Interview with William Fry

Partial Transcript: Jack, we'll start at the beginning. Where and when were you born?...

Segment Synopsis: Fry was born in Carlisle IA to a family with 1 older and 2 younger brothers. He talked about the modest farm on which they lived—relying on the timber on it and the extensive wildlife. He also discussed the local public school and his father’s part on the board of the school and local bank. He noted that his parents’ conservatism meant they seldom bought anything but necessities.

Keywords: Carlisle, IA; conservatism; farm(ing); wildlife

Partial Transcript: We rarely bought any food, but during the Depression, it was a very difficult time because there were several...

Segment Synopsis: Fry talked about hardships of the Great Depression—the drought disrupted their garden production, plagues of insects destroyed remaining crops, and life ground down to survival. But he mused about getting interested in radios from a young age, building his first crystal set with the help of a local man.

Keywords: The Great Depression; drought; survival

Partial Transcript: So, was your father's generation the pioneer generation in Iowa, or did your family go back...

Segment Synopsis: He talked about his paternal great-grandfather George Stumble, who came and lived with Keokuk’s tribe before IA was a state, and his grandfather, who built the house his family lived in. He related several interesting stories about his mother’s grandfather, who built a large estate in neighboring Hartford IA, and his brother and wife. He explained his mother’s college education, unusual for the time, and marriage to his (relatively poor) father (which he thought his maternal grandfather disapproved of).

Keywords: Carlisle, IA; George Stumble; Hartford, IA; Keokuk tribe; Stumble-bottom

Partial Transcript: Then, when I was probably 10 or 9, I got interested in music, and my dad told me that there was a man...

Segment Synopsis: Fry discussed his young interest in music; he got violin lessons in town for about a year, which piqued his interest in the instrument. After his first teacher could teach him no more, he took lessons at Simpson College and won second place at a state competition. Fry also talked about his brother-in-law, a “jolly man” who lived next door, nicknamed him “Jack,” and influenced his attitude about life. He discussed his mother’s depression and suicide and his brother-in-law’s positive parental influence in dealing with difficult childhood experiences. He reflected that even though he grew up in the Depression, he didn’t think his childhood was a bad period.

Keywords: Simpson College; The Great Depression; childhood; violin

Partial Transcript: But, when I graduated from high school, I decided that I didn't want to give up music, but I wanted to...

Segment Synopsis: Fry talked about high school and his decision to pursue engineering (over music) afterward. In music, he talked about a part time music teacher who exemplified to him “the Music Man.” Since this teacher only knew the trumpet, Fry taught violin privately starting as a freshman in HS, but he recalled that two music teachers basically created and sustained the music program at Carlisle HS and Hartford HS.

Keywords: engineering; high school; music

Partial Transcript: So, when I had decided to go to college, fortunately, my grandfather left in his estate money for...

Segment Synopsis: He said that while he was a poor student in HS, his grandfather had left money for he and his brothers to go to college. After recalling one English teacher who demanded excellence and “woke him up,” he discussed getting interested in academics (in part thanks to a newly endowed library in town). He talked about his father’s agency in getting the process started in their town in the 1930s.

Keywords: college; grandfather; high school

Partial Transcript: So it sounds to me that from a very young age, you were a person who had a talent for teaching...

Segment Synopsis: Fry asserts “there was a vacuum of knowledge” that he filled. He recalled building PA systems for auctioneers and realizing that the world was a lot larger than the farm—beginning with hearing languages he couldn’t understand over shortwave radio. “The farm didn’t answer my questions,” so he enrolled at Iowa State University as a double major in electrical engineering and music. While he didn’t have good study skills, got poor grades, and almost flunked out his freshman year, he read voraciously at ISU’s library and was taught by talented violin professor Ilse Niemack, who wisely advised him to spend more time on his engineering. He shared several anecdotes about Niemack.

Keywords: radio; teaching

Partial Transcript: So you, a couple of years into your college education, war was declared...

