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Goldberger (Marvin L.) Papers
MSS 0793
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Table of contents
Languages:
English
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla 92093-0175
Title: Marvin L. Goldberger Papers
Creator:
Goldberger , Marvin L.
Identifier/Call Number: MSS 0793
Physical Description:
4.8 Linear feet
(12 archives boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1945 - 2012
Abstract: Papers of Marvin Leonard "Murph" Goldberger, a particle physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, the fifth president
of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and a founding member and chairman of the JASON group of scientists.
Goldberger served on the faculty of UC San Diego from 1993 until his death in 2014.
Marvin L. Goldberger Papers (10090-MS). California Institute of Technology.
The CalTech papers include personal and general correspondence, documents relating to the administration of Caltech and the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), papers concerning professional societies, government and civic affairs, arms control, human
rights, and a small amount of biographical material.
Marvin Leonard "Murph" Goldberger was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 22, 1922. He attended the Carnegie Institute of
Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie-Mellon University) where he received his bachelor's degree in 1943. For the next three
years he served in the U.S. Army while attending graduate school, primarily in the theoretical physics division of the Metallurgical
Laboratory at the University of Chicago, where he worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Goldberger was closely
associated with Nobel Laureate Eugene P. Wigner and was a member of the Wigner's team of scientists who did the principal
work for the great atomic (Production Reactor) Pile Design at DuPont and Hanford in Washington.
While at the University of Chicago, Goldberger met his future wife, Mildred Ginsberg, also a mathematician and physicist working
on the Manhattan Project. Goldberger received his PhD in physics in 1948 under the mentorship of another Nobel Laureate, Italian
physicist Enrico Fermi.
Goldberger joined the faculty at the University of Chicago and taught physics from 1950 through 1957. He eventually left to
teach physics at Princeton University from 1957 to 1977. In 1978 he was appointed President of Caltech, where he served for
the next decade. He later returned to Princeton to serve as the director of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1987 to
1991.
Goldberger joined the University of California system in 1991, first as a professor of physics at UCLA then joining UC San
Diego in 1993 as a professor of physics, as Dean of the university's Division of Natural Sciences until 1999, then as professor
emeritus until his death in 2014.
In addition to his long and illustrious teaching career, Goldberger was a co-founder of JASON, an elite group of scientists
who worked for the Department of Defense and other agencies of government concerned with nuclear arms control efforts. He
served as the chairman of JASON from 1960 through 1966.
Goldberger also served as an adviser to various presidents. During the late 1960s he was chairman of the Strategic Military
Committee of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). He served as a member of the United States-People's Republic
of China Joint Commission on Scientific and Technological Cooperation and was the chairman of the National Academy of Sciences'
Committee on International Security and Arms Control. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was named a Fellow
of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was chairman of the Federation
of American Scientists.
Goldberger passed away on November 26, 2014.
Marvin L. Goldberger Papers. MSS 793. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.
Acquired 2017
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE. ALLOW ONE WEEK FOR RETRIEVAL OF MATERIALS.
Publication rights are held by the creator of the collection.
Scope and Content of Collection
Papers of Marvin Leonard "Murph" Goldberger, a particle physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, the fifth president
of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and a founding member and chairman of the JASON group of scientists.
Goldberger served on the faculty of UC San Diego from 1993 until his death in 2014. Most of the collection consists of Goldberger's
notebooks and lecture notes relating to particle physics, quantum mechanics and other courses he taught at the University
of Chicago, Princeton University and UC San Diego. Also included is a small selection of materials relating to Goldberger's
involvement with the JASON group of scientists, and articles and op-ed columns by his wife, Mildred Goldberger.
Arranged in six series: 1) BIOGRAPHICAL, 2) CORRESPONDENCE, 3) WRITINGS BY GOLDBERGER, 4) JASON MATERIALS, 5) NOTEBOOKS AND
LECTURE NOTES, and 6) MILDRED GOLDBERGER WRITINGS.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Physicists -- United States
Particles (Nuclear physics) -- Research
Quantum theory
Physics -- Study and teaching
Goldberger , Marvin L. -- Archives
Goldberger , Mildred, 1923-2006
JASON Defense Advisory Group