TUVE, MERLE ANTONY

(b. Canton, South Dakota, 27 June 1901; d. Bethesda, Maryland, 20 May 1982)

physics.

All of Tuve’s grandparents immigrated to the United States from Norway in the mid nineteenth century. His parents—Anthony G. Tuve and Ida Marie Larsen—came to Canton in order to teach at Augustana College, a school supported by a Norwegian-Lutheran church group (and a precursor of Augustana College at Sioux Falls); and from 1890 to 1916 his father was its president. Tuve’s siblings also pursued learned professions: his older brother, George Lewis, in mechanical engineering; his younger sister, Rosemond, in English literary criticism; and his younger brother, Richard Larsen, in physical chemistry. On 27 October 1927 Tuve married Winifred Gray Whitman, who received her M.D. degree from the University of Minnesota and practiced psychiatry and psychoanalysis. They had two children, Trygve Whitman and Lucy Winifred, both of whom earned doctorates in the sciences.

As a boy, Tuve became interested in electrical devices. He and his friend Ernest O. Lawrence rejuvenated cast-off telephone dry cells and used them for electrical projects, including a telegraph line between their houses. As teenagers they turned their attention to wireless telegraphy. Their first set was one that the local Boy Scout troop had acquired. Later, each built his own vacuum-tube set.¹

After a year at the public high school, Tuve transferred to the secondary-school program at Augustana. While there, he took a course in physics. Under the influence of the school’s new president, P. M. Glasoe, however, he decided to major in chemistry when he entered the University of Minnesota in the spring of 1919.

Not long after moving to Minneapolis, Tuve changed his major to electrical engineering, the field in which he received his B.S. degree in 1922. The engineering curriculum included a required sequence of physics courses, and that—plus John T Tate’s sequence on theoretical physics—clinched his interest in the subject. As a result, he stayed for another year to work on a master’s degree in physics. Under Tate’s direction he sought to determine whether bombardment by positive mercury ions could ionize mercury gas, but he observed no effect.

After leaving Minnesota, Tuve went to Princeton as an instructor, hoping to continue his work with positive ions as the basis for his doctorate under the direction of Karl T Compton. The department, however, did not have sufficient funds to keep him for more than a year. Accordingly, after spending the summer of 1924 at Western Electric (working under the direction of Clinton J. Davisson), he went to Johns Hopkins University as an instructor and a graduate student.

In Baltimore, Tuve discussed a new project with Gregory Breit, whom he had met at Minnesota. Now at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW), Breit proposed building a large parabolic transmitter to direct a beam of very short radio waves at the ionosphere (then known as the “conducting layer” or the “Kennelly-Heaviside layer” of the earth’s atmosphere). As his part in the project. Tuve was to man a mobile receiver to determine where the beam returned to earth.

Drawing on an approach described by W. F. G. Swann at Minnesota, Tuve proposed instead that they broadcast pulses of conventional-length radio waves and compare two sets of signals: one arriving from the transmitter directly and the other arriving via the ionosphere. The amount by which one train was offset from the other would serve as a measure of the time difference between the two routes—from which the height of the conducting layer could be established. Using the Naval Research Laboratory’s transmitter, Tuve and Breit performed the experiment during the summer of 1925.

Prior to the mid 1920’s, the existence of the ionosphere had been accepted on theoretical and practical grounds but had not been conclusively demonstrated by experiment. The first such demonstration came in December 1924. Working in England, E. V. Appleton and M. A. F. Barnett employed a different method. (Specifically, they observed the interference effects between the ground wave and the sky wave as the transmitter frequency was slowly varied.) In the years that followed, however, it was the method of Breit and Tuve that came into widespread use of ionospheric studies.²

In 1926 Tuve received his Ph.D. for his work on the ionosphere and thereupon joined Brett at the DTM—in part to continue the radio work. With Odd Dahl he developed a technique for sending out sharply peaked, widely spaced pulses, and with Lawrence R. Hafstad he developed a technique for leaking a portion of the signal from the transmitter to the receiver and using it for direct comparisons with the incoming sky wave. So sensitive were these techniques that their ionospheric measurements were disturbed by aircraft landing and taking off nearby—observations that played a role in the development of radar a few years later³.

