 
INTERVIEWER: So this is the 150
anniversary celebration
with professor Robert Redwine.
Let me start out by asking you
where you were born and where
did you grow up?
REDWINE: So I was born in
Raleigh, North Carolina.
My parents were both from the
south, my father's family
mostly in Georgia, my mother's
family mostly in Alabama.
They had met, actually, in
Washington, D.C. during the
war, and they married soon after
that and decided to pick
a place that was in the south,
but maybe not the deep south
where they were from.
So they settled on Raleigh.
I think they went there without
having a job at the
time, but eventually everything
worked out.
We lived there until
I was seven years
old in an old farmhouse.
Then my father got involved in
politics as a member of staff
of a guy who was the governor
of North Carolina.
When he was elected to the
Senate, we moved to the
Washington area.
I graduated from high school
in Northern Virginia.
INTERVIEWER: Are there any
particular influences that you
remember from childhood which
you think kind of put you on
your career path?
REDWINE: I think the only thing
probably was my parents.
Neither one of my parents
had much education.
My mother graduated from high
school, my father never really
went to school very much,
although I wouldn't say he was
uneducated.
His mother was a pretty
remarkable person and she did
a lot of what we would call
home schooling now.
 
So they came through the system
then without a lot of
credentials, but they
both thought
very highly of education.
I would say especially my
mother, she really expected a
lot of my sister and me.
I was just brought up to think
as long as I worked hard I
could do whatever
I wanted to do.
But education was key.
That probably was the
main influence.
Certainly neither of my parents
knew much about science.
They hadn't had the
opportunity to.
I just found that I
liked that myself.
 
INTERVIEWER: What was
it that made you
decide to go to Cornell?
 
REDWINE: Again, I graduated from
high school in Northern
Virginia, and those
were pretty good
schools in those days.
A lot of my classmates in high
school went to a university,
most did, a variety
of universities.
I had the feeling, and I must
admit I don't know exactly the
origin now, but I really did
want to go north to experience
something different.
And I also had the feeling that
I wanted to not be in an
urban area.
I had spent the last 10 years
or so in an urban area, in
Washington D.C., so Cornell
fit pretty well.
It's certainly not
in an urban area.
INTERVIEWER: Kind of in
the middle of nowhere.
REDWINE: Ithaca is an
interesting place.
But it's isolated.
INTERVIEWER: When you were there
what was it that drew
you to physics?
REDWINE: I just loved it.
Of all the classes I was taking,
this was the one I
most enjoyed.
And that was true from
the beginning.
I also should say that I did
have a really interesting
experience in high
school physics.
When I was a senior, my high
school introduced what was
called Physical Sciences
Study Committee in
physics or PSSC physics.
This was actually a curriculum
that was developed at MIT by
Jerrold Zacharias and
colleagues in
the years after Sputnik.
There were various efforts in
the sciences to produce more
hands-on, exciting curricula
for high schools.
I was lucky enough to come
along when this was first
introduced in my high school.
It was just a revelation because
it was very hands -on,
very practical, things
made sense.
To me it was just
a revelation.
So in some sense the start in
physics really came in high
school not at Cornell.
Obviously I enjoyed it
at Cornell as well.
INTERVIEWER: In that particular
course do you think
it was the subject matter, the
curriculum itself that
interested you?
Or do you think it was the fact
that it was a more hands-
on approach to teaching?
REDWINE: Well I think it's hard
to separate entirely, but
certainly the idea of PSSC was
that you don't memorize a
whole lot of things.
You really try to figure out
what the concepts are.
What the essentials of
what's going on in
various situations are.
And this was very unlike my
experience, and it was the
experience a lot of students
had with biology and
chemistry, for example,
which we had typically
taken before physics.
Where it just, at that time at
least, was an awful lot of
just memorization.
It could get pretty
unexciting.
At least to me.
So I think that was the
essential part.
Zacharias and his colleagues
did a remarkable job.
The problem with PSSC--
it did not stick.
It lasted a few years but
there are very few high
schools around the country
now that use it.
The problem was that it required
a really highly
trained and motivated teacher
to make it work.
 
