Guide to the Cornell University Department of Physics Records,
1876-1994

Correspondence, biographical material, clippings, photographs, notes, diagrams, publications, and other items pertaining to Cornell physics professors William A. Anthony, Frederick Bedell, Ernest G. Merritt, George S. Moler, Edward L. Nichols, and Floyd K. Richtmyer, as well as physicist Ernest Fox Nichols (Cornell University M.S. 1892); the correspondence pertains to efforts to obtain the biographical material, departmental administration, the study of physics, and other professional matters, such as the dynamo built by Anthony and Moler ca.1875, and its exhibition at the Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago, 1933, the establishment of the date Bedell invented his stabilized oscilloscope, and negotiations, 1926, for bringing the German physicist, Max Born, to Cornell. Includes correspondence of Livingston Farrand and John Henry Comstock. Also, physics notebooks, 1904-1931, with research data of Edward L. Nichols, Horace L. Howes, Ernest G. Merritt, D. T. Wilber, and others on phosphorescence, fluorescence, luminescence, and spectra, scientific photographs and charts, undated typescripts on various subjects by Nichols, Howes, and Wilber, and a monograph, apparently by Nichols and his associates, on the fluorescence and afterglow of solid solutions and their luminescence when rendered incandescent by a hydrogen flame, as well as accounts, 1913-1932, pertaining to a Carnegie Institution grant for this research.

In addition, indexed department account books, 1882-1948; inventory books, 1881-1933; and a "Committee Report on Survey of Floor Area Requirements for Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy for a 15-Year Period, 1947-1962," ca.1946; and personnel records of former faculty, staff, and graduate students who were appointed to the Physics Dept. prior to 1935. Manuscript entitled "Seventy Years of Physics at Cornell," by Harley E. Howe and Guy E. Grantham, 1958; bound typescript, "The Cornell Physics Department," by Paul Hartman, 1982, with an index; and chart of department staff, 1868-1940; and The Cornell Physics Department: Recollections and a History of Sorts, by Paul Hartman, 1984. Administrative correspondence of the department, primarily of George S. Moler, 1893-1900. Also, Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell, and A Memoir on the Physical Review (mentioning Cornell connections) by Paul Hartman.

Includes files from the 1950s, mostly of Carl Gartlein; blueprints, photographs, subject files, departmental correspondence, and other papers relating to the Physics Department.