Meanwhile, Tuve initiated a second line of research, one in which he had been interested since his Minnesota days⁴. Knowing that the repulsive electrical force between two particles of like charge had to break down in the atomic nucleus, he wanted to accelerate positively charged particles to high velocities. Directing the accelerated beam on atomic nuclei would then enable him to study the short-range attractive force that keeps the nuclear particles together.

Working at the DTM, Tuve and Breit were among the earliest researchers to develop particle accelerators as useful experimental devices. When they initiated the project in 1926, their first task was to develop a suitable high-voltage source. They found that by submerging a Tesla coil in a tank filled with transformer oil under pressure, they could produce 5 million volts. Their next step was to build vacuum tubes that could withstand such voltages. Breit’s departure in 1928 to study in Europe left the task of tube development largely in Tuve’s hands. Adopting the approach of W. D. Coolidge. He used a multisection tube—each section carrying only a portion of the high voltage. By the summer of 1929, Tuve, Hafstad, and Dahl had developed a multisection “cascade” tube that could withstand nearly 1.5 million volts. The third step was to use the apparatus to accelerate electrons and protons. Success with electrons led to a prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for the best paper presented at the annual meeting of 1930. But difficulties with protons led Tuve to seek a new type of high-voltage source.

The solution came in the form of the generator that R. J. Van de Graaff was developing at Princeton. Moving as quickly as they could as the field of nuclear physics took shape, Tuve and his DTM coworkers in 1933 used a one-meter Van de Graaff accelerator (which produced 0.4 million volts) to identify contamination effects in results reported by J. D. Cockcroft and E. T. S. Walton at the Cavendish Laboratory in England. In 1934 they used a two-meter Van de Graaff accelerator (which produced 1.2 million volts) to disconfirm results that Lawrence had obtained with his cyclotron at Berkeley. Subsequently they studied resonances in the proton bombardment of lithium and other elements.

Tuve then turned his attention to proton-proton scattering. Having arranged to make precise measurements of the accelerating voltage, he, Hafstad, and Norman P. Heydenburg initiated the studies in late 1935 and early 1936. Breit and two of his colleagues interpreted the results as demonstrating that the force at work in the proton-proton interaction is the same as the force at work in the proton-neutron interaction.⁵. Subsequent refinements supported the conclusion that the nucleons are held together by a strong, charge-independent force.

As the decade progressed, the DTM emerged as one of the world’s leading centers of nuclear physics. Along with using the two-meter machine, Tuve prepared plans for building an even larger Van de Graaff accelerator. Housed inside a pressurized steel container, it became operational (with a capability of accelerating protons to energies upward of 3 million volts) in late 1938. After Vannevar Bush Succeeded John C Merriam as CIW president in 1939, Tuve won approval for a sixty-inch cyclotron at the DTM— largely for producing radioactive isotopes—and much of his time that year was devoted to the new facility.

Meanwhile, Tuve did not neglect to strengthen his group’s ties with theoretical physicists. In particular, he encouraged the CIW to initiate a series of annual conferences—the first of which was held in 1935—sponsored jointly with George Washington University and known as the Washington Conferences on Theoretical Physics. At the Fifth Washington Conference in January 1939, Tuve and his coworkers learned of uranium fission from Niels Bohr, and on the last day of the meeting, they verified the occurrence of the reaction, using their new Van de Graaff accelerator. Later in the year, when President Roosevelt authorized creation of the Uranium Committee (headed by L. J. Briggs). Tuve was chosen as one of its members. Not being optimistic about the rapid development of atomic bombs, however, he withdrew when others pressed for a large-scale program.

In the summer of 1940, Tuve agreed to head the National Defense Research Committee’s (NDRC) efforts to devise ways of replacing contact fuses and timed fuses with influence fuses. Although his “Section T”⁶ explored a variety of approaches (for example, a fuse triggered by light reflected from the target), he decided in the spring of 1941 to concentrate on radio proximity fuses. Once in flight, a tiny transmitter in the nose of an explosive projectile would send out a continuous signal. The fuse would detonate the charge when it received the Doppler-shifted reflection from the target.

