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ABOUT THE INSTITUTE
History
University of Chicago Research Institutes:
50 years of scientific achievements
Oct. 17, 1995
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For 50 years, the University of Chicago's Research Institutes--the
Enrico Fermi Institute and the James Franck Institute--have fostered
an interdisciplinary dialogue between scientists that has resulted
in some of the most notable scientific achievements of the 20th
century.
The EFI and JFI, founded in 1945 as the Institute for Nuclear
Studies and the Institute for the Study of Metals, respectively,
are two of the oldest academic centers for interdisciplinary research
in the world. They were founded by then-Chancellor Robert Hutchins,
who recognized the wealth of intellectual talent that had assembled
at Chicago to work on the Manhattan Project and conceived of the
institutes as a way to retain these world-class scientists at
Chicago.
Hutchins saw the institutes as a way to continue the dialogue
between pure science and technology that had been initiated during
the Manhattan Project, as well as a way to ease the barriers between
traditional scientific disciplines. The mobilization of scientists
and engineers to solve wartime problems had revealed the extraordinary
advantages of bringing together scientists from different backgrounds
to focus on problems of national interest. Interdisciplinary research
has since come to be considered crucial to scientific progress,
but at no other university was such a commitment made so early
and so thoroughly.
"Hutchins had seen what happens when you bring really great
scientists together and give them a chance to interact in an interdisciplinary
fashion--it had an enormous impact on technology," said Robert
Sachs, Professor Emeritus in Physics and EFI and former Director
of the Enrico Fermi Institute.
Hutchins also sought to bridge the gap between basic scientific
research and industrial technology by establishing the Industrial
Affiliates Program. Industries--24 by 1950--supplied research
funds, while faculty members served as consultants and provided
research reports. Gradually, industrial support dropped off, but
government funding stepped in to fill the gap. Today, research
at the institutes continues with funding from a broad spectrum
of government agencies, philanthropic trusts and corporations.
Enrico Fermi Institute
Among the scientists Hutchins hired to staff the new Institute
for Nuclear Studies were physicists and chemists whose names now
carry the weight of scientific legend: Nobel laureates Enrico
Fermi and Harold Urey; Maria Goeppert Mayer and Willard Libby,
who would later win Nobel Prizes for their work at the institute;
and Edward Teller. The institute was headed by Samuel Allison.
In 1955, the Institute for Nuclear Studies was renamed the Enrico
Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies in memory of Fermi, who died
in 1954. The name was shortened to the Enrico Fermi Institute
in 1968.
From the beginning, the Enrico Fermi Institute proved a fertile
breeding ground for scientific ideas. Before the institute had
any facilities, members would gather weekly for what was known
as the "Institute Seminar." The range of topics included
nuclear physics, high-energy physics, cosmic-ray physics, cosmology,
astrophysics, planetary science and the abundance of the elements,
among others. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, although he did not
become an official member of the institute until 1954, regularly
participated in the seminars and laid the foundation for the institute's
distinguished achievements in astronomy and astrophysics.
Chandrasekhar, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1983, made
fundamental contributions across a wide range of topics in theoretical
astrophysics until his death earlier this year. Today, the Enrico
Fermi Institute is recognized as a world leader in both theoretical
and experimental astrophysics.
Eugene Parker, the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor
Emeritus in Physics and EFI, predicted the existence of the solar
wind--the stream of electrically charged particles emitted by
the sun's corona. Its existence was later confirmed by his colleague
John Simpson, the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor
Emeritus in Physics and EFI.
Simpson, a member of EFI since its inception, has had more than
35 scientific instruments launched into outer space on satellites
and space probes, and he is recognized as a world leader in cosmic-ray
astrophysics. In 1964, he founded the Laboratory for Astrophysics
and Space Research (LASR), an integral part of EFI, with funding
from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In nuclear physics, it was at the Enrico Fermi Institute that
Maria Goeppert Mayer developed the nuclear shell model, the work
for which she won the Nobel Prize in 1963. Mayer, a theoretical
physicist, collaborated closely with institute colleagues in chemistry
and nuclear physics, particularly Urey, Teller, Fermi and her
husband, Joseph Mayer.
Urey and his colleagues essentially founded the field of cosmochemistry--using
the abundances of chemical elements in meteorites as clues to
the composition and origin of the solar system. The University
has long been the world leader in this field, a tradition carried
on by Edward Anders, the Horace B. Horton Professor Emeritus in
Chemistry and EFI and Robert Clayton, the Enrico Fermi Distinguished
Service Professor in Chemistry, Geophysical Sciences and EFI.
In chemistry, it was Willard Libby who found that ancient organic
materials could be dated based on the abundance of an isotope
of carbon, a finding that had extraordinary implications for fields
such as archaeology and paleontology. Libby won the Nobel Prize
in chemistry for this work in 1960.
In theoretical particle physics, the work by Yoichiro Nambu,
the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus
in Physics and EFI, on "spontaneous symmetry breaking"--work
for which he won the 1994-95 Wolf Prize in physics--has become
a fundamental concept underlying much of the work done today in
the field.
The Fermi Institute has a long tradition in experimental particle
physics as well. At the time it was built, the Fermi Institute
synchrocyclotron was the largest accelerator in the world. In
1953, Fermi and Herbert Anderson used it to discover a resonance
in the scattering of pions from nucleons; this was the first "excited
state" of nuclear particles to be observed. Fermi and Anderson's
discovery was a major step toward the realization that nuclear
particles had structure, now described in terms of the more fundamental
particles known as "quarks."