It was just asking a lot of the
average physics teacher,
most of whom even today have
never earned a degree in
physics, even an undergraduate
degree.
So this remains a problem.
Unfortunately PSSC did not make
a huge impact over a long
period of time, but it
certainly made a
huge impact on me.
INTERVIEWER: Did you get to do a
lot of hands-on research and
study as a physics
major at Cornell?
REDWINE: Honestly not so much.
What we now see as the UROP
program at MIT, which of
course has been copied at a lot
of other universities, was
not so common in those days.
And I did not do any research in
labs at Cornell and I don't
remember any of my colleagues
who were physics majors doing
it as well.
We certainly had laboratory
courses.
We had a course that corresponds
pretty closely to
what we call junior lab at MIT,
but anything like UROP
was certainly not common
in those days.
INTERVIEWER: So after undergrad,
what made you
decide you wanted to go
to graduate school?
 
REDWINE: I think that
I was just having so
much fun doing physics.
I can't claim that I thought
long term about a career.
I really didn't.
Certainly my family they were
extremely supportive in terms
of what I wanted to do, but they
weren't in a position to
offer advice as to what it meant
to be a scientist, what
it might mean to be a
professor one day.
I just was having a lot
of fun studying
physics, doing physics.
I was doing pretty well, so I
had the opportunity to go to
graduate school.
It just seemed like the
obvious next step.
I wish I could say I thought
more deeply about it than
that, but I did not.
INTERVIEWER: You were 22?
REDWINE: Exactly.
INTERVIEWER: Why did you
pick Northwestern?
REDWINE: Well, they
accepted me.
Not every place did.
And they also offered a nice
scholarship, I visited and I
like the area, I liked
the university.
It seemed like a good fit.
INTERVIEWER: While you were
in school were there any
particular mentors or
influential professors besides
the course in high school?
REDWINE: I think the one to
point out, and it's fairly
obvious, is my PhD adviser
at Northwestern.
He was certainly extremely
supportive in a variety of
ways, not just intellectually.
He is a pretty savvy guy.
He's still fortunately alive
and we're in contact.
He's retired now, but
he was a great help.
He really was, not just
on the physics side.
He taught me a lot about what
I might expect in the
profession, for example.
INTERVIEWER: So how did you wind
up doing postdoc work at
Los Alamos?
REDWINE: So I got my PhD in
experimental nuclear physics.
At that time, this was 1973,
there was a brand new
accelerator at Los Alamos
which was really
just turning on.
I'll get back to that
in a moment.
But in our field, we really
depend on these large
accelerators to provide
new capabilities, new
opportunities to study things
that weren't available before.
So it's a really exciting time
when a major new capability
becomes available.
My timing, I was extremely
fortunate.
I finished my PhD just when this
new accelerator was about
to turn on.
So to me it was just a
terrific opportunity.
The best I could imagine.
So I jumped at the opportunity
to go to Los Alamos.
The accelerator was called
the Los Alamos
Meson Physics Facility.
We use acronyms all the
time so it was LAMPF.
I arrived in August, 1973.
I can't tell you the exact date,
but I remember it was a
Sunday evening.
And the first pions, which were
particles I used for a
number of years, were produced
by the accelerator on Monday
and I was there.
So the next few years
were very exciting.
INTERVIEWER: And then you wound
up going to Switzerland.
How did that happen?
REDWINE: That's an interesting
story.
Again I think I was
very lucky.
So one of the characteristics
of LAMPF, this accelerator,
was that it produced many more
protons than any other
accelerator had produced
before, so lots of
power in the beam.
And power in the beam raises
radioactivity issues.
Protons in particular produce
a significant amount of
radioactivity when they hit
anything, basically.
So people knew this from the
beginning, and the plan was to
run the accelerator for the
first year or so at reduced
current so that a lot of
measurements of radioactivity
in the area could be made.
Because people have to work
nearby in shielded areas.
And after those measurements
were completed, then the final
shielding was to be put in place
before the beam current
went up to its maximum value.
So that in fact happened.
But they found after they made
the measurement for the first
year or so while we were doing
experiments with reduced
current, that they actually had
a more extensive shielding
job than they thought
they did.
And so they were going to be
shut down for, they thought a
year, it turned out to
be about 16 months.
And so I had come to know a lot
of scientists there, and
at the time Switzerland was
building a similar but
complementary accelerator.
That was a year or two or so
after the accelerator in Los
Alamos was turning on.
And some of my colleagues who
were about the same age, and
were postdocs in Switzerland
were going back.
One of them said, look we have
a position in my group at the
University of Bern, would you
like to come for a year?
And so it sounded like a great
opportunity scientifically and
personally, and so I actually
went to the director of the
lab at Los Alamos and explained
the situation.
He was a remarkable guy.
He actually died just
a few months ago.
His name was Louis Rosen.
And what I asked him was could
we sort of suspend my postdoc?
I'll be gone for a year and
then I'll come back.
He said, well I don't really
think there's a mechanism to
formally suspend it, but I
understand what you want to do
is reasonable.
So if you resign your postdoc
and then a year from now you
want to come back then we'll
have a handshake agreement.
We'll definitely hire you.
So that's exactly
what happened.
I was gone for a year and then
came back and rejoined my
postdoc at Los Alamos.
 
