Oral-History:John M. Rowell
About John M. Rowell
John M. Rowell received the B.A., M.A., and the D. Phil. degrees in physics from Oxford University, Oxford, England, in 1957 and 1961, respectively. He joined Bell Laboratories in 1961 after carrying out his graduate studies at Oxford University, Oxford, England. With P. W. Anderson, he made the first observation of the Josephson effect and demonstrated the magnetic field sensitivity of the Josephson current. He held the first patent granted for logic applications of the Josephson effect. With W. L. McMillan, he developed tunneling spectroscopy, which determines in detail the electron-phonon interaction that causes superconductivity, at least in the low-Tc materials. In a collaboration with J. Geerk, M. Gurvitch, and M. Washington, he invented the niobium/aluminum Josephson junction process that is now the basis of all low-Tc digital electronics and magnetic sensors. He held a series of management positions at Bell Laboratories and in 1983 he joined Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) as Assistant Vice President of the Solid State Science and Technology Laboratory. He joined Conductus, a start-up superconducting electronics company, in 1989 as Chief Technical Officer. In 1997, he was appointed as the Materials Institute Professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, and since 2001, he has been a Visiting Professor at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. Dr. Rowell is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 1989, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1994 and of the National Academy of Engineering in 1995. In 1978, he was the recipient of the Fritz London Memorial Low-Temperature Physics Prize for his work on the Josephson effect, tunneling, and superconductivity.
About the Interview
JOHN M. ROWELL: An Interview Conducted by Mary Ann Hellrigel, IEEE History Center, 28 September 2016
Interview #778 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Copyright Statement
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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
John M. Rowell, an oral history conducted in 2016 by Mary Ann Hellrigel, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
Interview
INTERVIEWEE: John M. Rowell
INTERVIEWER: Mary Ann Hellrigel
DATE: 28 September 2016
PLACE: Berkeley Heights, NJ
Early life and education
Hellrigel:
It is September 28, 2016. This is Mary Ann Hellrigel from the IEEE History Center, and I am with Dr. John M. Rowell.
Rowell:
Yes, Rowell.
Hellrigel:
Dr. Rowell we are here today to record your oral history. Thank you, sir.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
What we like to start with is your childhood. If you could tell us where you were born and what year? If it is not too revealing.
Rowell:
Well, I was born in 1935.
Hellrigel:
I see, 1935.
Rowell:
I was born in a little town in northwest of London. Nobody has heard of it.
Hellrigel:
Oh, what is it?
Rowell:
It is called Linslade.
Hellrigel:
Linslade.
Rowell:
LINSLADE.
Hellrigel:
Thank you.
Rowell:
The only claim to fame is that the great train robbery occurred some miles up the tracks from Linslade.
Hellrigel:
Well, that was a memorable heist.
Rowell:
You can look it up online.
Hellrigel:
I will look it up.
Rowell:
They stole a few million dollars from a train by stopping it.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
That was not the diamond robbery, was it?
Rowell:
No.
Hellrigel:
That is another one.
Rowell:
No. This was cash as far as I know.
Hellrigel:
Yes, I guess all the money coming in and out of London.
Rowell:
It was a mail train. They used to take the mail and sort it on the train so you could get delivery on the next morning almost anywhere. It was a very efficient postal service. They realized that there was a lot of cash being sent by mail that night so anyway-
Hellrigel:
End of April?
Rowell:
Yes. Maybe it was. Yes.
Hellrigel:
Did you grow up in Linslade?
Rowell:
No. Not long after I was four years old, they moved up to a town called Rochdale, which is near Manchester in the north of England.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
I stayed there until I went up to university. So, I went to the local grammar school there eventually.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
I came from a very large family; ten children all together.
Hellrigel:
Oh, my, that is a large family.
Rowell:
Five boys first, then four girls, and then one boy. We called him the little boy although he is about fifty years old now.
Hellrigel:
What did your father do for work?
Rowell:
He was a pastor of a Baptist chapel.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
They don’t call it church because church means the Church of England over there. A chapel means a non-conformist.
Hellrigel:
I see, your father was a pastor. Was his father, your grandfather, also a pastor?
Rowell:
Yes, he was a pastor, too. They were also tailors. They made clothing for people before you could buy clothes in a chain store.
Hellrigel:
Yes, ready-made clothes were sold in stores.
Rowell:
Before everything was custom made. They would go out and take measurements. Then you would try it on and then they would fit it. If it was a suit, say, this is what happened.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
After they made the suit, say for a farmer, they hoped they got paid. Sometimes they didn’t get paid.
Hellrigel:
Sometimes, did they get paid in-kind, say with a chicken?
Rowell:
No. Sometimes they didn’t get anything. People just put it off. Eventually, they closed the tailoring business and there was quite a bit of debt left.
Hellrigel:
Wow they had to be disappointed. And then, what about your mother?
Rowell:
My mother was a farmer’s daughter from again due north of London. The farm is in what is now the area where everybody lives to commute into London. The farm is still there. It is still being farmed by somebody who married one of my cousins.
Hellrigel:
Oh, what is that town again?
Rowell:
It is called Welwyn.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Rowell:
Lots of physicists come from farming stock I have observed.
Hellrigel:
From the farm to the physics laboratory, that is very interesting. And your mother’s name if you don’t mind?
Rowell:
Edith.
Hellrigel:
Edith. And your father?
Rowell:
Frank.
Hellrigel:
Frank. I guess growing up with nine siblings made your house rather busy.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
And, you always had a companion around.
Rowell:
Well, you always played most sports together. You didn’t really need anybody else, so we played cricket and rugby. A little bit of soccer although rugby was the game that high school and grammar school played.
Hellrigel:
Oh, what was your position?
Rowell:
Oh, we didn’t play positions.
Hellrigel:
Sure.
Rowell:
We just played. It was a very informal thing
Hellrigel:
I played for many years. Did any of your siblings become pastors?
Rowell:
Yes. My older brother did.
Hellrigel:
Since your older brother became a pastor, I guess the rest of you could do what you wanted?
Rowell:
No. I don’t think it was thought of like that because my father always wanted us to be doctors and none of us did. My elder brother also got a physics Ph.D. and for a while taught at a university.
Hellrigel:
I see, no medical doctors.
Rowell:
But then he decided he should become a pastor, so he did.
Hellrigel:
Oh, and what is his name?
Rowell:
Peter.
Hellrigel:
Peter. And what about your sisters? Did they go to college?
Rowell:
Most of them went to teacher’s training college. In those days, if you wanted to become a teacher, you didn’t go to a university. I suppose it was a little bit like a community college in a way. That is how you trained to become a teacher of grade school for example.
Hellrigel:
Yes. Here they called them normal colleges and teachers’ colleges. In the late nineteenth century, the normal college teacher’s preparation was a two-year program. By the early twentieth century it became a four-year program.
Rowell:
Yes. That is how ASU [Arizona State University] started. That is right. A normal college.
Hellrigel:
Montclair State University started as a normal college.
Rowell:
Did it?
Hellrigel:
It was founded in 1886. My former employer, California State University, Chico, known as Chico State, also started as a normal college in 1886. It was quite common. If your sisters married, did they continue to teach or work elsewhere? In many instances, married women were expected to leave work and become a housewife and stay-at-home mom.
Rowell:
Well, it was true of some of them, but one of them certainly worked. If they worked, once they had children it became more difficult.
Hellrigel:
Right. Let’s see, you were born in 1935, so do you have memories of growing up during World War II?
Rowell:
Yes, I remember some. I remember my little town was only about eleven miles from Manchester and Manchester got bombed.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
I remember standing with my father with a glow in the sky and he said that was Manchester burning. In the town where we lived there were only one or two bombs during the whole war. They were probably spares that some German bomber had left over after bombing Manchester, so he decided to get rid of it.
Hellrigel:
Sure, you do not want to land an airplane with bombs.
Rowell:
I remember details. I remember all the cars had little louver like vents looking downward so the lights shone down.
Hellrigel:
Oh, it is that important for the blackout restrictions.
Rowell:
Yes. Because everything had to be blacked out they came around to see if you got blinds over your windows that completely shielded the light from inside.
Hellrigel:
And no smoking in the street.
Rowell:
Right.
Hellrigel:
Today, some folks might consider them hardcore measures; but they were necessary. You did not want to provide a target for the German bombers.
Rowell:
We had this special table that you could get under. It had heavy steel corner brackets, and it was heavy steel plate, so if the area was being bombed, you were supposed to crawl under it.
