John Clarke Slater (December 22, 1900 – July 25, 1976) was an American physicist who advanced the theory of the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and solids.Per-Olav Lowdin (ed.) Quantum Theory of Atoms, Molecules and the Solid State, A Tribute to John C. Slater, Academic Press, N.Y. 1966. He also made major contributions to microwave electronics. He received a B.S. in physics from the University of Rochester in 1920 and a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard in 1923, then did post-doctoral work at the universities of Cambridge (briefly) and Copenhagen. On his return to the U.S. he joined the physics department at Harvard.
In 1930, Karl Compton, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, appointed Slater as chairman of MIT's department of physics. He recast the undergraduate physics curriculum, wrote 14 books between 1933 and 1968, and built a department of international prestige. During World War II, his work on microwave transmission, done partly at the Bell Laboratories and in association with the MIT Radiation Laboratory, was significant in the development of radar.
In 1950, Slater founded the Solid State and Molecular Theory Group (SSMTG) within the physics department. The following year, he resigned the chairmanship of the department and spent a year at the Brookhaven National Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission. He was appointed Institute Professor of Physics and continued to direct work in the SSMTG until he retired from MIT in 1965, at the mandatory retirement age of 65.
He then joined the Quantum Theory Project of the University of Florida as research professor, where the retirement age allowed him to work for another five years. The SSMTG has been regarded as the precursor of the MIT Center for Materials Science and Engineering (CMSE). His scientific autobiography and three interviewsOral History Transcript - Dr. John C. Slater, interviewed by Charles Weiner, Niels Bohr Center and Archives for the History of Physics. Session I, Gainesville, February 23, 1970. , Session II, MIT, August 7, 1970. present his views on research, education and the role of science in society.
Slater was nominated for the Nobel Prize, in both physics and chemistry, multiple times, and he received the National Medal of Science in 1970. In 1964, Slater and his then-92-year-old father, who had headed the Department of English at the University of Rochester many years earlier, were awarded honorary degrees by that university. Slater's name is part of the terms Bohr-Kramers-Slater theory, Slater determinant and Slater orbital.
Early life and education Slater's father, John Rothwell Slater, was born in Virginia and had been an undergraduate at Harvard, and had become head of the English Department at the University of Rochester, which would also be Slater's undergraduate alma mater. Slater's youthful interests were with things mechanical, chemical, and electrical. When Slater entered the University of Rochester in 1917 he took physics courses and as a senior assisted in the physics laboratory and did his first independent research for a special honors thesis, a measurement of the dependence on pressure of the intensities of the Balmer lines of hydrogen.
He was accepted into Harvard graduate school, with the choice of a fellowship or assistantship. He chose the assistantship, during which he worked for Percy W. Bridgman. He followed Bridgman's courses in fundamental physics and was introduced into the then-new quantum physics with the courses of E. C. Kemble. He completed the work for the Ph.D. in three years by publishing his (1924) paper Compressibility of the Alkali Halides, which embodied the thesis work he had done under Bridgman. His heart was in theory, and his first publication was not his doctor's thesis, but a note (1924) to Nature on Radiation and Atoms.
After receiving his Ph.D., Slater held a Hamard Sheldon Fellowship for study in Europe. He spent a period in Cambridge, England, before going to Copenhagen. He did not have a happy time working with Bohr who he found domineering and regretted that his name was attached to the ill-fated Bohr-Kramers-Slater (BKS) theory. Slater already had the idea that it was the photon that carried radiation energy. As he relates:
On the plus side, Slater's name was now well known by association with Bohr. On returning to America, Slater joined the Harvard Physics Department.