INTERVIEWER: Can you
talk anymore
about after you returned?
Is there anything more
to say about the work
you were doing there?
REDWINE: Well again, both of
these accelerators, both in
Switzerland--
by the way, the accelerator in
Switzerland is near Zurich
--and the one in Los Alamos,
they were high current proton
accelerators.
And they did complementary
things.
One was a circular machine, the
one in Switzerland, in Los
Alamos it was a linear
accelerator.
They had different timing
characteristics, and this can
be important to do one
experiment or another.
Most of what I did on both
accelerators, actually,
involved the use of particles
call pions and muons.
When a proton hits any material
actually, at least an
energetic proton, it
will produce pions.
Pions are short-lived particles
that were just
predicted by Yukawa many years
ago and found soon after.
In many ways, we think of them
as holding together the
protons and neutrons
in the nucleus.
So it was very important to
study the interactions of real
pions produced by accelerators
with nuclei.
The other thing pions do is when
they decay, they decay
into a muon and a neutrino.
We like to use both muons and
neutrinos to do different
experiments.
So in fact we use
those as well.
Again, because we had so many
more protons in the beam than
anybody had before, we had
more pions and muons and
neutrinos than anyone
had before as well.
It was just a wonderful time
doing experiments that just
hadn't been accessible
prior to that.
INTERVIEWER: Did you
worry at all about
your exposure to radiation?
REDWINE: Well, people have been
pretty careful since the
early days.
I would say when the particle
accelerators started in the
30s, 40s, and 50s probably the
field did not know quite as
much as they should have about
the effects of radiation.
In particular the chances
of developing
cancer down the road.
So I think looking back there
certainly were some
precautions that should have
been taken that people just
didn't know to take.
If you look at one of the early
accelerators at MIT, the
Van de Graaff accelerator that
was built by Robert Van de
Graaff and his colleagues in the
mid 20th century, many of
the people, not that there were
hundreds, but many of the
people who worked on that
accelerator did die of cancer
probably a bit prematurely.
There's little doubt
that contributed.
But that was in the
40s and 50s.
We know a lot more now,
and we certainly knew
a lot by the 70s.
So I made lots of precautions.
The amount of radiation
I was getting was
always being monitored.
The truth is flight attendants
and pilots who fly long
distance get more radiation
than we did then from the
accelerator.
People who are in airplanes a
lot get it from cosmic rays
because they are high
in the atmosphere.
 
