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Finding Aid for the Jesse W. M. DuMond Papers 1912-1976
10010-MS
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Title: Jesse W. M. DuMond Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1912-1976
Collection number: 10010-MS
Creator: DuMond, Jesse W. M. (Jesse William Monroe) 1892-1976
Extent:
3.5 linear feet
Repository:
California Institute of Technology. Caltech Archives
Pasadena, California 91125
Abstract: Jesse William Monroe DuMond, experimental physicist and professor of physics at Caltech, 1938-1963, was known for his work
on physical constants and spectroscopic instrumentation. His papers contain principally his scientific correspondence, with
some reprints, photos of experimental apparatus, and biographical material, the latter including his unpublished autobiography.
Physical location: Archives, California Institute of Technology.
Language of Material:
Languages represented in the collection:
EnglishFrenchGerman
The collection is open for research. Researchers must apply in writing for access.
Copyright may not have been assigned to the California Institute of Technology Archives. All requests for permission to publish
or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Caltech Archivist. Permission for publication is given on behalf
of the California Institute of Technology Archives as the owner of the physical items and, unless explicitly stated otherwise,
is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.
[Identification of item], Jesse W. M. DuMond Papers, 10010-MS, Caltech Archives, California Institute of Technology.
The correspondence files of Jesse W. M. DuMond were given to the Caltech Archives in 1985 by his colleague and collaborator,
Felix Boehm. The small amount of biographical material, including photos, was donated by DuMond's niece Jackie Ziff in 2004.
Jesse William Monroe DuMond, experimental physicist, was born in Paris on July 11, 1892, to expatriate American parents, Fredrick
Melville DuMond and Louise Adele Kerr. After the death of his mother before he was two years old, DuMond was cared for by
his maternal grandmother, Catherine E. Kerr, a resident of Paris, up to the age of seven. In 1899 young DuMond came to the
U.S. to live with his paternal grandparents. From his grandfather, Alonzo Monroe DuMond, who had founded a sheet-metal business
in Rochester, the young Jesse learned practical manual skills and a deep respect for craftsmanship. In 1905 the DuMond grandparents
moved with their grandson to California, settling permanently in Monrovia, just east of Pasadena. Young Jesse graduated from
Monrovia High School in 1911. He subsequently entered Throop College of Technology, the forerunner of the California Institute
of Technology, in Pasadena in September, 1912, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering
in 1916. For his thesis, he designed and built a harmonic analyzer, a type of mechanical calculator.
After graduation DuMond accepted a position with General Electric at their testing facility in Schenectady, New York. In the
spring of 1918 he joined the American Expeditionary Forces in France and served until the Armistice. In 1920 DuMond married
Irene Gaebel, a Frenchwoman. The couple had three children, a son and two daughters. They were divorced in 1942, and DuMond
married Louise Marie Baillet in that same year. Returning to the U.S. in 1920, DuMond took a year's job at the National Bureau
of Standards in Washington, DC. In September 1921 he returned to his alma mater, since 1920 called the California Institute
of Technology, to undertake a Ph.D. in physics. DuMond received his doctorate in 1929 with the thesis, "Experimental and Theoretical
Studies of the Breadth and Structure of the Compton Shifted Line." For this work, he designed and built, with the aid of his
first graduate student Harry A. Kirkpatrick, a multi-crystal spectrograph. This apparatus housed fifty calcite crystals, each
carefully regulated to focus spectral lines with high intensity and resolution. The results confirmed DuMond's interpretation
of the broadening and structure of the Compton shifted line and provided support for the Rutherford-Bohr dynamic atomic model.
Although he accepted briefly a professorial position at Stanford in 1931, DuMond returned to Caltech, where he served on the
faculty for thirty-four years, becoming associate professor in 1938, full professor in 1946, and emeritus in 1963. During
the 1930s DuMond's research in spectroscopy was based on the ingenious design and careful construction of original apparatus.
Much of the work was carried out by DuMond himself, with some help from students and from the gifted personnel of Caltech's
machine shops. DuMond and his associates produced in these years a 30-kilowatt X-ray tube operating at 300 kilovolts, a precision
two-crystal spectrometer, and the large curved crystal gamma-ray spectrometer. The latter instrument, whose development spanned
World War II, opened the door to a whole family of spectrometers that were used all over the world in a variety of nuclear
spectroscopy studies. The original curved crystal spectrometer, called the Mark I, was presented to the Smithsonian Institution
by Caltech in 1990.
Beginning in the 1930s, DuMond and his students embarked upon a series of experiments on the fundamental atomic constants,
particularly, the charge and mass of the electron and Planck's constant, h. With the work of R. T. Birge at Berkeley, DuMond's
continuing investigation of the fundamental constants in the late 1930s and again after World War II in collaboration with
E. Richard Cohen remained definitive until the late 1960s. With E. Richard Cohen and K. M. Crowe DuMond published the book,
Fundamental Constants of Physics, in 1957.
DuMond was the author or coauthor of more than 175 papers on physical topics. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society,
was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1953, and was also a member of Sigma Xi. He received two honorary doctorates,
from the University of Uppsala in 1966 and the University of Manitoba in 1967. He also received a distinguished service award
from Utah State University in 1974. He died in Pasadena on December 4, 1976, at the age of 84.
The papers of Jesse W. M. DuMond are organized in two series, correspondence and biographical material. The correspondence
includes letters from prominent physicists and other scientists. These include, among others, Hans Bethe, R. T. Birge, Niels
Bohr, S. Chandrasekhar, Arthur H. Compton, R. P. Feynman, P. Kapitza, M. von Laue, Robert A. Millikan, J. R. Oppenheimer,
Linus Pauling, Emilio Segrè, Kai and Manne Siegbahn, C. H. Townes, and J. H. Van Vleck. Also included are correspondence files
with DuMond's son-in-law, the physicist W. K. H. Panofsky.
The biographical series is of mixed character. Of special interest is DuMond's two-volume autobiography, which he completed
in September 1972. The photos in this series represent important and detailed documentation for the instrumental design and
experimental work conducted by DuMond and his colleagues at Caltech. The apparatus photos were received without identification
in most cases, and they have been left untitled by the archivists. Finally, DuMond's 80th birthday album contains letters
and greetings from a diverse array of scientist and colleagues.
The collection is organized into the following series:
- Series 1. Correspondence
- Series 2. Biographical
Researchers may wish to consult the
oral history of Felix Boehm , DuMond's longtime colleague and collaborator. DuMond correspondence in the Caltech Archives may also be found in the papers
of Robert A. Millikan and the papers of Lee A. DuBridge.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
California Institute of Technology
Nuclear spectroscopy
Physical instruments
Physics
Spectrum analysis
Physicists