Section T oversaw the development of vacuum lubes, batteries, and other components small enough to fit into artillery shells, rugged enough to withstand being shot from a gun (and spun rapidly in flight), and safe enough to be stored and handled readily. Moreover, Section T tested the mass-produced components to ensure that they were of sufficiently high quality, and it helped the military to introduce the fuses into field operations. First employed against Japanese aircraft in early 1943, they were later used to bring down V-l buzz bombs over England and Belgium and to stem German advances in the Battle of the Bulge⁷ By the end of the war, more than 22 million fuses had been manufactured at a total cost of about a billion dollars.

Tuve’s presence was felt throughout the vast enterprise. He assembled the personnel of Section T, set out the general lines along which they worked, and established their operating procedures (expressed in a series of aphoristic “running orders”, such as “I don’t want any damn fool in this laboratory to save money. I only want him to save time”⁸). Moreover, throughout the war he maintained effective liaison with military, industrial, and civilian research leaders. The result was an approach that became known as “the Section-T pattern of research organization”⁹.

Although the NDRC and the more comprehensive Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) were slated for termination at the war’s end, the successful wartime projects demonstrated the importance of continuing similar efforts in peacetime. Tuve considered the problem of what to do after the war while serving on the Committee on Postwar Research (the Wilson Committee), formed in mid 1944. The committee proposed the creation of the Research Board for National Security, a stillborn precursor to the National Science Foundation (which was not authorized until 1950).¹⁰

More immediately successful were Tuve’s efforts to establish the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). In 1942, as the proximity-fuse work shifted from laboratory development to full-scale manufacturing, Johns Hopkins agreed to continue the project under an OSRD contract. Accordingly, the technical work was transferred from the DTM to quarters in Silver Spring. Maryland, and the APL was born. Tuve became its first director and remained in charge when, in 1944, the OSRD contract was replaced by a contract between Johns Hopkins and the Navy Bureau of Ordnance. He also participated centrally in discussions that led in early 1946 to the continuation of the APL as a postwar organization administered by Johns Hopkins.

After the war Tuve returned to the DTM, and in mid 1946 Bush appointed him to succeed John A. Fleming as its director. Seeking to transform the DTM into a physics research laboratory, Tuve supported using the Van de Graaff accelerators for unclear physics and the cyclotron for biophysics; out his own research efforts centered on seismic studies of the earth’s crust using conventional explosives and investigations of radio emissions from hydrogen gas in space. These choices reflected not only “his skill in applying electronics to almost any given job”¹¹ but also his belief that the DTM should pursue projects in which the work of small groups could have a decisive impact on the development of entire fields.

Researchers in the years between the world wars had expanded Andrija Mohorovičič’s use of earth quake-generated seismic waves for studies of the earth’s interior, but there had been little systematic use of explosion-generated seismic waves¹² Obtaining surplus explosives from the Navy and working in the Washington area, Tuve and his DTM coworkers (including Howard E Tatel) sought to develop recording techniques that would enable them to map out the details of the earth’s crustal structure. But as they extended their studies into the Appalachian highlands, their seismograms proved harder to interpret than they had expected. After tests in California in 1949 verified the similarity between waves produced through explosions and waves produced through earthquakes, they undertook reconnaissance studies in a variety of geological regions, searching for marked differences in the depths and velocities of the waves. These field strips took them to the Mesabi Range and to Puget Sound in 1951, to the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains and to the Colorado Plateau in 1954, and to Alaska and the Yukon Territory in 1955.

Meanwhile, Tuve served as a member of the executive committee of the United States national committee for the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957 and 1958. As part of the ClW’s participation in IGY, he led an expedition to the Andes and altiplano of South America in 1957¹³. For several years thereafter, one of his main activities was the fostering of cooperative geophysical studies with his South American colleagues.

In the 1960’s Tuve’s geophysical activities shifted from annual summer field trips to high-level committee work. In particular, he served as chairman of the Geophysics Research Board (GRB). Formed in 1960 under the aegis of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the GRB’s first tasks was to examine what developments could be expected in solid-earth studies¹⁴ The GRB also oversaw the nation’s participation in the international efforts arising in the wake of IGY—including the International Upper Mantle Project (throughout the decade) and the International Years of the Quiet Sun (1964–1965).