Professional career
Chairing the Department of Physics at MIT When he became president of MIT, Karl Compton "courted" Slater to chair the physics department. "Administration (of the Department) took up a good deal of time, more time than he (Slater) would have preferred. John was a good chairman." The following items from the successive issues of the annual MIT President's ReportPresident's Report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bulletin, volume 622, number 1, 1930 , 1931 , 1932 , 1933 , 1934 , 1935 , 1936 , 1937 , 1938 , 1939 , 1940 , 1941 , 1942 , 1943 , 1946 , 1947 , 1948 , 1949 , 1950 , 1951 , 1952 , 1962 , 1963 , 1964 trace the growth and visibility of the Department under Slater's leadership, before World War II, and the ability of the department to contribute to defense during the war. The first two quotations are from chapters written by Compton in the successive reports. The other quotations come from the sections about the department, that Slater wrote. These include statements affecting policies in physics education and research at large, and show his deep commitment to both. 1930: "The selection of Dr. John C. Slater as head of the (Physics) Department will strengthen ... undergraduate and graduate work ... the limitation of space has retarded the development of graduate work ... the total number of undergraduates being 53 and ... graduate students 16." (p. 21) 1931: "This has been the first year of the Department in charge of its new Head, Professor John C. Slater ... the subjects actively (researched include) Spectroscopy, Applied Optics, Discharge of Electricity in Gases, Magneto-Optical Phenomena, Studies of Dielectrics, and various aspects of modern and classical theoretical physics." (p. 42) 1932: In the list of papers published by MIT faculty, items 293 to 340 are listed under Department of Physics. (p. 206-208) 1933: "The George Eastman Research Laboratory, into which the Department moved at the beginning of the year, provides for the first time a suitable home for research in Physics at the Institute". Slater states that outside recognition is shown by holders of six National, an International, and a Rockefeller Research Fellowship choosing to come to the department. Slater describes the dedication of the Laboratory, the hosting of meetings of the International Astronomical Union, the American Physical Society, and a Spectroscopic conference, and ends: "In general the year has been one of settling down to work under satisfactory conditions, after the more difficult transition of the preceding year." (p. 96-98) 1934: "A number of advances in undergraduate teaching have been made or planned." Among the "most conspicuous events" in the department, "we acted as host" to meetings of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and a national Spectroscopic Conference, where "the main topic was relation to biology and related fields." Advances in research have been "taking advantage of the unusual facilities" in the department, and include the work of Warren on structure of liquids, Mueller on dielectric properties, Stockbarger on crystal physics, Harrison on automating spectroscopic measurement, Wulff on hyperfine structure, Boyce on spectra of nebulae, Van der Graaff on high voltage and nuclear research, and Stratton and Morse on ellipsoidal wave functions. (p. 104-106) 1935: Considerable attention is given to major improvements in undergraduate teaching. The extensive comments on research mention the arrival of Robley Evans and his work on a field new to the department—radioactivity, with special attention to nuclear medicine. (p. 102-103) 1936: "The most important development of the year in the Department has been the growing recognition of the significance of applied physics. There has been a tendency in the past among physicists to take interest only in the direct line of development of their science, and to neglect its applications." Slater develops this theme at length, and describes actions within the undergraduate, graduate and faculty work of the department and at the national level to develop Applied Physics. The description of the flourishing basic research refers to ten different areas, including the upsurge in work on radioactivity. (p. 131-134). 1937 to 1941: These continue in the same vein. But world affairs begin to impact. The 1941 report ends: "The X-ray branch had as a guest Professor Rose C. L. Mooney of Newcomb College, who was prevented by the war from carrying on research in Europe under a Guggenheim Fellowship ... As the year ends, the National Defense effort is beginning to claim the services of a number of staff members. Presumably the coming year will see a large intensification of the effort, though it is hoped that the interference with the regular research and teaching will not be too severe." (p. 129) 1942: This told a very different story. The defense effort had begun to "involve a considerable number of personnel, as well as a good deal of administrative work. With the opening of the Radiation Laboratory of the National Defense Research Committee at the Institute, a number of members of the Department's staff have become associated with that laboratory" followed by a list of over 10 senior faculty who had, and several more gone to other defense projects. (p. 110-111) 1943 to 1945: Slater took leave of absence as chair, to work on topics of importance in radar. The American Mathematical Society selected him as the Josiah Willards Gibbs lecturer for 1945.Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectures 1946: Slater had returned as chair. He starts his report: "The year of reconversion from war to peace has been one of the very greatest activity. ... Physics during the war achieved an importance which has probably never before been attained by any other science. The Institute, as the leading technical institution of the country and probably the world, should properly have a physics department unequaled anywhere." He lists plans to meet this objective, that proliferate his administrative responsibilities. (p. 133-143) Setting up interdepartmental laboratories, by restructuring existing laboratories using, as a model, the conversion of the Radiation Laboratory into the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) by Julius Stratton and Albert Hill. Financing student assistantships and helping shape the role of government financing on an unprecedented scale. Overseeing Robley Evans' Radioactivity Center (containing a cyclotron) and Van de Graaff's High Voltage Laboratory. Recruiting physicists familiar with the Manhattan Project to build the Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Engineering. This was directed by Jerrold Zacharias. Its first members included Bruno Rossi and Victor Weisskopf. Setting up the Acoustics Laboratory, directed by Richard Bolt, and the Spectroscopy Laboratory directed by the chemist Richard Lord. 1947: With the hiring of staff and building of laboratories well in hand, Slater begins: "The year in the Physics Department, as in the rest of the Institute, was one of starting the large-scale teaching of returned veterans and other students whose academic careers had been interrupted by the war." He goes on to discuss the needs of students, in the entire Institute, for Physics courses and laboratories, with particular mention of the upsurge in electronics and nuclear science, and he reports briefly on the developments following from his previous report. (p. 139-141)