INTERVIEWER: So how did you
wind up coming to MIT?
REDWINE: After I spent the year
in Switzerland, and I
actually went back for a few
months at a time to continue
doing experiments there, but
I didn't move back to
Switzerland, I was living
in Los Alamos.
I was happily doing experiments
there and I had,
by that time moved from a
postdoctoral position to a
regular staff position
at the laboratory.
And I must say I loved the
scientific opportunities and I
also liked the area.
Northern New Mexico is a
very special area in
a variety of ways.
So I very much enjoyed that.
But a number of the people who
were also doing experiments at
Los Alamos were from MIT.
So I got to know them.
And at some point probably
around 1978 they began
mentioning that they expected to
have a faculty position and
would I be interested?
So I did come and interview
and talked to people and
eventually received an offer.
I actually turned it down.
I mean, in writing
I turned it down.
And Herman Feshbach was head of
the physics department at
that time, and I had gotten to
know him because he was much
senior to me, but he was a
nuclear theorist and a very
approachable nuclear theorist
that I had met at various
conferences and at Los Alamos.
It was typical in those days
for senior scientists,
especially nuclear physicists,
to spend time at Los Alamos in
the summer.
Many of these people had been
there during the war and so
they really enjoyed coming back
for a month or two during
the summer.
So it was great.
You got to meet lots
of people.
Hans Bethe was an example of
someone who was there a lot.
Edward Teller, so for
a young person
it was really wonderful.
Anyway Herman Feshbach was at
Los Alamos fairly often and we
had got to know each other.
So when I turned it down, and
the reason I turned it down
was just that I was
having so much fun
doing what I was doing.
And I didn't think about
making a change.
But he called me up and
basically said, look we're not
going to let you get
away with this.
He actually raised the salary
offer, which wasn't the point
but it got my attention.
Which probably was what
he wanted to do.
And so I came back
to Cambridge and
made another visit.
Talked some more.
In the end, I think it what
tipped it was while I was
having a great time doing what I
was doing, Herman and others
got me to think 10 years
down the road, 20
years down the road.
And the opportunity to be in
a place like MIT where one
wouldn't be tied to a particular
laboratory or
accelerator in the long term
but would be able to adjust
the tools to the problem
one wanted to attack.
And also of course the
opportunity to work with
really terrific students,
both undergraduates
and graduate students.
I think what they got me to do
is think a bit more long term
and I realized this was
not an opportunity
I should turn down.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember
what your first impression was
when you got here of MIT, the
culture, students, faculty?
REDWINE: Well the first thing
I remember about the Boston
area was how cold it was.
This is not an exaggeration,
but I think the first two
weeks I was here in February
of 1979 were the coldest
two-week stretch that there's
been since I've moved here.
Which is more than
31 years ago.
You know what it's like.
I had rented an apartment
in Arlington.
I was doing a lot of driving
around to stores, buying stuff
and things like that.
The car never really getting
warm, et cetera.
I just froze to death.
But that was just unlucky.
I knew a number of people
at MIT already.
But of course it is a different
culture than a
national laboratory.
I think the most difficult
thing at first, the most
challenging thing at first,
was really the teaching.
Because I literally arrived on
a Sunday night and I started
to teach on Tuesday
or Wednesday.
 
I was teaching recitations,
8.02, and that meant I didn't
have to give full lectures, but
even so the first time you
teach it's a huge effort.
I'm glad I didn't know how
unprepared I was for it.
But I had some help and
I got through it.
And then it was a question of
learning a lot about the
overall culture.
One thing I was surprised and
actually pleased with was from
the beginning people did not
try to tell you what to do.
They really wanted to let
you find your own way.
They would answer questions if
you had them, but it was kind
of like being thrown into the
swimming pool without a float,
but probably it's a good way
to do it in the long run.
INTERVIEWER: Now you had the
experience of spending some
time at Cornell, you spent some
time at Northwestern.
Was there anything that struck
you when you got here that was
different about MIT?
Did it feel different
in any way?
REDWINE: I think it feels
different in a number of ways.
I mean there's no question.
As we all know and we're very
proud of, MIT focuses on
science and engineering.
It always has and presumably
it always will.
So while we certainly offer the
same range of intellectual
opportunities that any
university does, we focus on
science and engineering.
So it does feel different.
At Cornell, for example, I was
a physics major but I was
living with people who were
deathly afraid of physics.
 