Hellrigel:
Your family was so large you would need a few tables. [laughter]
Rowell:
Well, as far as I know, we only had one.
Hellrigel:
One.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Did any of your siblings serve in the military during the war?
Rowell:
No.
Hellrigel:
Too young?
Rowell:
Luckily, we were too young.
Hellrigel:
When you were growing up did you attend an all-boys grammar school?
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
There was a boy’s school in Rochdale and there was a girl’s school. My wife attended the girl’s school in Rochdale.
Hellrigel:
I see, so you have known your wife from your childhood?
Rowell:
No. I met her when I was about 19. It was the first year of Oxford.
Hellrigel:
When you were in grammar school what were your favorite subjects?
Rowell:
Eventually they were the science subjects and math and geography, but not particularly history.
Hellrigel:
Sure. History was your least favorite?
Rowell:
Probably. Yes, probably.
Hellrigel:
Other people I interviewed said their least favorite subjects were history and Latin.
Rowell:
Latin was interesting because at that time if you got into Oxford and Cambridge you had to have what they called the ordinary level degree of the national examination in Latin.
Hellrigel:
Yes, so you had to study Latin.
Rowell:
Yes. They gave up that requirement a few years later, but you needed it when I started university. There were two of us, one, I got into Oxford and Sven got into Cambridge and neither of us had the Latin qualification when we were accepted. The headmaster had been a Latin teacher, so in a few months he taught us enough Latin so that we could take that national exam.
Hellrigel:
Yes, you had to pass the Latin test.
Rowell:
But then they gave it up. A few years later, they abandoned it.
Hellrigel:
Did you study other languages?
Rowell:
German.
Hellrigel:
German is an important language in the science fields.
Rowell:
Yes, I studied German, but I don’t remember any.
Hellrigel:
Did you need German to get into Oxford?
Rowell:
No.
Hellrigel:
No, just Latin?
Rowell:
I don’t think so. I doubt it. Latin was required. I don’t remember German being required. It may have been. I don’t know.
Hellrigel:
When you were young did you play with the radio and have technical hobbies?
Rowell:
Not when I was less than ten certainly.
Hellrigel:
Yes, if you were less than ten years old, you were too young. Besides, it was a wartime economy.
Rowell:
My brother got interested and I remember he built a crystal set but that must have been when we were fourteen or fifteen years old. Somewhere around that age.
Hellrigel:
Did you spend time on the family farm?
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
You learned all the agricultural chores?
Rowell:
Yes. That was the big event because the summer holiday in England was about six weeks. The first day after school ended, we went to the farm when we were young kind of middle teenage years. We left the day before school started. We spent all the summer with our uncles and aunts and family, and grandparents on the family farm.
Hellrigel:
Did you learn to operate and fix the machines? The mechanical arts such as fixing tractors and all that?
Rowell:
I learned to drive a tractor there. Yes. I knew how to start it. The fact that it needed gas and it needed a spark; that is all there was to a tractor in those days.
Hellrigel:
When you were growing up did you have hobbies and join organizations such as the scouts?
Rowell:
Not the scouts. I suppose sports were the main thing that we did. If we weren’t working on homework, and if the weather was decent, then we would be playing something.
Hellrigel:
Sure, outdoor sports and games.
Rowell:
I did play lacrosse, which was unusual in England.
Hellrigel:
Yes, I imagine lacrosse was uncommon in England. Did you participate on any school sports teams?
Rowell:
It wasn’t a school lacrosse team. It was a town team.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
It was the Rochdale town team. There was a cluster of towns around Manchester that had a lacrosse team. They still do so. We played other towns. Then in Oxford I played.
Hellrigel:
You played on the college team at Oxford?
Rowell:
Yes, the lacrosse team.
Hellrigel:
Just lacrosse, no rugby or other sports?
Rowell:
Yes, lacrosse.
Oxford
Hellrigel:
Why did you select Oxford? I know it is an elite university.
Rowell:
Yes, in those days you went down to college for a few days to take an exam. Cambridge held its exams around Christmas time. Maybe before. Oxford’s exams were later, so I went to Cambridge, and they accepted me but said that I had to do National Service first. Because in those days National Service was still required so they said do it first and then come to Cambridge so then I didn’t like that idea, so I went to Oxford. I already planned to do both places anyway. And they accepted me with a small scholarship and said I could go straight away.
Hellrigel:
Scholarships are always helpful; an excellent outcome.
Rowell:
I went straight away and by the time I finished at Oxford the national requirement for National Service had also ended.
Hellrigel:
I see, so you did not go into the military.
Rowell:
Yes, I never did National Service. However, a lot of the people that were in Oxford at the same time were coming back from doing National Service. So, there was a bunch of us fresh from high school and another bunch of people a few years older.
Hellrigel:
One question about the farm and your school breaks. Did your family take any vacations like to Blackpool or anything like that?
Rowell:
We never did. I don’t think we could, probably the family could never afford to take us all somewhere for any period of time. But there used to be one-day trips to places like Blackpool, but you must remember it was wartime.
Hellrigel:
Sure, life was much different during the war.
Rowell:
Yes, there weren’t any extended trips. Nothing like that happened during the war.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Rowell:
Right. I could still remember after the war going to Blackpool or one of the ghost towns in Lancashire for the first time. It was the first time I had any ice cream, so probably I was eleven years old I had ice cream.
Hellrigel:
Your first ice cream would be a memorable event. I understand Rochdale was a pretty industrial town, so what was your reaction when you saw the sea, the rides and all that festivity in Blackpool?
Rowell:
I don’t remember.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
I had some imagination of what the sea looked like. We did have books.
Hellrigel:
Right, you had books; but I am curious about your impression of Blackpool or another resort. In 2006, I visited Brighton, but I have not been to Blackpool.
Rowell:
It was the favorite place for people from Lancashire to go to as a summer week.
Hellrigel:
When you were awarded the scholarship at Oxford, what did your folks have to say? They must have been pleased.
Rowell:
It was a combination of what happened because I received a state scholarship and a scholarship from the university. If you get a state scholarship, which is how most people went to university, you got paid essentially by some entity in London. If you got a small scholarship from the university, then the state scholarship was reduced by the same amount. In the end, you received the same amount to live on; at least in my case that was true.
Hellrigel:
At that time the tuition was free?
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Wow, that made attending university more affordable.
Rowell:
It was covered by the state scholarship.
Hellrigel:
It sounds like a good plan.
Rowell:
In the end, there was enough, or at least kind of enough. However, looking back not much looking back but.
Hellrigel:
Did you have any jobs or employment while you were-
Rowell:
I had summer jobs. Yes, I had two summer jobs on the railway, working at railroad stations.
Hellrigel:
What did you do on the railway; sell tickets?
Rowell:
No. I was a porter, helping people with bags. The other job was to load pigeons. You know about pigeons?
Hellrigel:
Pigeons?
Rowell:
People used to keep pigeons for racing, so they sent them on the train to some distant point. Then somebody released the pigeons and timed their return flight back home.
Hellrigel:
Oh, racing pigeons. They were also popular in the U.S.
Rowell:
They used to bring them to the station, and we put them on the right train.
Hellrigel:
Yes, I understand that part of your job.
Rowell:
The first time that I went to the Rochdale station the porters wanted to have a kind of a joke with me. They gave me the job of sweeping. In England, the platforms are raised about three feet and they are usually either concrete, or in those days, stone slabs. They gave me the job, with a broom that had a brush that was about this wide, sweeping the whole length and width of one of these platforms. Once I finished sweeping, they let me sit with them in the room where they played dominos all day long, except when the trains came.
Hellrigel:
Sure, when the trains arrived you had to hustle out to the platform and work as the porter.
Rowell:
Yes, but I don’t think there was much hustling at the train stations in those days.
Hellrigel:
How did you get that job? Did your brothers work for the railways, too?
Rowell:
No. No. I just went around looking for a job. I went to the station and asked, and they needed some summer help. During the summer, if people were travelling and the regular porters took time off, replacements were needed. They took pity on me.
Hellrigel:
This was a summer job during high school or college?
Rowell:
High school.
Hellrigel:
High school.
Rowell:
Oh, sorry. Yes. It did start in high school, but certainly some of them were while I was at Oxford.
Hellrigel:
Then you went home for the summer while you were at Oxford?
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
When you were an undergraduate at Oxford, how did you decide on physics as a major?
Rowell:
I decided that before I went to Oxford because I enjoyed physics. The usual reason there is an unusual teacher that turns you on to a particular subject. The physics teacher was by far one of the most influential teachers I had. So, sure, I decided on Physics ahead of enrolling at Oxford.