Segment Synopsis: Fry discusses why he was draft-deferred because he was in engineering. He worked as a researcher at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), first as a civilian and then as military personnel. It was here that he “woke up” academically. Fry also discusses his wife. He had known her since grade school and they had dated in college/nursing school. But he met his first wife in college and they married before they graduated.

Keywords: US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL); engineering

Partial Transcript: Okay, so then, we go out to the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC...

Segment Synopsis: He described this experience at the NRL as a “great awakening” because he had responsibility placed on him. He was charged with creating technology to jam radio guidance systems used in German bombs (for which he got citations). He recalled enjoying the responsibility place upon him, discussing some frustrations but noting that it went well despite these minor setbacks.

Keywords: Naval Research Laboratory (NRL); Washington DC; bombs; electronics

Partial Transcript: But, during the war years, I became more interested in the question of "why" rather than "how"...

Segment Synopsis: Fry said that during the war years, he became more interested in the “why” question rather than just the “how” question; so he went back to night school at George Washington University, under the instruction of the brilliant Russian physicist George Gamow. Fry recalls Gamow talking about ideas, not just formulas. Fry also talked about Gamow’s work in physics.

Keywords: George Gamow; George Washington University; night school; physics

Partial Transcript: So you were at the end of your stay at the Naval Research Laboratory...

Segment Synopsis: Fry talks about being sent as the NRL’s representative to the White Sands testing facility’s project working on ex-German V-2 rockets with Wernher von Braun’s group. He discussed meeting a colleague in the program with whom he developed an experiment testing the attenuation of radio transmissions over the hot gasses produced by a jet on the V-2 rocket. He explained the thrill he got from discovering how things worked related to complex physical phenomena.

Keywords: German V-2 Rockets; Naval Research Laboratory (NRL); Wernher von Braun; physics; radio

Partial Transcript: Tell me the process of how you approach a problem? Do you think about it...

Segment Synopsis: Fry said he always started by trying to answer “why” something is happening.

Keywords: "why"; physics; problem

Partial Transcript: You decided to go to graduate school in physics, and so, where did you...

Segment Synopsis: Fry talked about going back to ISU, where the chair was a good friend of his boss. He was admitted on severe probation because of his undergrad grades, but passed with flying colors. He talked about his teachers at ISU. Attracted first to biophysics, he later decided to get into particle (high-energy) physics; because no one at ISU did particle physics, he became close with theoretical physicists and decided he wanted to follow the work of British physicists like G. Occhialini and C. Powell at U. of Bristol, who worked with high-density nuclear emulsions.

Keywords: Ames, IA; Iowa State University; biophysics; particle physics

Partial Transcript: I decided that's what I wanted to do. So I decided that the way to expose the plates was to fly them...

Segment Synopsis: Continuing to talk about his graduate school research, he recalled getting specialized nuclear emulsions and exposing them at high altitudes using weather balloons. He decided to study pi mu decay, since he found a number of cases of mu meson trajectories that didn’t match with predicted values. When he published his findings in an Italian journal, he caught the attention of Enrico Fermi. He also talked about his run-in with a Columbia assistant professor who was studying the same phenomenon, but whose research was sloppy. Fermi later wrote a recommendation for Fry to do a post-doc. He then explained the later interpretation by physicists of why these anomalies were occurring. Fry also discusses how some questioned his technique of flying balloons.

Keywords: Enrico Fermi; nuclear emulsions; pi mu decay; weather balloons

Partial Transcript: So, I got the post-doctoral appointment, and due to Fermi, I was invited to go to Chicago...

Segment Synopsis: Fry talked about going to Univ. of Chicago upon Fermi’s invitation to do a post-doc, though with Marcel Schein’s group. He talked about his impressions of Fermi from working with him at the cyclotron—unpretentious, a rare combination of experimentalist and theorist. He related anecdotes about Fermi’s ability to identify explanations of things, his ability to remember the values of constants, and his considerate way of expressing his opinion. Fry also talks about Marcel Schein who stood out. He described Schein as a very creative theorist who proved that the fundamental particles in cosmic rays were protons, but who was not very good with calculations (which led to some disrespect from his younger colleagues and his group later breaking up). Fry’s interests caused him to spend more time with Fermi’s group than Schein’s.

