Hoddeson, Lillian 1940-

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HODDESON, Lillian 1940-

PERSONAL: Born December 20, 1940, in New York, NY; daughter of Jacob and Liselotte (Bruck) Hart-mann; married Gordon Baym, 1981, divorced, 1992; children: Michael Hartmann, Carol Liselotte. Education: Brandeis University, 1957-58; Barnard College, B.A. 1961; Columbia University, M.A., 1963, Ph.D. (physics), 1966.

ADDRESSES: Home—410 Sherwin Dr., Urbana, IL 61802. Offıce—History Department, Gregory Hall, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 810 South Wright St., Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail—hoddeson@ uiuc.edu.

CAREER: Physicist and historian. Bronx Community College, New York, NY, instructor in physics, 1966-67; Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY, assistant professor of physics, 1967-70; Robert Louis Stevenson High School, New York, NY, science teacher, 1970-71; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, assistant professor of physics, 1971-76; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, visiting fellow, 1974-75; Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark, visiting scholar, 1976; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, visiting scientist, 1977-79, senior research physicist, 1980—, visiting associate professor of history, 1989-92, associate professor of history, 1993-2000, professor of history, 2000—; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, IL, historian, 1978—; Nagoya University, Japan, visiting historian of science, 1979-80; University of California, Santa Barbara, visiting historian of science, 1980.

MEMBER: American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Historical Association, American Physical Society, History of Science Society, New York Academy of Sciences, Society for the History of Technology.

AWARDS, HONORS: A. P. Sloan Foundation, 1980; National Science Foundation grant, 1967-70, 1974, 1989-93, 1992-95, 1995-99; American Council of Learned Societies study fellowship, 1974-75; fellow, American Physical Society, 1993; A T & T Foundation fellow, 1993-94; A T & T Bell Labs fellow, 1994-97; Sally Hacker Prize, Society for the History of Technology, 1999; Guggenheim fellowship, Guggenheim Foundation, 2000; LAS Alumni Scholar Award, University of Illinois, 2000.

WRITINGS:

(Editor with L. M. Brown) The Birth of Particle Physics, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1983.

(Editor with L. M. Brown, and M. Dresden) Pions toQuarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1989.

(Editor with E. Braun, J. Teichmann, and S. Weart) Out of the Crystal Maze: A History of Solid State Physics, 1900-1960, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(With P. Henriksen, R. Meade, and C. Westfall) Critical Assembly: A History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943-1945, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

(With M. Riordan) Crystal Fire: The Birth of theInformation Age, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor with L. M. Brown, M. Riordan, M. Dresden) The Rise of the Standard Model: Particle Physics in the 1960s and 1970s, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.
(With V. Daitch) True Genius: The Life and Science ofJohn Bardeen, the Only Winner of Two Nobel Prizes in Physics, Joseph Henry Press (Washington, DC), 2002.

Contributor of articles to books, conferences, and journals, including Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, History and Technology, Illinois Historical Journal, Journal of Statistical Physics, Minerva, Physics Today, Reviews of Modern Physics, Technology and Culture, and others.

WORK IN PROGRESS: (With A. Kolb and C. Westfall) Frontier: Rings: Big Science at Fermi Lab: 1965-89; (with others) Tunnel Visions: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider.

SIDELIGHTS: Lillian Hoddeson is a noted historian of science whose specialty is physics in the twentieth century. She was born and educated in New York, and earned her bachelor's and graduate degrees at Barnard College and Columbia University, respectively. Hoddeson received a Ph.D. in physics in 1966, but gradually shifted her focus of interest to the history of science. Graduate-level study in the history of science at Princeton University developed this interest further. Her primary areas of activity are the origins of information technology, the development of particle and solid-state physics, atomic weaponry, and what is referred to as "big science": research in the settings of government and industrial laboratories. In the course of her career, Hoddeson has conducted over 400 interviews with individuals working in the field. She founded the history program and archives at Fermilab and worked with Alison Kerr on the archives at Los Alamos. She has a dual appointment in both physics and history at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and is historian at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Hoddeson has many titles to her credit, including both books and articles. She has been the recipient of several awards, among them a Guggenheim fellowship in 2000, and is a regular contributor to scholarly journals and conferences.

Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s, edited by Hoddeson in conjunction with Laurie M. Brown and Max Dresden, is an account, in forty-seven essays, of the history of contemporary physics encompassing the years 1947 to 1963. It is a follow-up work to the 1983 publication The Birth of Particle Physics. The stimulus for this book was a 1985 Fermi lab symposium. By all accounts, this was a period of great change in physics; the pion was discovered and the "new physics" was born. This book is a collaborative effort between historians and physicists. Nobel laureate Leon Lederman contributed the foreword to the book, and noted the need for increased cooperation between the two disciplines. Helge Kragh, in a review in the British Journal for the History of Science, deemed this volume a generally successful example of the desired collaboration. Included are many reminiscences by physicists active during this period. There are accounts of the observation of the neutrino by Reines, as well as Chamberlain's memories of antiproton research. There are also significant efforts on the part of the researchers to give credit where it is due. One of the most notable examples is the acknowledgment of the work by the self-trained Nicholas Christofilos. The authors received positive critical attention for their examination of historical documents and their ability to describe the political issues surrounding the construction of particle accelerators in the United States.

Hoddeson has done extensive work tracing the careers and contributions of some of the more notable twentieth-century physicists. Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age, winner of the Sally Hacker Prize, is an examination of the research, done at the Bell Telephone Laboratory after World War II, that led to the invention of the transistor. As John Durant noted in his review in the New York Times Book Review, European physicists did the work that resulted in quantum theory, while it was the Americans who first understood the impact and applications of quantum physics to electronics. The personalities and relationships of the scientists, William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain are described in detail. These were, by all accounts, difficult working relationships. The three men did, however, win the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956 for their work on the transistor. Critics have praised Hoddeson and Riordan for a book that is a rich and dramatic rendering of this technological breakthrough.

Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch have written a biography of Bardeen, who is the only scientist to have won two Nobel Prizes, both in physics. The second one was awarded in 1972. In True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen, Bardeen, is depicted as a solid, reliable consensus-builder; a far cry from the cliché of the mad genius. Antony Anderson's review of the book in New Scientist pointed out that Bardeen had a reputation as a careful, methodical thinker who was generous with students and colleagues. Critics have noted that although the book is a detailed account of his life, the focus on Bardeen's individual contributions to physics is never lost.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Directory of American Scholars, tenth edition, Volume1: History, Archaeology and Area Studies, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

periodicals

American Journal of Physics, August, 1993, Zuoyue Wang, review of Out of the Crystal Maze: Chapters from the History of Solid-State Physics, p. 766.

Booklist, July, 1997, Gilbert Taylor, review of CrystalFire: The Birth of the Information Age, p. 1785.

British Journal for the History of Science, December, 1991, Helge Kragh, review of Pions to Quarks: Particle Physics in the 1950s, pp. 477-478.

Choice, June, 1993, J. U. Trefny, review of Out of theCrystal Maze, p. 1665; April, 1994, R. L. Stearns, review of Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943-1945, p. 1316.

Isis, December, 1994, José M. Sánchez-Ron, review of Out of the Crystal Maze, pp. 735-736; December, 1999, James T. Cushing, review of The Rise of the Standard Model: Particle Physics in the 1960s and 1970s, p. 835.

Journal of American History, March, 1995, Lawrence Badash, review of Critical Assembly, p. 1813.

Library Journal, July, 1997, Robert C. Ballou, review of Crystal Fire, p. 121; September 15, 1999, James Dudley, review of Crystal Fire, p. 131.

Nature, June 7, 1990, David J. Miller, review of Pions to Quarks, p. 488.

New Scientist, October 3, 1998, Graham Farmelo, review of The Rise of the Standard Model, p. 52; September 21, 2002, Antony Anderson, review of True Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen, the Only Winner of Two Nobel Prizes in Physics, p. 52.

New York Times Book Review, February 1, 1998, John Durant, review of Crystal Fire, p. 29.

Physics Today, April, 1991, Michael Chanowitz, review of Pions to Quarks, p. 108.

Publishers Weekly, June 23, 1997, review of CrystalFire, p. 80; July 29, 2002, review of True Genius, p. 62.

Science, October 5, 1984, Andrew Pickering, review of The Birth of Particle Physics, p. 38; July 27, 1990, Constance Dilworth, review of Pions to Quarks, p. 426; May 21, 1993, Yves Gingras, review of Out of the Crystal Maze, p. 1165; February 25, 1994, Rudolf Peierls, review of Critical Assembly, p. 1162.

Sciences, November-December, 1995, Sidney Perkowitz, review of Out of the Crystal Maze, p. 40.

Technology and Culture, October, 1995, Bruce E. Seely, review of Critical Assembly, p. 1053; July, 2000, Arthur Molella, review of Crystal Fire, p. 623.