Hellrigel:
What did you like about physics?
Rowell:
Oh, physics was methodical. Then there was a reason for things whereas chemistry, I didn’t like chemistry, was just remembering a lot of facts.
Hellrigel:
Sure, first, you had to memorize the periodic table.
Rowell:
We had practical lab work as well in high school and grammar school. You know, we did things; maybe children do it here now, but they certainly didn’t use to.
Hellrigel:
I understand your point.
Rowell:
My impression is that there is a certain time, up to a Ph.D., when you work unusually hard. At that time in England, you worked the hardest in high school, the period after grammar school when you are age 15 through 17 or 18. Whereas in the U.S., you worked the hardest when you were doing your Ph.D. study.
Hellrigel:
Yes, graduate school is expected to be the most intense, as you work on the master’s degree and Ph.D. So, there is some difference between the education systems in England and the U.S. When you were at Oxford were there many physics majors?
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
It was the era of the Cold War and the Space Race. When you earned your bachelor’s degree in 1957, that was the year of Sputnik.
Rowell:
It was all big in the news. Yes, it influences you.
Hellrigel:
When you were an undergraduate what did you like best about Oxford?
Rowell:
I had a very good group of friends. One of my best friends was in the soccer team, so I tended to know most of the soccer players. I played lacrosse, so that was another team I was active with. Sport was important and you really had ample opportunity to play even when you were studying at the same time. During the summer, in the afternoon, if you weren’t doing anything else, you played tennis.
Hellrigel:
Sure, tennis is a popular sport.
Rowell:
There was a squash court in the college, so we played squash. The availability of sport was a big thing.
Hellrigel:
Then you met your wife at Oxford?
Rowell:
No. I met my wife in Rochdale, but after I had been at Oxford for a year.
Hellrigel:
When you attended Oxford were the students all men?
Rowell:
No. It has never been, well to begin with it was all men, but at that time there were men’s colleges and a few women’s colleges.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
Some of the colleges were restricted to women and it was after I left that the first women were allowed into the men’s college I attended.
Hellrigel:
Then you stayed at Oxford and worked on your master’s degree?
Rowell:
Master’s is not a real degree, so if you are getting a Ph.D., they kind of throw in the master’s degree.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
You don’t do anything separately for the master’s degree.
Hellrigel:
At what point did you decided that you were going to stay on for advanced academic studies?
Rowell:
I always had that in mind. Yes, I always had in mind staying on for a Ph.D. Really, there were no courses, and at that time, Oxford had very few students working on a doctorate in physics. Once you finished your undergraduate degree you signed on with a supervisor, you did experimental work for three years, and then you usually finished.
Hellrigel:
Three years to experiment and write the dissertation.
Rowell:
Your road to thesis may be at the end of that or a little bit after. I took three and a half years because the last half year I was really working on writing the thesis.
Hellrigel:
Did many people go on for a Ph.D.?
Rowell:
Yes. There was quite a good number of professors, and each had maybe one or two students a year. My supervisor took on one new student per year. He may have skipped a few years, but usually overall, he had about three or four students. Some of the other professors had more.
Hellrigel:
How did you select your supervisor and why did you want to work with that professor?
Rowell:
I selected him.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
Initially, I was assigned to somebody else. There were some kind of resistance studies which I didn’t think sounded very interesting. I decided I wanted to work with semiconductors because this was the time just post transistor.
Hellrigel:
Right a lot of transistor work was done in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Rowell:
My supervisor was one of the few, maybe the only one, doing any work on semiconductors at the time.
Hellrigel:
Selecting him made sense given your interest in semiconductors.
Rowell:
He had one or two students before who had started acquiring some equipment and grew some crystals, which wasn’t easy in those days.
Hellrigel:
Right. Did you have scholarship and funding for your doctorate studies?
Rowell:
Yes. It is different. It was different. In the United States, I see professors must work very hard to get money. Once they have the money they can pay a student, buy some equipment and supplies, and so on. But, if the money dries up, then the student of course is stranded.
Hellrigel:
Right, it comes down to funding.
Rowell:
Whereas in England at that time, if a student did well enough with the undergraduate degree, they were promised funding to go on and do a Ph.D. Then the money was to the student, not the professor.
Hellrigel:
I see, the student was funded directly. That is a different setup.
Rowell:
So, regardless of what the professor had to provide, such as space and the equipment, the student had money. It is a much better system.
Hellrigel:
Why?
Rowell:
Why? The situation here in the U.S. is ridiculous. You have all these professors, who are good scientists, spending all their time trying to get money from somebody in Washington who really-
Hellrigel:
Right, that somebody in Washington may not want to provide the funding or fund certain projects, or even favor other projects.
Rowell:
Right. Even if they give it out, they have their favorites to give it to.
Hellrigel:
True. Also, the student may have more independence in the British academic system. They had their independence because they were not dependent on a professor for their livelihood.
Rowell:
Yes. You could take your money and go work for somebody else if it didn’t work out.
Hellrigel:
Wow, that is a much better way to fund graduate students. The students have a degree of independence and the professors do not have to spend so much time writing grants and begging.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Generally, if you changed professors in graduate school, you may lose funding and you could pretty much kiss your career goodbye.
Rowell:
It does happen.
Hellrigel:
Yes. When you were in graduate school did you think, you were going to make a career teaching at university?
Rowell:
No. I don’t think I really believed that.
Hellrigel:
Oh, teaching never appealed?
Rowell:
No, I never formally taught a series of classes of a said course.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
I got some extra money at Oxford by supervising work in the lab, one of the undergraduate labs.
Hellrigel:
Right, I had graduate student laboratory assistants.
Rowell:
No, I did not consider teaching. I always enjoyed being in the lab and doing experiments, and by the time I was finishing my doctorate I had been doing it for three years. I don’t think I seriously thought about teaching.
Hellrigel:
I noticed you published your first article in 1960, before you graduated with your doctorate. You must have been excited about that first publication.
Rowell:
Yes. I imagine.
Hellrigel:
In the U.S., it is sort of like the box you got to tick.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
As you move on through graduate school, having a publication is another significant professional accomplishment.
Rowell:
Yes. That was work in semiconductors. It wasn’t superconductivity.
Bell Labs
Hellrigel:
Sure, you were working with semiconductors. How did you end up at Bell Labs?
Rowell:
Oh, yes. It was rather easy in those days. There was quite a bit of hiring of technical university people from England to the United States. It was kind of a brain drain at the time. And, my wife always wanted to come to the United States or to New Zealand. New Zealand, that was her other choice for at least a couple of years. We never intended to stay. Very few people intended to stay in those days. We all expected to go back, but I had written to a few places. I remember I wrote to a huge lab out in California.
Hellrigel:
Right, California was really booming in the post-World War II era.
Rowell:
They just replied they were only hiring U.S. citizens at the time.
Hellrigel:
Oh, that must have been disappointing.
Rowell:
Then one day a person who was quite high management level at Bell Labs was visiting Oxford. He knew my supervisor NAME??? and the supervisor said do you want to talk to him? His name is Rudolf Kompfner, and he was famous. He was famous first because he was an architect by training. He also was famous because he invented the traveling-wave tube.
Hellrigel:
Good, now you had the chance to meet a big guy from Bell Labs.
Rowell:
Anyway, he was there for the day and I said sure I will talk to him. I had no idea what Bell Labs was. So, we chatted, and I told him a little bit about what I did. He told me about what went on in his lab. I don’t think either of us understood too much about what the other was doing. But anyway, based on that conversation I was offered a job at Bell Labs.
Hellrigel:
Great, you landed a job at Bell Labs.
Rowell:
We went to London one day and came away with our green cards. It was a different time. We also had a reservation on the ship to come to the United States. We came over and Rudy Kompfner was kind of my guide. He introduced me to various groups, and I actually pretty much had an open choice to selecting a department. There were many departments to choose from because almost everyone was hiring at that time. He would have had me in the group, but in the end, I chose the group with Alan Chynoweth [Alan G. Chynoweth] who was also from England via Canada.
Hellrigel:
You had a choice.
Rowell:
Chynoweth was the department head and I decided to work with him.
Hellrigel:
Then you worked for him for a while?
Rowell:
I worked with him until he was promoted, and department heads changed.
Hellrigel:
When did you get married?
Rowell:
We were married in 1959.
Hellrigel:
Then you were newlyweds arriving in the United States for a post at Bell Labs. Did your wife then go to college or had she completed her education in England?