Keywords: Enrico Fermi; Marcel Schein; University of Chicago; cyclotron; post-doctoral

Partial Transcript: And, the group sort of broke up when I was there. I was spending more time with...

Segment Synopsis: Fry explained how he ended up at UW. After the breakup of Schein’s group, Fry (who’d intended to stay at Chicago another year) decided to go as well. His advisor at ISU contacted Bob Sachs at UW, which had no high-energy physics group at the time. So in 1952, he was invited to apply for a position starting a high-energy group—he described the trip (during which he fell in a ditch), his talk, and the party afterwards. But on the interview, he didn’t feel much enthusiasm from Sachs and others for high-energy physics (the emphasis was nuclear physics at the time with Ray Herb, Julian Mack, and others), so he returned to Chicago disappointed.

Keywords: 1952; Bob Sachs; Chicago; UW; nuclear physics

Partial Transcript: So I went back to Chicago very disappointed. I thought I just blew it. And, in two weeks I got a letter...

Segment Synopsis: Fry described unexpectedly being offered a job, getting an office and lab, and starting to teach—all without a contract or being notified of his hiring.The department had about 21 staff—a medium sized, but relatively closely knit and democratic department. He recalled everything being voted on, even salaries, which was good as long as outstanding people remained in control. As the department grew, however, he thought the democracy became a leveling process in an uneven group of scholars.

Keywords: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Partial Transcript: The department was one of the earliest universities, aside from Stanford and MIT, that started to get funding...

Segment Synopsis: Fry talks about how special it was for UW-Madison to receive support from the Atomic Energy Commission. Fry also discussed feeling that he was at a supportive university, especially through the role of Bob Sachs. By the time he left (1991), the high-energy group yielded $6.7 million a year. He briefly chronicled development in high-energy physics from the beginnings, when only the mu-meson was known, until later, “tooting his own horn” about an incident at a conference at which Werner Heisenberg looked forward to talking to him because of his extensive knowledge of k-meson physics.

Keywords: Atomic Energy Commission; Bob Sachs; high-energy physics; k-meson physics

Partial Transcript: So, you're established now in Madison. You are building your program, you are taking on graduate students...

Segment Synopsis: Fry discussed how the university was smaller back then, but he didn’t spend a lot of time with colleagues because he was using accelerators in Berkeley and Long Island. He and Tortorice talked about the divide between theoreticians and experimentalists, noting he was the latter and few (like Fermi) did both well. He also observed how often physicists made errors and how little physicists understand, using a classic anecdote about Fermi’s self-evaluation to illustrate the point and speculating that had he not made certain errors, he might have won a Nobel prize.

Keywords: Berkeley; Long Island; UW-Madison; physics

Partial Transcript: If I were to have been much for intelligent, much more clever, my work could have led to a Nobel Prize...

Segment Synopsis: Fry told the story of how Valentine Telegdi, who he described as an unhappy man, blamed him for his not winning the Nobel Prize, supposedly because Fry’s results were incorrect. Fry attributed his perspective to having known some great scholars—Fermi, Oppenheimer, Feynman, Gamow, etc.

Keywords: Fermi; Feynman; Gamow; Noble Prize; Oppenheimer

Partial Transcript: So when did you then get tenured? Since the process of hiring you was...

Segment Synopsis: In 1954 he was promoted to associate professor and in 1956 he got a letter saying he’d been promoted to full professor.

Keywords: Tensure; associate professor; professor

Partial Transcript: Before we move onto Italy and the other parts of your career, I assume that your interest in...

Segment Synopsis: Fry said that he’d stopped playing violin entirely when Niemack told him to concentrate on physics. But when Wilson Powell, a specialist in magnetism and talented musician, invited him to play for an evening on a Stradivarius and other violins, he realized that part of his earlier problems had to do with the instrument. From this realization, he thought he should be able to solve the problem of what makes a great violin. He made friends with a Madison violin repairman who let him play Old Masters, but claimed he had a secret —that the varnish changed the quality of the sound. Being a physicist, he worked by experimenting with the theories they came up with and learned to have a critical ear in order to quantify what makes a good violin sound.

