
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nationality =United States
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doctoral_students =Carl Sagan
known_for =radar ,nuclear weapons
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footnotes =Edward Uhler Condon (
March 2 1902 –March 26 1974 ) was a distinguished Americannuclear physicist , a pioneer inquantum mechanics , a participant in the development ofradar andnuclear weapons inWorld War II , research director ofCorning Glass , director of theNational Bureau of Standards , and president of theAmerican Physical Society (as well as, late in his life, professor ofphysics at the University of Colorado, where he directed a controversial Air Force-funded scientific study of UFOs).He was born in
Alamogordo, New Mexico ,United States , and earned a Ph.D. fromUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1926.In 1943, Condon joined the
Manhattan Project ; however, within six weeks, he resigned as a result of conflicts with General Leslie R. Groves, the project's military leader.Condon was one of the physicists whose loyalty to the
United States was challenged by members of Congress — including CongressmanRichard M. Nixon , who called for the revocation of his security clearance — in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The superpatriotic chairman of theHouse Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Rep.J. Parnell Thomas , would call the physicist "Dr. Condon," the "weakest link" in American security, and even the "missing link."In 1948,
U.S. President Harry Truman — at the Annual Meeting of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science , and with Condon sitting beside him — denounced Rep. Thomas and HUAC on the grounds that vital scientific research "may be made impossible by the creation of an atmosphere in which no man feels safe against the public airing of unfounded rumors, gossip and vilification." He called HUAC's activities "the most un-American thing we have to contend with today. It is the climate of atotalitarian country."Carl Sagan , once a student of Condon, documented Condon's own account of being brought up before a loyalty review board:"Dr. Condon, it says here that you have been at the forefront of a revolutionary movement in physics called" — and here the inquisitor read the words slowly and carefully — "quantum mechanics. It strikes this hearing that if you could be at the forefront of one revolutionary movement...you could be at the forefront of another."Condon replied that the accusation was unfounded, since he most emphatically was "not" a "revolutionary". He raised his right hand and solemnly declared, "I believe in
Archimedes' Principle , formulated in the third century B.C. I believe in Kepler's laws of planetary motion, discovered in the seventeenth century. I believe in Newton's laws...." He continued in this vein, listing a long sequence of scientists whose work, done centuries before, was still valid and respected: TheBernoulli family , Fourier, Ampère, Boltzmann, and Maxwell. HUAC did not appreciate his sense of humor; however, fortunately for Condon, the most severe charge they could confirm was that in high school he had a paper route delivering a socialist newspaper.From 1966 to 1968, Condon directed the University of Colorado UFO Project. Though plagued with infighting and controversy, the project's conclusion--that all
unidentified flying object s had prosaic explanations--have been cited as a key factor in the generally low levels of interest in UFOs among most mainstream scientists and academics. SeeCondon Report . In his negative critique of the Condon Report, astronomerJ. Allen Hynek hoped that Condon's reputation would not be soured by the Condon Report, writing, "It is unfortunate that, almost certainly, popular history will henceforth link Dr. Condon’s name with UFOs, and only the arcane history of physics will accord him his true place and record his brilliant career in contributing to the understanding ... of the nature of the physical world. These contributions UFOs cannot take away from him, even though his work with this problem is analogous to that of aMozart producing an uninspired pot-boiler, unworthy of his talents." (Clark, 605)Following his death, Condon crater on the
Moon was named after him.ee also
*
Franck-Condon principle External links
* [http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4997_1.html Oral history interview transcript with Edward Uhler Condon 17 October 1967, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives]
References
*http://www.nuclearfiles.org/rebios/condon.htm
*http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/exhibits/crow/condonbio.html
*Jerome Clark; The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial; Visible Ink, 1998; ISBN 1-57859-029-9
*Sagan, Carl (1996). "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark", New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-40946-9.
* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7192447 Find-A-Grave profile for Edward Condon]
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