Rowell:
She went to one of those teachers training schools in England. Yes. In fact, it was the one that was shared space in - - Castle which was used in these what, this whole series of books had been written where they play this game Quiddich because they, if you see the film that is in the back played on part of - - Castle where my wife played hockey.
Hellrigel:
When you came to the U.S. you only planned on staying for a few years?
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Then you stayed in the U.S.
Rowell:
You know, things happened. You come and you get settled in an apartment. Then you get some children. Then they start to be educated in American schools. After every step like that, it gets harder and harder to leave and go back.
Hellrigel:
How many children?
Rowell:
Three.
Hellrigel:
Three children?
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Did any of them become either physicists or engineers?
Rowell:
No. The two boys are in engineer-related fields.
Hellrigel:
Then you remained in the U.S., and you settled in at Bell Labs. What was the culture like at Bell Labs? You must have liked working with your team?
Rowell:
How many people have you talked to about Bell Labs?
Hellrigel:
Thus far, only a few. I heard mixed reviews. After the divestiture, conditions changed a lot.
Rowell:
Really, mixed reviews?
Hellrigel:
Yes. Some said it was a great place to work until the time of the divestiture and the breakup of Bell.
Rowell:
Oh, well, that was a different time.
Hellrigel:
A few other people I spoke with enjoyed working at Bell Labs, but their boss changed, and they were less content, so they left.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
I go the impression that much depended on the team and the supervisor at Bell Labs.
Rowell:
Well, I supposed it varied. Only a small part of Bell Labs was doing any basic research. A lot of Bell Labs was in a development area where you probably had a bit less freedom.
Hellrigel:
I see. That would make working conditions much different.
Rowell:
I was lucky enough to be in the research area and we had a lot of freedom. It was probably the best research environment that anybody ever had for about twenty years. Until as you say divestiture started to break things up.
Hellrigel:
Right. During your career at Bell, you rose up into management over the years, so your working conditions changed, too?
Rowell:
Eventually. Yes. Two levels.
Hellrigel:
Two levels? Did you like management?
Rowell:
Yes. Okay.
Hellrigel:
Okay?
Rowell:
Like being in the lab was okay. I tried to do both for a while.
Hellrigel:
Management responsibilities must have taken more and more of your time.
Rowell:
Yes, but nothing like being in a university.
Hellrigel:
Oh, sure, I get it.
Rowell:
Even when I was a director, which was second level, I still had an interest in the lab. Generally, I had a post doc or someone like that working with me.
Hellrigel:
Sure, that would be a great help.
Rowell:
When I went to Bellcore I went up another level. I really didn’t bother to have a lab of my own at the vice president level, but I stayed interested in some of the superconductivity work.
Hellrigel:
You did superconductivity at Bell Labs before the divestiture?
Rowell:
Oh, yes, long before; I did superconductivity work from the beginning.
Hellrigel:
From the beginning? What types of products were you hoping to develop and what were the research projects?
Rowell:
We worked on these super conducting tunneling devices, and joints and junctions and the idea was that they might be used for high-speed switching, communication circuits. The research area only had to have a vague link to the business of telephones. But it was always there. There was always this consciousness that it would be nice if it would be useful.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Rowell:
It was not a requirement. You didn’t have to promise that it is going to be useful.
Hellrigel:
How much of Bell’s research money would go into this type of project?
Rowell:
Going to?
Hellrigel:
Superconductivity projects.
Rowell:
There were just a few of us. It wasn’t a defined project, but it did become one. We did have a small group of people working on superconducting circuits, working at low temperatures. I was in the group. Probably there were four or five of us, but you didn’t have to be in that group to work on superconductivity. There were other groups and other people. Some of the most famous work done at Bell Labs was conducted just about the time I started. The discovery that superconducting wire could carry big currents when you have big magnetic fields was made within my first year at Bell Labs
Hellrigel:
Yes, that was significant.
Rowell:
It was not really linked to the telephone business, but it was probably the most important superconductivity work that was done there.
Hellrigel:
I noticed you have five or six patents, and they were developed when you were at Bell?
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Did you own them in conjunction with Bell?
Rowell:
They paid me a dollar for them.
Hellrigel:
Wow, one dollar.
Rowell:
The first day when you sign on with Bell Labs, they give you a dollar note and that is for all your rights, for all your patents, whatever they are.
Hellrigel:
The bought the rights forever and ever.
Rowell:
Yes. The transistor patent probably cost them a little more because three invented it. I am sure on the first day those three people were given their dollar and that was it.
Hellrigel:
Yes. I guess that is the way it works.
Rowell:
Yes. They provide all the facilities for you, pay you a nice salary, and provide funding. It was really a wonderful system because you did so little to justify the money that they gave you. You did so little in the way of writing any proposals. You wrote a page or two every year and that was all that was expected.
Hellrigel:
Yes. That is what another gentleman said.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
You sort of sketch out what you want to do and then you draft a short proposal and get the funding.
Rowell:
Whether you did that project or not.
Hellrigel:
That was a very supportive system with the freedom to explore and test your ideas.
Rowell:
If you did something that was recognizable or people liked or got a good publication, it was fine. Nobody worried about the fact that you might not have ever proposed doing it.
Hellrigel:
You published quite a bit, too.
Rowell:
Yes. You were encouraged to publish.
Hellrigel:
What happened if you didn’t publish? Would you get in trouble?
Rowell:
Yes. Did anybody discuss this merit performance review?
Hellrigel:
No.
Rowell:
Oh.
Hellrigel:
I see publications were considered in the annual review. The more you published the better your review.
Rowell:
It was not just publication. Once a year the managers at different levels (they worked up through the system at different stages) rank ordered the members of general staff who were generally the Ph.Ds.
Hellrigel:
I see, everyone was placed in an order based on their accomplishments during that year. It sounds like a very competitive environment.
Rowell:
Then the next level kind of amalgamated the information. They pushed that all together until eventually, although I never saw it, it was a rank order of all the technical staff, including managers.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
Right. Now you know, if you were doing well, you would be high on that list. That impacted your wage increase. Your raise for the year would reflect your position in the ranking order.
Hellrigel:
Sure.
UC San Diego
Rowell:
Now, if you didn’t publish or your work as you explained it to your managers was not considered important, you were low on that list. Eventually people who were low on the list disappeared to somewhere. Sometimes they went off to the development side of Bell Labs and some did well there and some did not. A lot of them went off to universities. But people at the highest ranks went off to universities, too. Soon after I started at Bell Labs there was this new university at San Diego, the University of California, San Diego.
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes, a new campus in the UC system.
Rowell:
A lot of people from Bell Labs went to San Diego and they were among the best people.
Hellrigel:
UC San Diego must have made an attractive offer to get people to leave Bell Labs. They were drafted to a new team.
Rowell:
They were hired. They were hired like everybody who goes through university. It is a negotiation between the university and the single scientist, you know.
Hellrigel:
The managers at Bell must have been nervous about people leaving.
Rowell:
I had that discussion with Alan Chynoweth once. He said, well it makes room for more good people.
Hellrigel:
Yes, and new ideas.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Sure, new people and new ideas.
Rowell:
The nice thing was that then you had somebody in university who was going to have good students. If they were good students, you could hire them.
Hellrigel:
At that point, did you have any type of collaboration with a college at Oxford?
Rowell:
No.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Rowell:
No, because I changed fields for one thing.
Hellrigel:
True.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Right. When the divestiture comes up what was the feeling in the lab as that monumental era of change approached?
Rowell:
The feeling among many of us was it was completely their own thing to do. The government should never have let it happen. The government eliminated what I consider the country’s best national lab, which is really what we were at Bell. We were paid for in a different way. We were paid for by the taxes on telephone bills.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
Essentially, we were a national lab for communications, and nobody liked to allow it to just be decimated in the end, which is what happened. Just entirely stupid.
Hellrigel:
Yes. I don’t think the public knew about that. They just anticipated more choice and cheaper bills for long distance calls.
Rowell:
I don’t think the public understood what we were or knew what we were.
Hellrigel:
True.
Rowell:
Some politicians knew because a lot of the very high-level people at Bell Labs were influential. They were science advisors and advisors to the president and things like that, so it is still a bit surprising that-
Hellrigel:
Is it at that point that you went to Congress and were discussing-
Rowell:
No. I don’t think it was then. The only time that I really remember was when the high temperature super conductors were discovered.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Rowell:
There was a hearing in Congress.
Hellrigel:
That would have been around?