Keywords: Wilson Powell; violin

Partial Transcript: But being a physicist, many of these things I disbelieved, and I felt that maybe we should learn things by...

Segment Synopsis: When Fry quickly learned that his Madison friend didn’t appreciate him conducting failed experiments on violins he’d spent much time building, Wilson Powell again came to the rescue by financing the purchase of a number of German violins for experimentation. He said Powell in the meantime learned to play violin fairly well. From his experimentation, Fry learned that the thickness of the top and back plates were the most important quality control; and the physics of it helped him identify that asymmetry in the plates was necessary to achieve the right effect. Fry described how Powell devised a clever way to test Fry’s theory on real Old Masters’ violins—using small magnets calibrated to measure thickness—which affirmed the theory. Powell proceeded to write a paper on the results, but was unable to get the paper published by the American Acoustical Society. When Powell reconducted the tests with a more powerful sensor, he miscalibrated the apparatus slightly, so that he died never having seen the true results of his work fulfilled.

Keywords: German violins; Wilson Powell; experiment(s); failure; physics

Partial Transcript: So you took this beginning experience and these experiments...

Segment Synopsis: Fry discusses how he went on to take regular violins and make the plates asymmetrical, which improved the sound but didn’t make a great violin. Since the theory had held, though, he started “worrying about the top.” He explained how he experimented with the position of varying strengths of the wood. While he used glue to stiffen the wood, he speculated that Stradivari used varnish to get the same effect. Fry also explains how he worked on violins since 1964. He chronicled his discoveries—the asymmetry of the back; recognizing how the violin oscillates as a function of frequency bands; discovering where the high frequencies were produced; including the high-frequency component of the bass-bar (based on the top plate).

Keywords: 1964; asymmetrical; violins

Partial Transcript: So how do you think the great violin makers came to understand these concepts and create...

Segment Synopsis: Fry talked about the continuous chain of knowledge transmission from the earliest violin makers to Stradivari; and recounted his speculation about certain tools Stradivari used to adjust the thickness of the final violin plates. Fry talked about a TV series, a course (“Acoustics for Musicians”) and a DVD book his daughter encouraged him to write. Fry also talked about the role Rose Mary Harbison (a violinist) had played in his work because of her critical ear, her ability as a violinist, and her willingness to test Fry’s work. Fry talks about how he deprecated the insecurity of many violinists—that a Stradivari is the best violin for some mystical reasons rather than trying to understand the principles behind sound.

Keywords: "Acoustics for Musicians"; Stradivari; violin makers; violins

Partial Transcript: Now, we are at the point when you began to engage in Italy. Could you tell me what really prompted...

Segment Synopsis: Fry remembered being intrigued by the Italian physicists he’d met, and that at a 1954 Rochester NY conference he met Nicola Dalla Porta, who invited him to come to Padua, where he taught. With the blessing of the department, he applied for and received a Fulbright fellowship to lecture at Padua and Milan. After the orientation month in Perugia, he recalled feeling the impact of not being able to communicate with others.

Keywords: Itlay; Milan; Nicola Dalla Porta; Padua

Partial Transcript: And, particularly, a gentleman who was the leading theorist and the University of Padua...

Segment Synopsis: Compared with the population of the country, Fry noted, the number of young scientists with fresh ideas in Padua was enormous. He talked about how Italian physicists were challenging the boundaries of high-energy physics. He also speculated that this year was the most intense experience of expansion of his person in his life, using the example of trying to discover the reason behind the paradox of fascism’s growth among Italians.

Keywords: Italian culture; Padua

Partial Transcript: And, this was the, kind of, origin of your collecting of materials on Italy...

Segment Synopsis: While it began with the effort to understand fascism, Fry soon began collecting materials from earlier times. He related an anecdote to this effect about negotiating with a Florence book dealer for a 17th century volume for which he paid $8, which got him interested in the aesthetics of books. He thought it wasn’t until the mid-1960s that he realized he had a “collection” of books, older newspapers, and other documents.

