Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
person who had signed up for the physics minor, then Lieutenant William "Herc" Carrol, also
dropped the physics minor. He later got a Ph.D. in civil engineering and went back to be a
deputy head of a department at West Point.
The two of us were sitting there one day at the start of a physics class when we looked
around. It was a very small class but in a large teaching auditorium. I guess there must have
been about 25 people there, and about half of them had Westinghouse notebooks and the
other half had General Electric notebooks. Then there was Herc Carrol and me. The
instructor came in and started writing formulas. He wrote them all the way around the room,
all long physics formulas. Then he looked and pointed up at this thing hanging over our head
on the wall, like at the Aerospace Museum here in Washington. It was the first betatron. He
said, "Well, of course, I invented that."
After he started writing formulas all around the room, both Herc and I felt that we were in a
league that we weren't prepared for, nor were we really interested in being in that league,
being rather pragmatically oriented toward Army engineering that we had known in the field.
So, we each at separate points, but within the month, marched down to see our faculty
adviser, Dr. Nathan Newmark, and asked him if we couldn't drop the physics minor.
So, I stayed on and got extra civil courses. Herc Carrol received approval to stay on and get
his Ph.D.
Q:
Do you think that physics minor might have come from the postwar engineer work in atomic
weapons?
A:
I think so. I think it had to do with nuclear effects.
Q:
That's what they were thinking about?
A:
That was the reason they established that as a discipline.
Q:
You didn't sound earlier like you thought you had picked that as your minor.
A:
I don't remember picking it, no. The people going there for civil masters were going for a
year. I was going for 20 months--that is, two summers, two fall semesters, and a single
spring semester for the physics minor. Because I didn't take that course until the first spring
semester--I'd already finished the summer and the fall--and then dropped the physics
minor, then we were able to ask to stay on. I really needed to stay on to finish the rest of the
work because of what I'd been taking. So, I added other civil courses like hydrology, which
was a help later when I got into the water resources business, and further geotech courses.
Illinois had some real heavyweights on their staff. Newmark was famous for dynamic
structures and earthquake loading. He was my faculty adviser. Interestingly, at that time the
Army told him, "Look, we're sending you a lot of engineer officers every year to Illinois,
more than any other university, but you're not giving them any of your own personal class
time. We'd like them to have some association with you." I took the structure course that he
invented in summer school, in the summer of '61, and he taught it so he could catch up with
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