Rowell:
That is around 1986, 1987.
Hellrigel:
You stay with Bell, but it becomes Bell Communication Research-
Rowell:
No. It was separate.
Hellrigel:
Separate?
Rowell:
It was a separate organization with separate buildings, separate management.
Hellrigel:
With the divestiture - -.
Rowell:
Right.
Hellrigel:
There you had to then build a laboratory system from scratch basically?
Rowell:
We were expected to take a certain number of people from Bell Labs and form a research entity that would serve the seven telephone companies. You know, the local telephone system was broken into these seven companies like Nynex was one here and Bell South.
Hellrigel:
Yes, the different local telephone companies.
Rowell:
Yes. Pacific Bell and so on.
Hellrigel:
- supposed to do pure research or was it going to be-.
Rowell:
We were supposed to serve those seven telephone companies, so the expectation was that we would perhaps be more relevant.
Hellrigel:
Product development sort of -.
Rowell:
Yes, a little. Again, Bell Labs always gets regarded and thought of as this basic research lab. It was only a fraction.
Hellrigel:
True.
Rowell:
Even at Bell Labs it was 10 percent or something close to 10 percent.
Hellrigel:
When it was founded Edison General Electric and then General Electric had a research lab in Schenectady, New York.
Rowell:
Yes, Schenectady.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Before the divestiture did Bell Labs lose many of its scientists and engineers to other research labs? I have spoken with many people who liked working at Bell.
Rowell:
Leaving for other labs wasn’t too common.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
I assume that there were people that went. The big labs were as you said General Electric, IBM, Bell, Westinghouse, RCA and so on. Sure, if I thought a bit harder, I could probably find some people that moved around, but going to university was a much more common route.
Hellrigel:
At that point, did you think of going to university?
Rowell:
I had some job offers at university. Yes. Obviously, I didn’t take those offers, but I did spend eight months at Stanford in 1975. It was really enjoyable.
Hellrigel:
What did you do at Stanford University?
Rowell:
I kind of filled in for Ted Geballe [Theodore H. Geballe]. He may be one of the people you are supposed to talk to.
Hellrigel:
No. He has not been mentioned yet.
Rowell:
Really? He is a Professor at Stanford. He was going off to Cambridge in England for a year or eight months on a sabbatical.
Hellrigel:
You were his replacement.
Rowell:
I went to Stanford, but I didn’t do his teaching. I just filled in by working with his students.
Hellrigel:
Did you enjoy working with his students?
Rowell:
Yes. It was great.
Hellrigel:
A change of environment.
Rowell:
Yes. It was California and the family enjoyed being in California. We had a swimming pool out here.
Hellrigel:
No snow to shovel.
Rowell:
Yes. No snow.
Hellrigel:
No snow.
Rowell:
No. Working with the students was a lot of fun. It was good.
Hellrigel:
When and why did you leave the Bell research lab? You were Vice President there for about six years or so?
Rowell:
Then you see this discovery of this super conductor was made.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
The group of venture capitalists got a group of professors from Berkeley and Stanford involved in starting a small company. They wanted me to go in on it and be there. They wanted me to be the chief technical officer. It was too temptingly different. I had been at Bell Labs, Bellcore, for quite a long time and I wasn’t too actively involved in any of the science anymore.
Hellrigel:
Yes, you were in management and not the laboratory.
Rowell:
So, I thought it would be a good chance, if not to get back to the lab, to at least get a lot closer to the lab, which is what happened. You know, being responsible for building a company by hiring students and local expertise from Silicon Valley was very interesting.
Hellrigel:
At this point the company was planning on marketing.
Rowell:
Oh, yes. We had lots of promises that we made about the products we were going to make.
Hellrigel:
What products did you think you were going to make?
Rowell:
The ones that the venture capitalists liked best was to build a better filter system, a communication tower system for cellular telephones.
Hellrigel:
I see, the cell phone tower.
Rowell:
They built some of those, and so did a competing company down in Santa Barbara.
Hellrigel:
A competitor in southern California.
Rowell:
But, after about one year, that market which seemed quite active, well in one year it just shriveled up.
Hellrigel:
Why did the market shrivel? Do you think the technology was too expensive?
Rowell:
No. My interpretation is there was a certain number of difficult cell sites.
Hellrigel:
Sales were less than anticipated.
Rowell:
The better filters helped, but probably two things happened. They satisfied some of that demand and then the telephone company’s technology advanced. Instead of these great big cell sites they started these mini sites. Yes, the market just wasn’t long term.
Hellrigel:
At this point MRIs had been developed already?
Rowell:
Oh, yes. Yes. I don’t know quite when the first superconducting magnet but that was, that was a long time before high TC. In fact, you don’t use the high TC materials in MRI machines.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Rowell:
The material that they use in MRI machines is the material that was demonstrated at Bell Labs in 1960, early 1961.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
1961. 1962.
Hellrigel:
The very early 1960s.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Then what happened? Did you like working for that company?
Rowell:
The one in California?
Hellrigel:
Yes. The Conductors Inc.?
Rowell:
Yes. Yes. I enjoyed it.
Hellrigel:
So, you had to move to California?
Rowell:
My wife said okay, you can go and I will stay here in New Jersey. Then when the company folds you can come back. So, I actually never moved to California. I bought a place there, a little townhouse, where we stayed. She came to California, especially in the winter and we stayed at the townhouse, but this is the house I had when I worked at Bell Labs
Hellrigel:
Did the other Bell people live around here?
Rowell:
Well not only this town, but there was a concentration in this town.
Hellrigel:
Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.
Rowell:
Yes. Berkeley Heights. I knew some Bell people lived in this town. In fact, the first house we had was by Aldrich which is quite a way out.
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes.
Rowell:
You know, it is about a forty-minute drive.
Hellrigel:
By this point, 1989, you did not have to worry about your children moving to California. They were probably on their own by this time.
Rowell:
Yes. Right.
Cambridge
Hellrigel:
Yes. After about six years, you left the start up company, and went to university? Cambridge?
Rowell:
Yes. It was typical that the technical people were either in a strong enough position to take over the company or they left. Then the company usually brought in some non-technical MBA type to be president.
Well, with the idea that person is going to be able to push to get products out of the door.
Hellrigel:
You were president for one year?
Rowell:
That was when one president left and before they replaced him.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
It wasn’t really my choice.
Hellrigel:
You stepped in to run the company. Then you left and ended up at Northwestern University?
Rowell:
Yes. That was kind of a strange position really. It was an attempt to get a superconductivity effort growing at Northwestern in collaboration with other universities. We wrote some proposals, but in the end, we didn’t get funded.
Hellrigel:
You were looking at NSF, the Department of Energy…
Rowell:
Yes. All those.
Hellrigel:
Then you found Arizona State University (ASU).
Rowell:
There was a younger person at Northwestern who had been with me at Conductors. He left Conductors and went to UC Berkeley.
Hellrigel:
Now it makes more sense to me.
Rowell:
Then he got a position at Northwestern and I met up with him again there. We got some funding between us; I forget whether it was NSF, probably not. Then he got a tenured position at ASU.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
It made sense for me to carry on the work that we started by going down to ASU.
Hellrigel:
What is his name?
Rowell:
Nate Newman.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
He is still there.
Hellrigel:
Nathan Newman is professor who rounded up your material. Rowell: Yes. Right.
Hellrigel:
Are you still affiliated with ASU?
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
If you are still affiliated, you go into the lab sometime during the year?
Rowell:
I stay in touch, and I go once or twice a year. This year [2016], mainly for personal reasons, we were there for three months, January, February, March.
Hellrigel:
Sure, the winter.
Rowell:
Scottsdale is a much nicer place than Berkeley Heights.
Hellrigel:
In the winter the Scottsdale climate is much different.
Rowell:
It is great.
Hellrigel:
Yes. I know a few folks who retired to Arizona. Did you have any graduate students? Perhaps you supervised dissertations or master’s thesis projects?
Rowell:
I worked closely with some students; however, I was never in a position that I was solely responsible as a supervisor. During the eight months I spent at Stanford, I worked closely with a number of students. We worked together and we published papers together. I also published many papers with ASU students. However, at ASU they always have been students in Nate’s group.
Hellrigel:
At ASU you were based in the school of engineering.
Rowell:
Yes. That is because that is where Nate had his professor position.
Hellrigel:
Sure.
Rowell:
Yes, most of the work on semiconductors and Nate’s program is in the school of engineering. That is the way it works at ASU.