It's just a different feeling.
Here I think for many
students, especially
undergraduates, they have come
from high schools where they
have felt very different and
perhaps unappreciated in terms
of their interests.
Because most kids in high school
are not interested in
science and math,
unfortunately.
And you see many students who
come here who clearly feel
like they're home.
They've reached home for the
first time in many cases.
So it's a real bonding
situation.
I think many of our students
immediately feel a very close
connection to the Institute
and to the rest of their
classmates.
I think that's a little
different than most places.
One thing that I've always found
here, and certainly as I
managed to get some
administrative roles--
 
you know, every large
organization has politics.
And universities certainly
have politics.
I think MIT has less than
comparable institutions.
Again it would be naive to say
there's none, but I think most
people here really are
interested in getting the job
done and not worrying too much
about who gets credit for it.
Again it's a question of degree,
but I think it's a
noticeable difference between
many other universities.
Certainly within the physics
department there's much less
infighting then I'd seen even
as a graduate student at
Northwestern.
Not that I was on the inside,
but you could tell that there
was a lot going on there.
INTERVIEWER: So I'd like to talk
a little bit about your
particular areas of interest
an expertise.
Maybe you could describe the
work that you've done or are
doing and talk a little
bit about why you've
picked these areas.
 
The first one I have on my
list is the intermediate
energy nuclear physics.
REDWINE: Yes, that's a pretty
broad category.
That really does cover
a lot of ground.
So let me talk a bit about the
parts of it that I've done.
So traditional nuclear
physics--
I think the right way to put
it is the study of the
structure of nuclei.
That took place over a number
of decades and ultimately a
couple of models emerged that
have been quite successful in
terms of describing the
properties of nuclei.
One is the so-called shell
model, which is in some ways
analogous to the model of
electrons in an atom.
But in the case of the nucleus
it's the protons and neutrons
that make up the nucleus.
That was pretty well developed
and understood in most details
by the time I was in
graduate school.
Another model which is in many
ways complementary, they're
not exclusive, is the so-called
collective model.
Where instead of viewing
protons and neutrons as
individual particles in a
potential, it was more that
they made up a fluid in the
nucleus where you had
collective motion.
Again that was developed, pretty
well developed by the
time I was in graduate school.
And so I think in some ways to
many of us, obviously not all,
but to many of us the main
issues in the study of sort of
heavy nuclei were fairly well
settled by the time I really
began to be a leader
in the field.
And that's a good thing.
That's not to say there aren't
still some issues
being looked at.
I mean the one thing one
continues to hear about is the
study of super heavy nuclei.
Trying to discover one
additional heavy nucleus.
And a lot of good people spend
a lot of time on that.
I personally don't find it that
interesting, because I
think whether that particular
nucleus is slightly bound or
slightly unbound isn't
going to change our
picture very much.
So by the time I came along,
accelerators like Los Alamos
had been built, not to do
traditional nuclear physics,
but to really go beyond that.
And in particular to study the
interactions of small numbers
of particles.
Protons and neutrons.
And the theory that had emerged
by that time, or was
emerging at that time, is called
quantum chromodynamics.
And quantum chromodynamics is
basically studying what makes
up protons and neutrons.
Not the interactions between
protons and neutrons.
And we believe we know now from
quantum chromodynamics
and lots of experiments, that
what makes up protons and
neutrons are quarks.
And the quarks interact
by exchanging gluons.
And so a lot of what we've done
in the last few decades
is to try to elucidate the
detailed structure of protons
and neutrons in terms of
quantum chromodynamics.
And it's been quite interesting,
in fact.
At the beginning we thought that
probably the proton, for
example, is a pretty
simple object.
It contains two up quarks and a
down quark, and a few gluons
running around.
And it turns out that this
picture, an experimental
picture, was developed primarily
by Jerry Friedman,
Henry Kendall from MIT and Dick
Taylor from Stanford, and
they won the Nobel
Prize for this.
And certainly the
picture is true.
There are those quarks there.
But we now know from other
experiments that in addition
to that there are a lot of
quark-antiquark pairs, and
many more gluons than we
originally thought that make
up the protons.
So it's these details,
structures, of protons and
neutrons that I've spent
much of my career since
coming to MIT on.
 
INTERVIEWER: Can you articulate
what it is that
keeps you interested?
 