Tuve was not an early proponent of the theory of plate tectonics, which rose to prominence in the 1960’s Even though studies of paleomagnetism (which provided much of the evidence for the theory) formed an important part of the DTM’s postwar research program, he discouraged the continuation of John W Graham’s work on it there in the mid 1950’s¹⁵ Nevertheless, Tuve’s seismic studies demonstrated that the earth’s crustal structure was far more complex than was expected on the basis of the reigning geosynclinal view. Moreover, the center of his interest—“the earth beneath the continents”¹⁶ —was a topic that is difficult to approach solely on the basis of the theory of plate tectonics.

Tuve’s second major line of research was radio astronomy. Although the DTM pursued a variety of radio-astronomy projects in the 1950’s (for example, the study of planetary radio emissions, which were first observed [from Jupiter] in 1955 using the DTM’s Mills Cross¹⁷), his personal efforts focused mainly on observing radio emissions from interstellar hydrogen clouds. Within a year after H. I. Ewen and E. M. Purcell experimentally verified the occurrence of twenty-one-em radiation from atomic hydrogen in 1951, Tuve and his coworkers were making similar observations using a twenty-six-foot Wurzburg parabolic antenna mounted on the DTM grounds. In the late 1950’s they developed a multichannel recorder for their work and constructed a sixty-foot parabolic antenna at the DTM’s Derwood field station. As a result, they were able to continue mapping the densities and velocities of the hydrogen clouds, their aim being a better understanding of galactic structure.

Meanwhile, Tuve actively promoted radio astronomy within the American scientific community. He helped to plan several important conferences, he contributed to the development of the facilities for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)¹⁸, and his group was one of the primary users of the NRAO’s 300-foot transit telescope at Green Bank. West Virginia. Like his geophysical work, his radio astronomy gave rise to cooperative efforts with colleagues in South America, including the construction of a 100-foot parabolic antenna near La Plata, Argentina, for studying the hydrogen clouds of the southern sky.

During the postwar era, Tuve chaired the physics section of the National Research Council’s community on Growth and the CIW’s Committee on Image Tubes for Telescopes, served as a member of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and as a trustee for the Johns Hopkins University, and edited Journal of Geophysical Research. Concerned by the prospects of a continuing arms race, he was one of twelve petitioners in early 1950 asking President Truman to renounce the first use of hydrogen bombs.

Tuve was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1943 and of the National Academy of Sciences in 1946. His awards include the Presidential Medal of Merit (1946), Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (awarded in 1948), the National Academy of Sciences’ Comstock Prize (1948), the American Geophysical Union’s Bowie Medal (1963), and the Cosmos Club Award (1966). Notable among his honorary doctorates was one from Carleton College (1961), awarded in a ceremony that similarly recognized his sister and brothers.

In late 1965 Tuve succeeded Hugh L Dryden as home secretary of the National Academy of Sciences. At about the same time, however, he began reducing the level of his professional activities. He retired as DTM director in 1966, resigned from the GRB in 1969, and stepped down as home secretary after his term expired in 1971. As a distinguished service member of the CIW, however, he continued his work with the sixty-foot dish at Derwood into the mid 1970’s.

Although Tuve ranks as one of his generation’s notable research directors, he was a vocal critic of postwar trends. In an era of massive funding and complex organizations, he insisted on the importance of creative individuals using relatively modest means. In an era of narrow specialization, he insisted on the unity of knowledge—not only within the sciences but also between the sciences and the humanities, Finally, in an era of rapid-paced, high-pressure activity, he insisted on the value of quiet scholarship.

One objection to Tuve’s views was “that the ideals Tuve championed were out of step with the world of 1956”;¹⁹ another was that Tuve’s DTM had “much in common with a nineteenth-century Utopian community”.²⁰ But Tuve saw things differently. In an era dominated by “big science” he chose to act as a spokesman for “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition”²¹ and to present the research of the DTM as “a good old-fashioned example of the real thing”.²²

NOTES

1. Herbert Childs, An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence (New York, 1968), 32, 37-42.

2. C. Stewart Gillmor. “Threshold to Space: Early Studies of the Ionosphere”, in Paul A. Hanle and Von Del Chamberlain, eds.. Space Science Comes of Age: Perspectives in the History of the Space Sciences (Washington, D.C., 1981), 103-104.

3. David K. Allison. New Eye for the Navy; The Origin Of Radar at the Naval Research Laboratory (Washington. D.C., 1981), 57-59.

