Physics in the 1930s
1931
Wheeler Loomis complains bitterly about a vibration problem that causes the Physics Laboratory to shake so badly that spectrograph measurements are disrupted. "Our vibration problems would be reduced considerably if a concrete pavement could be put on Green Street [which was still cobblestoned—ed.]. We can feel the whole building shake every time a buss [sic] or a big coal truck goes over one of the many big bumps in front of our building." (Loomis complained about this problem annually until 1941, when Green Street was evidently paved.)
1932
Professor Floyd Watson wins the department's first externally funded research grant when the U.S. Gypsum Company gives him $1000 to study the effects of sound waves on materials.
1935
The Great Depression—Wheeler Loomis notes in his annual report to the Dean, "The department, whose operating expenses have been reduced to a starvation point for over three years, suffered a financial crisis this winter and pretty nearly had to close up. It was rescued, temporarily, by the allotment of $2200 from general engineering funds."
1936
Professor P. Gerald Kruger builds the world's third cyclotron—the first to be built outside of Berkeley and the first to have an external beam.
Wheeler Loomis begins a vigorous campaign for a new Physics building, a battle that will last for nearly two decades.
1937
As the economy gradually improves, Wheeler Loomis begins to rebuild his department. His strategy—upon realizing that Illinois lacks the ambience, money, and prestige to attract senior scientists—is to hire promising youngsters and nurture them assiduously. The tradition of "Loomis tenure" begins.
Between 1937 and 1941, Loomis hires twelve new physicists, including Maurice Goldhaber, John Henry Manley, Leland J. Haworth, Ernest M. Lyman, Donald Kerst, and Robert Serber. Loomis's enthusiastic spending inspired the following verse, written by a colleague for the 1941 Physics newsletter: "There was a young fellow named Wheeler/Who for more men put out a feeler/Many men did he hire/And none did he fire/But spent cash like a drunken New Dealer.")
John H. Manley, Maurice Goldhaber, and Leland J. Haworth
1939
Professor Maurice Goldhaber marries Gertrude Scharff Goldhaber, and she joins him at Illinois. They are not allowed to join war-related research because of their foreign birth, but they initiate a fruitful program in nuclear physics using radioactive sources and simple equipment.