Hellrigel:
Doing some research, I discovered you are a scientific advisor for High Press Ink?
Rowell:
Oh, I don’t think I am anymore. Although officially I don’t think that was ever terminated.
Hellrigel:
I found that in Bloomberg News.
Rowell:
Yes, I was for quite some time. I used to go up, not monthly, but often in my younger days. Now they know a lot more than I do about what they are doing, so they don’t need me anymore.
Hellrigel:
Given all the projects you have worked on in your career what has been your favorite project or your most important project?
Rowell:
There are probably three. You know, Brian - - predicted this effective tunneling of superconducting pairs and I observed the magnetic field dependents. That was back in 1962, 1963. So, that was one.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
Then in 1982, 1983 I was involved in developing a material system which now everybody uses for junctions like that which was a layer of niobium, layer of, very thin layer of aluminum which you oxidized to make an insulator and then you put more niobium on top. And that is the process that say High Press uses but everybody else around the world uses now to make junctions except in a few rare cases.
Hellrigel:
Did you patent it?
Rowell:
Yes, it was patented.
Hellrigel:
But it was patented by Bell?
Rowell:
Was it? It was about the time that we were breaking up. It was a Bell patent. I am pretty sure it was a Bell patent.
Hellrigel:
If others were using it, then Bell would sell the rights?
Rowell:
Yes. But it is too long. First, you only need to pay rights you know, if you make something and sell, hopefully make profit.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Rowell:
If people are making a few of the magnetic field detectors that we call squids, well Bell is not in shape to prosecute patents anymore.
Hellrigel:
True.
Rowell:
Yes. It would have been interesting. There was a big IBM program in the 1970s up to about 1983 and that patent was at the end of that program.
Hellrigel:
An IBM program.
Rowell:
If they had continued, and if they used it, they probably would have been after these big companies. They may have just agreed these hundred patents you can use, this hundred we will use, and we are not going to bother discussing details.
Hellrigel:
What was the third important project? You got the tunneling, you got the materials-.
Rowell:
In terms of what I did, the third project is probably my favorite. If you take one of these tunnel junctions with a material, like niobium or lead, and you measure the current versus voltage and you take derivatives of it to reveal all the fine details then there are features voltages like 10 to 30 millivolts which tell you exactly how the two electrons are being coupled together by the photons. So, a friend, Bill McMillan [William L. McMillan], a theorist, and I turned that into a spectroscopic tool. These were the experiments that I always enjoyed because they were wonderful. They were exactly the same everyday compared to the Josephson effect which was affected by things like bits of field, noise, and so on.
Hellrigel:
Controllable, predictable.
Rowell:
Yes. Used to measure particularly the second derivative of current voltage versus voltage. They got all these little fine details. Then you measure tomorrow, and they are all exactly the same. That was pretty neat.
Hellrigel:
What was your reaction the moment when you had these breakthroughs? Perhaps some physicists jumped up and down and went out for a pint?
Rowell:
Roughly. Yes. As much as scientists do. The Josephson effect was exactly the one day, because we had been trying to do that without success. Looking back, we were trying to do it with the wrong materials. But, then I made the junction which had tin and lead in it and this turned out to be a better choice. I saw this little current, we used XY recorder. There wasn’t __________ in those days. I could see that it was magnetic field sensitive because if you moved anything metal nearby it was changed. I called Phil Anderson. Have you interviewed him; has he been on your history chart?
Hellrigel:
Phil Anderson has not been interviewed, so I will put him on my list.
Rowell:
Yes. I called Phil and he came to the lab. We had a bar magnet, so we moved this bar magnet making enough magnetic field to affect the current. Then he walked back towards the back of the lab and even when he was at the door, it was still changing the current. It was probably the most remarkable single day when something happened because often with other things, you know, it is not in a one-day thing. Today, you do a better job than yesterday and eventually you get the measurement you want.
Hellrigel:
Right. You would have to go through the different-.
Rowell:
I don’t remember, but I am pretty sure Phil and I did not go out for beer.
Hellrigel:
Oh, did you go home and at least jump up and down a bit?
Rowell:
No. I probably came, probably came home and was given homework to do by the kids.
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Rowell:
No. They were too young.
Hellrigel:
On that reality.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
It seems that at times you made decisions in your career because of family. There have been forty or fifty female engineers who had been interviewed and we always ask them about the relationship between family and career, and I said to my boss no one ever asks the gentlemen.
Rowell:
Family and career?
Hellrigel:
Yes, the work-life-family balance question. One fellow said he built his company and his lab close to his house so he could go home for dinner and go back to work if necessary.
Rowell:
Well, that is true for this house. I don’t know if you had noticed but you may have you almost drove by Bell Labs and have you been in and looked at the museum? Have you done that?
Hellrigel:
No. I should do that.
Rowell:
You should. Go to the main entrance.
Hellrigel:
I will look into it. Thanks.
Rowell:
As you go in there will be usually a lady sitting at the entrance desk. You should say can I look at the museum?
Hellrigel:
No.
Rowell:
She will say yes unless it is always open whenever I have done it. Then you turn to the right and then you go almost back on yourself to the right and there is an area there, which has got displays of what Bell Labs did.
Hellrigel:
It sounds very interesting.
Rowell:
I am not sure whether the wire, superconducting wire is in there anymore but anyway it should be.
Hellrigel:
I guess for family you didn’t sell this house and drag your wife out to California so that was a good thing. You didn’t go back to the U.K.
Rowell:
No, as I said before the probability of going back to England decreases the longer you are here.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Rowell:
If you are happy and I enjoyed all the places I worked here especially Bell Labs and by the time I left Bell Labs we had family firmly established at three children were getting on too married. Let’s see, were they? Well, two of them were. What was the question? I was going back to something
Hellrigel:
For family.
Rowell:
Oh, for family.
Hellrigel:
Decisions.
Rowell:
When we first came, we lived in an apartment that was walking distance from Murray Hill.
Hellrigel:
Sure, that made sense.
Rowell:
Just down the hill. We moved out to the countryside because we lived on a farm in England when we were first married and like the countryside but then we moved back here because we decided the children would just have a very long bus ride to schools and they were getting to school age and grade school age. We got this house built. The California company was certainly a gamble and two of our children were married here by then and my wife, if I had gone to a University in California then she would have seen that it was permanent.
Hellrigel:
True.
Rowell:
And would have moved but it turned out not to be permanent anyway, so it was the right choice.
Hellrigel:
Since there were so many start-ups associated with some many different technologies, some successful, but most less than successful, I understand her apprehension
Rowell:
Right. Yes. A certain number recede and get big, and a lot don’t. In a way if you want to ask how she had an influence, it really was her idea that we would spend some time either in the United States or in New Zealand.
Hellrigel:
I see you considered the U.S. as well as New Zealand.
Rowell:
I had an influential physics teacher, and she had an influential geography teacher. She was always interested in seeing other places and travelling.
Hellrigel:
And that didn’t come up on the list?
Rowell:
Australia probably would have, but she always mentioned New Zealand. The teacher must have been particularly enthusiastic about the glaciers and mountains of New Zealand or something.
Hellrigel:
And sheep.
Rowell:
We had sheep; sheep on the moors of England.
Hellrigel:
True. True. Yes. When I went to Ireland the first time, I saw lots of sheep, and they had different spray-painted marks on them for identification.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
They let them all run around.
Rowell:
Yes. Right. Yes.
Publications, conferences
Hellrigel:
Now in terms of publications I see that you publish in different physics journals. Which were the most important journals for you? You know, the top of your career and the Physical Review?
Rowell:
Physical Letters.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
Physical Review Letters were kind of the one that you know, and this merit review that I was talking about. Like kind of, Science and Nature did not exist. They weren’t at places where anybody would think of publishing in those days. Applied Physics Letters, and then Physical Review you always assumed that you would in Physical Review Letters with a longer article in Physical Review.
Hellrigel:
And then how about I see you have published some in the IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity-
Rowell:
Some of those must be in proceedings in conference talks, that kind of thing. Yes.
Hellrigel:
Has the IEEE been important in your career?
Rowell:
No.
Hellrigel:
No? Just asking.
Rowell:
The IEEE has been important for providing a Superconductivity Conference which I have always tried to go to.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Rowell:
That is an IEEE influence.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Rowell:
I attend the Conference and I used to go all the Physical Society meetings, the big March meeting.
Hellrigel:
Sure, the Applied Superconductivity Conference and the March meeting of the American Physical Society.