4. Thomas D. Cornell. “Merle Antony Tuve: Pioneer Nuclear Physicist”, in Physics Today, 41 (January 1988), 57-64.

5. Abraham Pais. Inward Bound: Of Matter and Forces in the Physical World (Oxford, 1986), 416-417, 424.

6. The “T” stood for “Tuve”. Other DIM staff members who played notable roles were Hafstad and Richard B. Roberts. The project was established at the request of the Navy through an NDRC contract with the CIW

7. Section T also developed better gun directors, and in early 1945 it initiated an entirety new project, developing ramjet engines for guided missiles (the “Bumblebee” project).

8. Ralph B. Baldwin. The Deadlv Fine: The Secret Weapon of World War II (San Rafael. Calif., 1980), 80.

9. M. A. Tuve. “Development of the Section T Pattern of Research Organization”, in George P. Bush and Lowell H. Hattery, eds.. Teamwork in Research (Washington, D.C., 1953), 135-142.

10. Daniel J. Kevles. “Scientists, the Military, and the Control of Postwar Defense Research: The Case of the Research Board for National Security, 1944-46”, in Technology and Culture, 16 (January 1975), 20-47.

11. Maurice Ewing. “Twenty-fifth Award of the William Bowie Medal: Citation”, in Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 44 (June 1963), 287.

12. John S. Steinhart and Robert P. Meyer, Explosion Studies of Continental Structure (Washington. D.C., 1961), 16-18.

13. Walter Sullivan. Assault on the Unknown: The International Geophysical Year (New York, 1960, 379-382.

14. Panel on Solid-Earth Problems of the Geophysics Research Board and Division of Earth Sciences. NAS-NRC. Solid-Earth Geophysics: Survey and Outlook (Washington. D.C., 1964).

15. William Glen. The Road to Jantmillo: Critical Years of the Revolution in Earth Science (Stanford. Calif., 1982), 119n.

16. John S. Steinhart and T. Jefferson Smith, eds., The Earth Beneath the Continents: A Volume af Geophysical Studies In Honor of Merle A. Tuve (Washington. D.C. 1966).

17. David O. Edge and Michael J. Mulkay, Astronomy Transformed: The Emergence of Radio Astronomy in Britain (New York, 1976), 35, 226-227.

18. Allan A. Nccdell. “Lloyd Berkner. Merle Tuve, and the Federal Role in Radio Astronomy”, in Osiris, 2nd ser., 3 (1987), 261-288.

19.ibid., 283.

20. Spencer Klaw. The New Brahmins: Scientific life in America (New York, 1968), 159.

21. M. A. Tuve. “Physics and the Humanities—The Verification of Complementarity” (acceptance speech. Cosmo Club Award, 9 May 1966). Tuve Papers, box 366.

22. M. A. Tuve. “Basic Research in Private Research Institutes”, in Dacl Wolfe, ed.. Symposium on Basic Research (Washington. D.C. 1959), 177.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. The Library of Congress holds Tuve’s papers (in more than four hundred archival boxes). A year-by-year listing of his publications (and year-by-year accounts of his research) can be found in Yearbook of the Carnegie Institution for Washington. The oral history collection of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics includes tapes and transcripts of several interviews with Tuve.

His publications include “Impact Ionization by Low Speed Positive Ions” (abstract), Physical Review, 23 (Jan. 1924), 111; “A Test of the Existence of the Conducting Layer”. Physical Review, 28 (Sept. 1926), 554-575, written with G. Breit: “A Transmitter Modulating Device for the Study of the Kennelly-Heavjside Layer by the Echo Method”. Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 16 (June 1928), 794-798, written with O. Dahl; “An Echo Interference Method for the Study of Radio Wave Paths”, ibid., 17 (Oct. 1929), 1786-1792, written with L. R. Hafstad; “A Laboratory Method of Producing High Potentials”. Physical Review, 35 (1 Jan. 1930), 51-65, written with Breit and Dahl; “The Application of High Potentials to Vacuum-Tubes”, ibid., 35 (1 Jan. 1930), 66-71, written with Breit and Hafstad.