REDWINE: I'm not
sure how many--
you know probably most
scientists would be a little
bit surprised at the question.
It's almost like, why wouldn't
I be interested?
Intellectually these are very
intriguing questions.
The opportunity to find out
something that nobody else has
known is I think a
really exciting
motivation for any scientist.
And we also know that history is
not just for show or money.
That if we continue to push
these technical boundaries
that lots of good things turn
up that benefit society.
You know certainly, as we'll
probably talk about later, one
of the projects, the lab I'm
involved in now is pushing
this medical physics project
for cancer therapy.
And these techniques came
out of nuclear physics.
So while most nuclear physicists
I think do not
think every day, well what
application might this have?
We are certainly always very
aware that one of the reasons
we're doing this, one of the
reasons-- probably the main
reason --that the government is
supporting this is because
history has shown that this will
provide big dividends in
a practical sense for society.
 
INTERVIEWER: Is there anything
else to say about the research
that you've done?
REDWINE: I've also, at different
times, done research
in the area of weak
interactions.
This of course is a long
story, but basically
neutrinos, which I mentioned
before, interact weekly with
the other particles.
The weak interaction is one of
the four fundamental forces we
believe exist in nature.
Four and only four.
And it turns out that in nuclear
physics certain types
of reactions can be very
powerful tools to study the
weak interaction.
And so like many scientists
I've done a variety of
experiments.
You asked why pick this as
opposed to that, and I think
in general there are
different reasons.
Some of them quite practical.
There certainly is no dearth of
interesting problems to study.
So what one looks at, in
addition to whether the
problem is interesting,
is do I have the
resources to do this?
Do I have a student who is
interested in doing it?
Is the appropriate
tool available?
Like the type of accelerator
that we want to use.
All of these questions come into
play at any given time.
These days, projects have
become pretty large.
Both in terms of number of
people in collaborations, size
of the equipment, the funding
that's needed to do it, and
the time scale.
So you have to pick pretty
carefully these days.
And one should, because I
would say that somebody
entering that field now will
probably do no more than five
experiments in his
or her career.
At least in my area that
would be true.
And that certainly was not
the case when I started.
We could do an experiment
every year or two.
INTERVIEWER: And why
has that changed?
REDWINE: Just that to do, to
study the science we want to
study, we have to really use
large pieces of equipment.
Which of necessity involve lots
of money, lots of people
to build, run it, et cetera.
And a lot more time
to get it done.
So it's driven by the times.
But it's a fact.
 
INTERVIEWER: Can you talk a
little bit about the Bates
Linear Accelerator Center?
REDWINE: The Bates Linear
Accelerator Center actually
came on in a time scale sort of
the same as the accelerator
in Los Alamos.
A couple of years later.
And so I was well aware of it.
I did not visit until 1978,
but I collaborated with a
number of people in Los
Alamos who also did
experiments at Bates.
The accelerator is an electron
accelerator.
It's also a medium energy
accelerator.
And it was really designed
primarily for very high
resolution.
And the idea that was used to
get better resolution than
other people had been able to
before that is called energy
loss spectrometry.
It was actually developed by
Stan Kowalski and Bill
Bertozzi at MIT.
 
So Bates was able to do
experiments that no one else
had been able to do before.
It wasn't at that time the
sort of experiment I was
doing, but I was well
aware that this
unique capability existed.
And when I started talking in
1978 to the people at MIT
about the possibility of coming
as a faculty member, it
was clear that one of the
reasons they were interested
in me was they wanted to broaden
their scope in the
field by the sort of experiments
that I was doing
at Los Alamos.
By no means did they expect that
I would drop everything
at Los Alamos and only
work at Bates.
On the other hand, one of the
attractions for me was the
opportunity to broaden my scope
by getting involved in
experiments with the electron
accelerator at Bates.
Which I did.
So through the 80s in
particular, I did probably
half my work at Los Alamos.
Doing a lot of commuting.
Which isn't easy.
Two airplane rides and
a two hour drive.
But I got used to it.
But also doing experiments
at Bates.
And one of the things we did
was not just use the energy
law spectrometry, but also do
photo pion experiments.
Again this is the same particle
I'd been using at Los
Alamos, but doing complementary
experiments at Bates.
And I really liked
working at Bates.
I did from the beginning.
The people deserve--
well, a lot of people deserve
credit for it, but the
founders were really Peter Demos
and Bill Turchinetz, who
ran it from the beginning.
And also people like Phil
Sargent, who was responsible
for the accelerator
complex there.
And they were extremely
welcoming to not just me but
lots of other people
coming in.
It was a great place for
students in fact.
They got a wide range
of experience in
hardware and software.
INTERVIEWER: And you were also
working at a lab in Hamburg?
REDWINE: OK, this came
a bit later.
The involvement in Hamburg
started around 1990.
This actually coincided with the
arrival at MIT of Richard
Milner, one of my colleagues
now, and soon after he arrived
at MIT he initiated an
experiment with others at the
DESY laboratory.
DESY stands for Deutsches
Electronen and SYnchotron.
It's a German electron
synchotron.
 
