Updated:  Sept. 9, 2003
physics@fisk.edu

Brief History of The Physics Department at Fisk University Including Its Infrared Spectroscopy And Other Research Programs

 by Nelson Fuson

February 18, 1997

 Imes Starts the Fisk Physics Department Major

Elmer S. Imes graduated from Fisk University, receiving his A.B. degree in 1903. He later went on to do graduate work in physics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. He earned his Ph.D. there in 1918. He had the good fortune to do his graduate research in infrared spectroscopy under the direction of Harrison M. Randall, Chairman of the Department and a pioneer in the Infrared field. Imes published two important scientific papers in the physics literature. His thesis, ”The Far Infrared Spectra of HCl”, produced the first experimental proof that Quantum Theory was essential to explaining the structure and spectra, not just of the then about 90 known atoms in their isolated existence, but also of molecules, i.e., of everything in the Universe.

Imes returned to Fisk in 1929 to inaugurate Fisk’s Physics Department and its interest in Infrared Spectroscopy.  Previous to his arrival as Professor of Physics, only the usual one year General Physics course was taught, largely for chemistry majors and as an elective for other majors. Imes started Fisk’s full physics program leading to an A.B. degree in Physics including good equipment for elementary and advanced laboratory experiments.

Imes continued some experimental work in infrared but his infrared spectrometer was not equipped to do research so he did not publish any more scientific papers. Unfortunately his tenure at Fisk was cut short in 1941 by his death from cancer. You will find reference to Imes in the current Fisk Catalog after whom an Elmer Imes Scholarship is named. His name is also attached to Fisk’s Physics Department Colloquium.

Fisk’s physics department chairmen since Imes have been: JamesR. Lawson, 1942-49; Nelson Fuson, 1949-56; Gertrude F. Rempfer, 1956-57; James Lawson (again), 1957-67; Rutherford H. Adkins, 1967-70; George Neely, 1970-74; Enrique Silberman, 1974-1990; John Springer, 1990-93; and W. Eugene Collins, 1993-1998; Steven H. Morgan, 1998-present.

Research at Fisk University

Infrared instruments for research were not manufactured commercially until the mid 1950s. Now it happened that Imes, Lawson and Fuson, the first three chairmen of Fisk’s physics department, all did their doctoral research at the University of Michigan under its physics department chairman H. M. Randall. As a result of this close relationship, Lawson was able to obtain a research infrared spectrometer with a large rock- salt prism, built especially for Fisk by the University of Michigan Physics Department’s machine shop.

During the academic year, 1948-49, with the help of Fisk’s first graduate students in physics, Lawson began its installation in a lab room in the basement of the chemistry building. However he needed help to get it into operation. It happened Fisk’s President Charles S. Johnson that same academic year had hired a French chemist, Marie-Louise Josien, to strengthen Fisk’s graduate program in the sciences. Upon arrival at Fisk she had been virtually ignored by the chairman of Fisk’s Chemistry Department who felt challenged by having a woman Ph.D. chemist brought in to his department without first consulting him. Under these circumstances Josien had decided to leave Fisk after one year. However Fisk trustee Percy Julian, a well known black American chemist, persuaded Josien to take samples of 5 new i-steroids he had just synthesized, return to France during the summer of 1949 to learn infrared spectroscopy from French physicist Jean LeComte, then obtain and analyze the spectra of these new compounds and return to Fisk in the fall to help Lawson develop an infrared research program for Fisk.

In the fall of 1949, at the same time that Lawson chose to leave Fisk , Fuson arrived at Fisk to teach physics half time and do infrared research half time. When Josien returned from France eager to start infrared research at Fisk, she and Fuson, working together, set up the Fisk Infrared Spectroscopy Research Laboratory, got the spectrometer equipment operating properly, and started infrared research with 4 black Fisk graduate physics students.  Soon the infrared spectrometer was working well, the graduate students had calibrated the instrument and starting their thesis research under Fuson and Josien’s direction. Soon the wholeFISK IR Research lab group were publishing their research findings in the American Chemical Society’s and American Physical Society’s scientific journals. When these black Fisk graduate students started reporting their scientific results in the Southeastern Section meetings of the APS and the ACS, it became clear to the scientific community in the South that they could no longer hold meetings in southern hotels which refused to serve blacks. Result: the ACS & APS soon stopped using segregated facilities.