“Experiments with High-Voltage Tubes” (abstract), ibid., 37 (15 Feb. 1931), 469, written with Hafstad and Dahl; “Disintegration-Experiments on Elements of Medium Atomic Number”, ibid., 43 (I June 1933), 942, written with Hafstad and Dahl; “The Atomic Nucleus and High Voltages”, Journal of the Franklin Institute, 216 (July 1933), 1-38; “The Emission of Disintegration-Particles from Targets Bombarded by Protons and by Deuterium Ions at 1200 Kilovolts”, Physical Review, 45 (I May 1934), 651-653, written with Hafstad; “High Voltage Technique for Nuclear Physics Studies”, ibid, 48 (15 Aug. 1935), 315-337, written with Hafstad and Dahl; “Excitation-Curves for Fluorine and Lithium”, ibid., 50 (15 Sept. 1936), 504-514, written with Hafstad and N. P. Heydenburg.

“The Scattering of Protons by Protons”, ibid., 50 (1 Nov. 1936), 806-825, written with Heydenburg and Hafstad; “The Scattering of Protons by Protons”, ibid., 53 (1 Feb. 1938), 239-246, written with Hafstad and Heydenburg; “The Forces Which Govern the Atomic Nucleus”, Scientific Monthly, 47 (Oct. 1938), 344-363; “The Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics”, Science, 89 (24 Feb. 1939), 180-182, written with C. F. Squire, F. G. Brickwedde, and E. Teller; “The Scattering of Protons by Protons. III”, Physical Review, 56 (1 Dec. 1939), 1078-1091, written with Heydenburg and Hafstad; “Technology and National Research Policy”, in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 9 (Oct. 1953), 250-293; “Studies of the Earth’s Crust Using Waves from Explosions”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 97 (Dec. 1953), 658-669, written with H. E. Tatel and L, H. Adams; “Development of the Section T Pattern of Research Organization”, in G. P. Bush and L. H, Hattery, eds., Teamwork in Research (Washington, D.C., 1953), 135-142.

“Seismic Exploration of a Continental Crust”, in A. PoMervaart, ed., Crust of the Earth (A Symposium) (New York, 1955), 35-50, written with Tatel. “Basic Research in Private Research Institutes”, in Dael Wolfe, ed.. Symposium on Basic Research (Washington, D.C., 1959), 169-184; “Scienceand the Humanities, in G. W. Elbera and P. Duncan, eds.. The Scientific Revolution: Challenge and Promise (Washington, D.C, 1959), 215-226; “Atomic Hydrogen Survey Near the Galactic Plane”, in R. N. Bracewell, ed.. Paris Symposium on Radio Astronomy (Stanford, Cal., 1959), 374-389, written with B. F. Burke, E. T. Ecklund, J. W. Firor, and Tatel; “Cooperative Geophysics in the Andes”, in Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 44 (June 1963), 290-300; “A High-Resolution Study of M31”, in F. J. Kerr and A. W. Rodgers, eds.. The Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds, (Canberra, 1964), 99-102, written with Burke and K. C. Turner; “A High-Resolution Study of the Outer Parts of the Galaxy”, ibid., 131-134, written with Burke and Turner; “Hydrogen Motions in the Central Region of the Galaxy”, ibid., 183-186, written with Burke; “Solid-Earth Geophysics”, in Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 46 (Mar. 1965), 203-204; “Symposium on the Years of the Quiet Sun—IQSY: Introductory Remarks”, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 58 (15 Dec. 1967), 2131-2135; “Radio Ranging and Nuclear Physics at the Carnegie Institution”, in D. A. Bromley and V. W. Hughes, eds.. Facets off Physics (New York, 1970), 163-177; Velocity Structures in Hydrogen Profiles: A Sky Atlas of Neutral Hydrogen Emission (Washington, D.C. 1973), written with S. Lundsager; and “Early Days of Pulse Radio at the Carnegie Institution”, in Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics, 36 (Dec. 1974), 2079-2083.

II. Secondary Literature. Biographical sketches by professional colleagues include P. H. Abelson, “;Merle Antony Tuve (1901-1982)”;, in American Philosophical Society Year Book 1982 (1983), 521-529; and L. T. Aldrich et al., “Merle A. Tuve: 1901-1982”, in EOS63 (13 July 1982), 569. In addition to the sources cited in the footnotes, see Thomas D. Cornell, “Merle A. Tuve and His Program of Nuclear Studies at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism; The Early Career of a Modern American Physicist” (Ph.D. diss.. Johns Hopkins University, 1986).

Thomas David Cornell