Rowell:
I haven’t been to the APS meeting for a few years; it covers many more topics. AFC is just Superconductivity, but the APS March meeting is all Condensed Matter Physics.
Hellrigel:
Did you attend the first Applied Superconductivity Conference in 1966?
Rowell:
Which one was that?
Hellrigel:
I forget where it was held, but it was 1966. I don’t know if you are, well, I guess you are one of the founders of applied superconductivity so you would have-
Rowell:
I could have gone to that one, but whether I did or not I do not remember. The first one I went to was a little meeting in Charlottesville, which may or not have been called an ASC.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
I was certainly involved through the 1970s. I was kind of organizing one, but it was the meeting in 1983 where IBM announced that it was terminating the joints and junction program. That was one we held in California.
Hellrigel:
Oh, gosh. That must have been a dark day.
Rowell:
Yes, it was for them particularly.
Hellrigel:
Yes. All the changes that happened.
Rowell:
Around the same time.
Hellrigel:
Yes. Now we will discuss your awards.
Rowell:
Oh, yes.
Hellrigel:
How important are awards to your career at Bell? Were publications more important?
Rowell:
Well, a Nobel prize might count.
Hellrigel:
Yes. Then you could get ranked number one and a nice salary increase.
Rowell:
Yes. That is about right. The other awards count. It just is a way of people would say, well you know, the outside world recognizes this guy. We have him up there as one of our best people. It reinforces the judgment that has already been made inside the company.
Hellrigel:
True.
Rowell:
Yes.
Royal Society
Hellrigel:
You were elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
That must have been a happy day?
Rowell:
Yes. It counts.
Hellrigel:
It counts considerably.
Rowell:
Yes. That one counts.
Hellrigel:
Certainly.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
And others?
Rowell:
Yes, particularly the first meetings of what became the Royal Society. Some of them were held inside the college that I went to in Oxford. They were just a group of enthusiastic scientists who got together. It is different. It is not the same as the academies here.
Hellrigel:
True.
Rowell:
It is not the same because they don’t have any obligation. The Royal Society doesn’t have the same obligations to the government, so they can be more outspoken. Maybe they should be more outspoken.
Hellrigel:
And yes, they had their invitation.
Rowell:
The academies here were created to inform the government, so they are limited to some extent.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
They write an awful lot of reports, so they do their job.
Hellrigel:
Right. Did you have to go to the Royal Society for your induction?
Rowell:
There was some reason why I couldn’t go that year, but I went a year later and yes, it was the same. It just included the people from a year later.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Do you go back to attend their meetings?
Rowell:
A few years ago, I went back for some big anniversary meeting. When I am in London they have a little section of the building, the main building there right in the middle of London it is very convenient where they have some bedrooms. Like a little bed and breakfast for about ten rooms maybe.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
For a night, if you can get in but not often you know, sometimes they are just full.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Rowell:
The main contact that I have had with Royal Society in the recent years have been because I have stayed there.
Hellrigel:
I stayed at Imperial College in London.
Rowell:
Right.
Hellrigel:
I was attending a history of technology conference. We also went to the Royal Society, and I got to see Michael Faraday’s equipment and laboratory, including the famous magnetic ring. Do you go back to Oxford for reunions or anything like that?
Rowell:
No. I would have done so, but there really hasn’t been a meeting. There was one in the countryside outside of Oxford that I went to in the High TC days.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
Recently, I just go to the college and walk around for old times sake and usually meet people that take care of alumni and so on.
Hellrigel:
Which organizations have been the most important I know IEEE wasn’t too important, but the physics society seems more imporant?
Rowell:
Yes. The American Physical Society I would say.
Hellrigel:
Sure.
Rowell:
Over the years, over all the years.
Retirement, reflections, closing remarks
Hellrigel:
Let’s see, do you consider yourself retired now?
Rowell:
No. Semiretired.
Hellrigel:
Semiretired?
Rowell:
Yes. I go to ASU a few times a year. We have a conference call each week. They have a meeting, a group meeting, each week and I listen into that.
Hellrigel:
Sure, teleconferences are useful.
Rowell:
And then of course with emails you can exchange a lot of information these days.
Hellrigel:
You spend part of the year in Scottsdale, Arizonia?
Rowell:
That was-
Hellrigel:
Back then.
Rowell:
This year we did, but I went with my new friend. My wife died twelve years ago.
Hellrigel:
Sorry to hear about your wife.
Rowell:
Yes. I did that once before on my own stayed, in fact I stayed in the same complex in Scottsdale about six weeks the time before. This was three months.
Hellrigel:
Do you think your career would have been any different if you stayed in England?
Rowell:
Oh, it had to be different. Yes. Bell Labs only existed in one place. It couldn’t possibly be the same.
Hellrigel:
What type of work would you have ended up doing if you stayed in England?
Rowell:
It is possible that I would have stayed in a university. My brother worked in the university with a similar background for a while. Maybe I would have tried the British Telecom Lab, a lab like Harwell (the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, AERE), or the National Lab at Malvern where similar work went on.
Hellrigel:
Yes. Several the gentlemen I spoke with have worked with National Labs here. They started at the RAD Lab. Some are over in Washington. A couple of are at the lab in Colorado.
Rowell:
Yes, federal labs, for example.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Rowell:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Did they, the federal labs, ever try to court you?
Rowell:
I can’t remember a case. Boulder would have been the most natural fit and in a way, it still is. The work going on there is the closest to what I am interested in now.
Hellrigel:
Yes. Those are the people working with Richard Harris.
Rowell:
Yes. Dick Harris.
Hellrigel:
Where do you think superconductivity is going to go in the future?
Rowell:
I was reflecting on that a little bit after the Denver meeting because the big successes or the big applications right now are not things that I would have put that are the top of my list.
Hellrigel:
What are the big successes then?
Rowell:
One of the big activities is just using the film you make it, you control the temperature so it is in the middle of its transition so its resistance is changing extremely fast with temperature and then you use it as an energy detector and they are building these enormous rays and putting them up in space and underground. It is not a product in the sense that they are commonly sold over any counter or anything like that but in terms of the number that are being made and the influence they are having as a tool for doing other experiments that was one of the big applications. MRI is an old one that we tend to forget about and then you look at something like the - - accelerator which plans to expand. That is entirely dependent on superconductivity. It wouldn’t exist otherwise.
Hellrigel:
How about the trains like the Japanese trains?
Rowell:
That levitated train?
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
It is an expensive experiment. It is working and it is great but whether it will ever. America doesn’t even understand high-speed trains anyway. The last few weeks my son decided to go down to Washington from here and he has been using Acela, which is very nice. In fact, he had a meeting and went down and back in one day. But there is nowhere else in the U.S. where there are any decent trains.
Hellrigel:
Right. New Jersey Transit is delayed and breaks down often. At least my line is not always reliable.
Rowell:
But Europe, you can, almost anywhere you can jump on a decent train. Some places you can jump on fast trains and those are fast enough in many cases that you don’t really need the extra 100 or 200 miles an hour out of the levitated train so it is going to be a rather, unless the Japanese want to improve their already great train then that is their choice. Then it is their money.
Hellrigel:
In 2006, I went to England, and took friends from New Jersey. When I said we were taking the train from Manchester to York, they said when is the train? I told them there were many trains each day. They said, no when is the train? I said just stop and listen to me. Then one of the railway workers pointed to the timetable above the platforms. I said, look at the timetable and relax.
Rowell:
Yes. You were going where? Manchester to-
Hellrigel:
Manchester to York to Edinburgh.
Rowell:
But Manchester to York is not a very good line.
Hellrigel:
No. But you still had more frequent service. Here on New Jersey Transit, you get infrequent service with one or two trains on some lines and if you miss it you look for a bus or drive. I went to Manchester to do research and they came along, and we then rode the rails.
Rowell:
Yes. You probably went through Rochdale or you went-
Hellrigel:
Yes. Because my research is mostly on Industrial Revolution and-
Rowell:
You went to the Railway Museum in York?
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
Good for you.
Hellrigel:
Yes. And my other is on Edison and commercialization of electricity so I dragged them to some of those sites too but when I tried to explain to them the railroad is extensive but then another year we go to Ireland and I am like it is not the railroad friendly and then the same friends say it is just an island. I said it is a big island. Oh well, we spent considerable time driving back and forth across Ireland.
Rowell:
Yes?
Hellrigel:
Yes. In regard to using superconducting technology for railroads, such as levitating trains, other people I interviewed said currently it is an expensive experiment.