Since then, the cyclotron's size has been far surpassed by accelerators
at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and at
CERN in Switzerland. But Chicago continues to be a world leader
in the field of experimental particle physics--Melvin Shochet,
the Elaine M. and Samuel D. Kersten Jr. Professor in Physics,
EFI and the College, served as the co-spokesperson for the 400-member
collaboration that co-discovered the top quark earlier this year.
That team also included 11 other University faculty members and
graduate students.
Nobel laureate James Cronin, University Professor in Physics,
heads an international team of physicists--the Pierre Auger collaboration--who
are making plans to build the largest cosmic ray detector ever
built, an array of detectors that would cover an area the size
of the state of Delaware. The Pierre Auger detector array could
detect high-energy particles that slam into the earth's atmosphere
with energies millions of times greater than those created in
particle accelerators.
Today, the Enrico Fermi Institute, directed by Riccardo Levi-Setti,
Professor in Physics, EFI and the College, continues its tradition
of groundbreaking research in high-energy experimental physics,
theoretical particle physics, quantum field theory, astronomy,
high-energy astrophysics, cosmology, general relativity, solar
and planetary research, geochemistry and cosmochemistry, electron
and ion microscopy, and solar-energy concentration.
Each of the institute's 49 faculty members also holds one or
more joint appointments in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Chemistry,
Geophysical Sciences, Mathematics or Physics. The scientific staff
also includes numerous senior scientists, senior research associates,
research scientists and postdoctoral research associates. EFI
sponsors the popular Saturday-morning Compton lecture series and
provides Enrico Fermi Fellowships and Robert R. McCormick Fellowships
to promising postdoctoral fellows from around the world.
James Franck Institute
The James Franck Institute, originally the Institute for the Study
of Metals, grew out of the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory
and began its mission with a narrower focus than the Enrico Fermi
Institute--specifically, to conduct research on the fundamental
aspects of metallurgy and solid-state physics. Headed by metallurgist
Cyril Stanley Smith, the new institute consisted of chemists,
physicists and metallurgists.
The spectrum of research has since evolved into the much broader
study of the chemistry and physics of materials--gases, liquids
and solids--including the behavior of superconductors, granular
materials and complex fluids.
In 1967, the institute was renamed the James Franck Institute,
reflecting its broader research interests and honoring the memory
of James Franck, a chemist and Nobel laureate who was a leading
scientist in the field of photosynthesis. Franck was a member
of the Chicago faculty from 1938 until his death in 1964.
Just five years after it was established, the institute built
a low-temperature laboratory that was, at the time, the largest
facility of its kind at any university. The low-temperature laboratory
made possible early studies of superconductivity--the nearly complete
disappearance of electrical resistance at extremely low temperatures.
In 1964, the University constructed an ultra-low-temperature laboratory,
enabling scientists to conduct experiments at temperatures within
several thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. Theoretical
work on superconductivity in the 1950s and 1960s by Leo Falicov,
Morrel Cohen and James Phillips evolved into the studies of "high"-temperature
superconductivity that continue at the institute.
Today, under the direction of David Oxtoby, Professor in Chemistry
and JFI, the institute is part of the national Science and Technology
Center for Superconductivity Research, a consortium formed in
1989 between Chicago, the University of Illinois, Argonne National
Laboratory and Northwestern and funded by the National Science
Foundation. Associate Director Kathryn Levin, Professor in Physics
and JFI, heads the Chicago contingent.
True to the interdisciplinary focus of the Research Institutes,
many research areas within JFI straddle the boundary between chemistry
and physics--for example, the work pioneered by Yuan Lee in the
1960s and 1970s on molecular-beam spectroscopy. Lee, who received
the Nobel Prize in 1986, after he left the University, used crossed
molecular beams to measure the forces between atoms and molecules.
Later, Donald Levy, the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor in
Chemistry and JFI, and Lennard Wharton developed a supersonic
nozzle to cool large molecules and clusters to study their properties.
Laurie Butler, Associate Professor in Chemistry and JFI, currently
uses similar techniques to study chemical reactions.
Another major area of research in the James Franck Institute
is materials science. Many of the faculty members in JFI are also
part of the Materials Research Science & Engineering Center
(MRSEC), funded by the National Science Foundation to conduct
fundamental studies into the behavior of disordered materials,
self-ordered systems and catalysis.
MRSEC director Leo Kadanoff, the John D. MacArthur Distinguished
Service Professor in Physics, Mathematics, JFI and EFI, is a leader
in the field of nonlinear dynamics, particularly in chaos theory
and fluid turbulence. Current work at MRSEC includes theoretical
and experimental studies of low-temperature magnetism and flow
in granular materials. The importance of the research in granular
materials to industries such as construction, mining and pharmaceuticals
is again attracting corporate funding to the Research Institutes.
The 26 faculty members in JFI continue to perform cutting-edge
research in a variety of fields, including non-equilibrium phenomena,
phase transitions, chemical kinetics, laser spectroscopy, semiconductors
and polymer physics. The institute also supports a large number
of research associates and graduate students, and it offers a
weekly colloquium series and frequent special seminars.
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