Keywords: Italian culture; Italian history; UW Fry Collection; fascism

Partial Transcript: But then, the price of books suddenly began to rise. For instance, in the 60s...

Segment Synopsis: When book prices began to rise, he moved in the direction of purchasing manuscripts at the encouragement of Padua manuscript dealer Danilo Nogarotto. He discussed this dealer’s life story at length because of his uniqueness and reputation for knowledge about Italian culture. One of 9 children of a working class family that was forcibly moved to the Latino marshes south of Rome at Mussolini’s request, Nogarotto began collecting documentation at a very early age.

Keywords: Danilo Nogarotto; Rome; books; manuscripts

Partial Transcript: With the collecting, it sounds as if it kind of grew to be a kind of more important part of your interests as the years....

Segment Synopsis: Fry remarked that his interest quickly migrated to Venetian culture. He discussed Nogarotto’s serendipitous discovery of a cache of documents that was going to be destroyed, which he was able to recover at little cost, how Nogarotto’s mentored him about Venetian culture and documents in general, and how Nogarotto shepherded his interests as a collector. This included his internal reasons for assembling a collection, which he knew would never match the breadth of the Italian archive—rather he wanted to know what made Italians what they are. Fry wanted to note about the collection that his inspiration came to a large extent from the staff at Memorial Library (because he knew the material would be preserved and accessible to people for generations). He gave the examples of gaining access to Nogarotto’s caches of documents, finding the only known list of the “Spedizione dei Mille,” and Nogarotto’s donation of the list to Fry because he knew it would be preserved at UW.

Partial Transcript: Maybe now go back to Madison and the physics department in the 50s...

Segment Synopsis: Fry discusses his return to Madison in 1954 and going back to Italy in 1955-56 and how he came back a “changed person” because he was not only interested in physics but in Italy and the collaboration with Padua. He also said that as the department expanded and garnered funding with AEC (which developed from $5000 initially to $6.7 million in 1987), it went from just him to 12-15 professors and over 100 employees. Fry also talks about his experience as the chair of the physics department.

Keywords: AEC; Madison; chair of physics department; physics department

Partial Transcript: Were you in Sterling Hall when the bombing occurred in 1970 of the Army Math Research...

Segment Synopsis: Fry supposed the bombing had little impact on high energy physics, but rather on nuclear physics (in which R. Fassnacht was a postdoc). He also mused about the 1960s and 70s being a time of change, when the department needed to take more account of young people’s needs—citing R. March’s Physics for Poets. He also thought some students were going into physics that should have pursued other fields—many of which soon realized physics wasn’t for them.

Keywords: Physics for Poets; R. Fassnacht; Sterling Hall; bombing; nuclear physics

Partial Transcript: This was a period, also, where physics attracted people for graduate school who shouldn't have gone into...

Segment Synopsis: Fry observed that the department never paid appropriate attention to undergraduate education (which was why graduate student numbers were higher than undergraduate numbers). But in the 1960s and 70s the number of physics students rose and March became a vocal proponent of undergraduate education.

Keywords: enlightenment; graduate; undergraduate

Partial Transcript: But, in recent years, your work has continued, and you've made some discoveries...

Segment Synopsis: Fry discusses how he didn’t think major progress had been made in the acoustics of violins recently because it was difficult for physicists to pick one part of a whole complex of problems that make the quality of violin acoustics. Fry also talks about the professional organizations he has been involved with. Finally, Fry recalls that the UW-Madison physics department was an “unusually wonderful place to have been,” partly due to long-standing traditions but partly due to outstanding graduate students who wanted to keep UW at the cutting edge. He observed changes in the field of physics in terms of the expense and number of investigators on any single experiment (often hundreds of scientists and millions of dollars). Second, he wanted to assess his contributions—which he saw as only the early stages of learning on mu-mesons and such—and note that while he no longer could contribute to the frontier, he appreciated the joy of working in the field at the frontier of learning. He also found joy that he could contribute his collection to UW and was grateful for his association with Danilo Nogarotto and the Memorial Library staff.

Keywords: Academia Galileo Galilei in Padua; acoustic violins