Rowell:
I always regard it more of as a very ambitious experiment. If they can find ways to get the costs down. Maybe there is room in Japan. I remember in Japan getting on a plane in Tokyo and flying just down to Osaka. You know, it is a 747 so they filled the 747 with 500 people and went there. Sure, they would like to put them on a high-speed train instead.
Hellrigel:
True. Do you do a lot of travelling now or have you done a lot of travelling during your career?
Rowell:
I did. I travelled a lot, especially in my Bellcore days. During my Conductors days, I travelled a lot back and forth across the country. Usually, I spent around ten days in California and then I flew home to New Jersey and stayed a week. It was a cycle ten days and a week. Now we travel, this friend and travel a lot. We enjoy travelling and last month we were in Alaska and British Columbia and then finished up in Denver.
Hellrigel:
It sounds like a scenic trip.
Rowell:
And then came back and then-
Hellrigel:
When you travel do you do a lot of travelling for collaboration purposes in Japan, London or elsewhere? Today you might visit people you met earlier in your career?
Rowell:
I went to Japan quite a few times for conferences and I had a little bit of association with one of the universities through a professor there. But again I have gone back to England and to other parts of Europe, mostly for conferences, but not to spend say a sabbatical year or anything like that.
Hellrigel:
If you didn’t end up working in superconductivity what would have been the alternative?
Rowell:
The alternative at the time was to work in semiconductors because that was the big popular topic at Bell. You know, this wasn’t that long after the transistor. Most of the work going on in the group that I joined was semi-conductor related. In fact, this was the group that Shockley was in when he was there, and it was the group and the head of it was Gerald Pearson who invented the solar cell.
Hellrigel:
Bell Labs had a really talented staff.
Rowell:
But they had all left. Most of the people who were famous names from semi-conductor beginnings had left, but a lot of influence was still there.
Hellrigel:
You were at the top of the list of people to interview this year from Peter Lee.
Rowell:
Oh, yes.
Hellrigel:
Yes, from a list of ten. Initially, Peter Lee said we will go with ten and then at one point he was up to almost forty. I said I can’t do forty interviews in four days, so he came back to ten. During your career, who has been most influential in your field?
Rowell:
People who have influenced me most?
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
Phil Anderson [Philip W. Anderson] clearly.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
We worked directly together for quite a while. I used to see Phil almost daily because there was a little theory group in Bell Labs, and he was down there. Bill McMillan [William L. McMillian], who unfortunately died shortly after he left for Illinois, had an office there. We used to have coffee together in the mornings every day. Ted Geballe [Theodore H. Geballe] who is at Stanford has always been a good friend and somebody I knew at Bell Labs. I got to know Ted even better when he was at Stanford. Bob Dynes [Robert C. Dynes] worked at Bell Labs (1964-1990) and then became a physics professor and later the Chancellor at the University of California at San Diego.
Hellrigel:
The physicist Robert Dynes.
Rowell:
Yes. He also became the big boss of the California system for a while.
Hellrigel:
Yes, Dynes was in charge of the University of California system.
Rowell:
Check him out because he was my post doc initially and he was in the group and we worked together and haven’t seen him for a while now. Nate Newman is responsible for me being at ASU.
Hellrigel:
Sure, you worked closely with Nate. He sent me your vitae and other documents.
Rowell:
Then there is a whole lot of people, kind of superconductivity people, that I know as friends.
Hellrigel:
Right, I may have recorded an oral history with a few of them at the Applied Superconductivity Conference in Denver.
Rowell:
You should speak with people like Dick Harris [Richard Harris] and Matt Beasley [Matthew Beasley] at Stanford and Bob Hammond [Robert Hammond] and John Clarke at Berkeley. He [ Clarke???] is a person I first met when he was a student and I tried to hire him for Bell Labs.
Hellrigel:
Yes. In early September, I recorded oral histories with Richard Harris and John Clarke at the Applied Superconductivity Conference in Denver.
Rowell:
Right. Paul Richards, some of these people were on the scientific advisory board at Conductors so I had gotten to know them very well and-
Hellrigel:
Not too many women in the field?
Rowell:
No. There were women. Laura Greene.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
Do you know Laura yet? Oh, you better meet Laura. She is president elect of the American Physical Society. She is senior scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, and Florida State University. Yes, you should interview her. [Laura H. Greene, 2017 President of the American Physical Society}
Hellrigel:
Sure, I will add her to my list.
Rowell:
She will give you her views on the state of physics, the state of the American Physical Society, and the field of superconductivity.
Hellrigel:
That would be great.
Rowell:
We are still good friends. Then there was an interesting young lady, she had a master’s degree from a German university, who came and worked with us in the lab. She came about the time of the break-up of Bell Labs. She has a Ph.D. from MIT. After working at Bell Labs, she went to MIT for a while for her master’s degree and her Ph.D. After she got the Ph.D., she came to me and said she didn’t know what she was going to do next. I said well, how many American Physical Society meetings in March have you attended? She said I don’t know, five or so. I said how many more do you want to go to? She didn’t want to go to anymore. I said well, then you better not be a physicist. So, she went off and worked with a telephone company that started the cellular system in Germany. She was once selected as a possible astronaut for Germany, but she turned it down.
Hellrigel:
What is her name?
Rowell:
Gisela Hertl. She works for a cellular phone company that is based in Europe. Now the company is based in London. It is not one that we see here.
Hellrigel:
This is another fantastic lead, thank you.
Rowell:
I forgot the name of it now.
Hellrigel:
Do you have any recommendations for anybody who would be entering your field now? Advice?
Rowell:
None of my grandchildren are going to go into superconductivity. Maybe that is the answer.
Hellrigel:
That is a very straight-forward answer and pragmatic advice. What are they going to go into?
Rowell:
You know, more bio related things, but I am not sure. Some of them are too young. Half of them are too young to know yet.
Hellrigel:
How many grandchildren?
Rowell:
Six.
Hellrigel:
Six.
Rowell:
They are more interested in soccer than anything else right now.
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes. That is understandable. Is there any topic we didn’t cover that you think we should cover?
Rowell:
No. You have covered a lot.
Hellrigel:
Yes, we have covered a variety of topics. Thank you.
Rowell:
I met my wife in one of these summer jobs, but not on the railroad.
Hellrigel:
Oh, what about your summer job?
Rowell:
I kind of just walked around town asking places if they had summer positions. There was one that was a distributor of electrical equipment; everything from you know, toasters and ovens down to fuses and switches. They had a position, or rather menial position for writing and entering sales into a ledger kind of record keeping. It was a job and it paid probably all of eight pounds a week, which is about what I got on the railroad a year before.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
As it happened, my wife’s father was one of the directors, and that is where I met her.
Hellrigel:
Her name?
Rowell:
Judith.
Hellrigel:
Judith. Did her father set you up?
Rowell:
No. We met in the company.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Rowell:
I met Judith before I met him. I didn’t meet him yet. I worked in the front office in the record keeping part of the building. Her father was in charge of sales for toasters and that kind of thing.
Hellrigel:
Domestic appliances.
Rowell:
Yes. Right.
Hellrigel:
She just happened to come in the office?
Rowell:
Yes. Yes. Yes. She said I was sitting in her desk.
Hellrigel:
Oh, no you were in trouble.
Rowell:
I was sitting at her desk.
Hellrigel:
Did you get up and move?
Rowell:
I am not sure what I really did. I have been told do sit there and do something; so anyway, she forgave me for that.
Hellrigel:
Then you started courting. Did you marry shortly thereafter?
Rowell:
Um-
Hellrigel:
A year or two?
Rowell:
How many years? Two, no, it was, 1954, so it was four or five years.
Hellrigel:
Do you have any regrets about your career? If you could have done something differently, would you have had a different career? If you had a second chance, would you do things differently?
Rowell:
Maybe when I left Conductors I would not have gone to Northwestern.
Hellrigel:
Perhaps a different employer and university?
Rowell:
Maybe I would have looked for a university position at that time and settled in a university somewhere.
Hellrigel:
I see.
Rowell:
Yes. I do enjoy the work with students. I don’t think I would enjoy teaching, but I just would have to put up with that.
Hellrigel:
Most professors have to do some teaching, but you may have been able to work out a deal to focus on working with students in the lab as opposed to the classroom.
Rowell:
Seeing the young students progress, on experimental work particularly, is enjoyable. They become skilled.
Hellrigel:
Certainly, you work with them and watch them mature as researchers and scholars. That will wrap it up.
Rowell:
That will do?
Hellrigel:
Yes, sir.
Rowell:
Turn your machine off.
