I was interested in nuclei originally with my deuteron photo work because that was one of the fundamental forces, and the measurement was basic to new science.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I did a thesis in experimental nuclear physics under the direction of Samuel K. Allison.
Investigating the forces that hold the nuclear particles together was a long task.
Originally I had planned to revert to nuclear physics there, in particular the structure of the deuteron.
The discovery of deuterium and the marked differences in the physical and chemical properties of hydrogen and deuterium, together with an efficient method for the separation of these isotopes, have opened an interesting field of research in several of the major branches of science.
Direction coupling between the various radiations generated in a nuclear reaction both with one another and with the initiating radiation can also be detected and measured by coincidences; this provides valuable information about the structure of the atomic nuclei.
In this atmosphere I soon became interested in nucleic acids.
Physical studies of DNA had, of course, been under way for some years before analysis of virus particles began.
The research included neutron resonance spectroscopy, the angular distribution of pion elastic and inelastic scattering on nuclei with optical model fitting.
I got bored with the topic; I felt this was 19th century physics. I was wondering if there was still something profound that could be made with light microscopy. So I saw that the diffraction barrier was the only important problem that had been left over.
During my first year as a graduate student, we worked on a measurement of the isotope shift and hyperfine structure of mercury isotopes.
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