To help in this development, Fisk’s offer to host the 22nd annual meeting of SESAPS was accepted. During the weekend of March 29-31, 1956, over 100 physicists from all over the South attended this SESAPS meeting and were housed in Fisk dorms. 80% of this meeting’s Local Arrangements Committee were Fisk personnel. Fisk faculty and students presented 3 of the 11 papers on spectroscopy, 2 of the 8 papers on electron and ion optics, and 2 of the 10 papers on general physics. The Fisk Physics Department held an Open House one afternoon. The meeting’s banquet speaker was Nobel Prize winner Arthur Compton. He received a ”No-bell” award at the close of his lecture since he didn’t talk overtime!

In the years since the mid-’50s extensive revisions and additions have been made to the graduate physics program at Fisk University, including laser-Raman spectroscopy, Fourier-Transform infrared spectroscopy and research in solid state physics.

Fisk’s Undergraduate Physics Program

From 1949 on Fisk’s undergraduate program usually graduated from 1 to 2 students with the A.B. degree,  reaching a peak in 1963 with 8 physics majors graduated with the A.B. degree.   The major required 32 credit hours of physics courses supported by math courses at least through calculus, and at least a year of chemistry. For a long time two years of a foreign language was required. All this was, of course, in addition to Fisk’s standard requirements for all its A.B. degrees.

We quote below the 1956 list of physics courses as an example of Fisk’s undergraduate physics program in the 1950’s:

Physics 101-102             General Physics

Physics 103-104             Advanced General Physics (Calculus based)

Physics 201-202             Modern Physics

Physics 211-212             Electricity and Magnetism

Physics 221                     Electronics

Physics 232                     Analytical Mechanics

Physics 241                     Heat and Thermodynamics

Physics 252                     Optics

Physics 261                     Experimental Infrared Spectroscopy

Physics 272                     Electron Microscopy

Physics 281-282             Laboratory Techniques

Physics 291-192             Special Problems in Physics

FIRI: The Physics Department’s Fisk Infrared Institute

Each year during 1949-52 we invited a consultant to come to Fisk for a day or two to help us in plan and evaluate our Fisk Infrared Research Laboratory program. G.B.B.M. Sutherland, Cambridge Univ, England, and University of Michigan, R. Norman Jones, Canadian National Research Council, Camille Sandorfy, and others were among them. We scheduled each of them for a public evening lecture. Starting the second year we began also giving public lectures on our own Fisk research.

In these early years infrared spectroscopic techniques were becoming useful in the qualitative and quantitative analysis of materials not only in chemistry, physics and biology, but also in special fields like agriculture, astronomy, cosmetics, forensics, fuels, paint, paper, plastics, etc. However equipment was just beginning to be commercially available and only a few scientists in these fields knew how to use the technique. In the summer of 1953 we decided to give a week’s program of lectures and laboratory experiments go help academic, industrial and governmental scientists learn infrared techniques and the interpretation of infrared spectra. We invited several instrument companies to bring their first infrared spectrometers for use in the labs. While we gave most of the lectures ourselves, we were helped out by three local physicist professors, two from Vanderbilt U. and one from Tennessee State U. We invited Harrison M. Randall, our thesis professor from the University of Michigan, to be the lecturer for one of our featured evening programs.

Twice as many participants as we had expected paid to come. Clearly the Institute was filling a real need. As a resultFisk has, with three exceptions, held the”FIRI” each summer for 47 years. Depending on demand we have at times expanded theFIRI into a 2 week period and offered several additional week-long programs such as Gas Chromatography, Visible Spectroscopy, Raman Spectroscopy, and PollutionAnalysis. At its peak we have had over 150 scientists here for one or both weeks. We have been helped by faculty from American universities and instrument companies, as well as by scientists from Oak Ridge, TVA, USDA, OSHA,USPHS, NASA, Chem-IR, Bureau of Standards, etc. Visiting scientists from England, Germany, Japan, France, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Israel, etc., have given lectures in our institutes.  Two off-shoots of theFIRI should at least be mentioned:

(1) LAFIRI, The Latin-American FISK Infrared Institute, held for 3 weeks in February, 1965, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with the financial support of the USAID, theU.S. Agency for International Development, and the counsel of the OAS, the Organization of American States;

(2) the Infrared Institute in France, held for at least two summers, 1957and 1958, at the Faculte des Sciences, Bordeaux, France, while Josien was a Professor there and while Fuson was there as a Visiting Professor, on sabbatical leave from Fisk, during the three year period, 1956-59.