This particular experiment,
which went by the acronym of
HERMES, also was aimed at
using the particular
characteristics of the electron
beams in Hamburg to
study the structure
of protons.
Again we've been doing this for
awhile now using different
complementary probes.
And Richard ended up spending
a lot more time in Hamburg
than I did, but I would come and
go and that's a very nice
laboratory.
It has a huge amount of
technical support, something
which has become more
difficult in the US.
 
INTERVIEWER: It sounds like a
lot of the work that you've
had has been in collaboration
with others.
Can you talk a little bit about
the collaboration that
takes place at MIT?
REDWINE: Well I think certainly
in the experiments
that we do again, because of
the scale, it's absolutely
necessary to collaborate.
And not just with MIT
colleagues, but with typically
colleagues now at many
other institutions.
The typical experiment for us
now might involve 200 people
from 15 institutions,
just roughly.
So collaboration becomes
absolutely key.
In my own research group at MIT,
and this is within the
Laboratory for Nuclear Science,
we have funding from
the Department of Energy for
a fairly large group doing
several different experiments
at once.
We have currently about six
faculty members, six or seven
postdocs, and about 15 graduate
students as well as a
number of UROP students,
undergraduates,
who work with us.
Now we're not all
doing the same
experiment at the same time.
We typically are involved in
several different experiments,
and not everybody is involved
in every experiment.
But what we do try to do is to
use the size and flexibility
of the group so that we can
really be leaders in the
projects that we're
involved in.
It's unlikely that just one or
two people would get involved.
If we're going to get involved
in a project, we like for 10
people to get involved
so we can really play
a leadership role.
So the collaboration
is absolutely key.
And certainly the local group,
I've mentioned some of the
names already.
We're very close and we
do collaborate very
strongly I would say.
INTERVIEWER: What do you
see as the benefits of
collaboration?
The value of it?
REDWINE: Well, I think the
simple value, the first thing
is that we wouldn't be able to
do these projects if we didn't
collaborate.
They're just not of a scale that
one person or even one or
two people could really
be very effective.
 
It's just a fact of life.
But also you always learn things
from other people about
science and about other
human characteristics.
And so I certainly
have enjoyed it.
I think in general these
collaborations are real
meritocracies, at least the
way they are run at MIT.
That is a young person if he or
she shows great merit and
ability can get promoted very
quickly in the collaboration.
I should also say, and this is
sometimes not appreciated, but
you know different scientific
areas can be very different.
If you look at the typical
biology lab run by a faculty
member now, this could
involve 20-25 people.
But for the most part, those
individuals are working alone
on their own projects.
Now they have group discussions,
this sort of
thing, and they know what each
other is doing, but they're
working on their own project.
And that's the way it should be
in biology and chemistry.
But in physics, at least in
high energy and nuclear
physics and space physics as
well, the structure is much
more vertical.
Of necessity.
And so if you're working within
that structure, you may
work closely with a small group
of people but what you
do gets fed in and goes
up, et cetera.
And so it's actually pretty easy
to see who's really doing
well and who's not.
So we try very hard to promote
and recognize--
for our own good as well as
theirs --the young people who
are doing well.
 
INTERVIEWER: Maybe this
is a good time
to talk about teaching.
 
How does that fit in
with your research?
What's your attitude about it?
What's it like teaching
at MIT?
 
REDWINE: First of all, as I
mentioned before one of the
attractions to come to MIT was
the opportunity to teach.
If I didn't want to teach, I
would have stayed at the
national laboratory.
So I came with the idea that
this really is an important
part of my life.
And is going to be an important
part of my life.
And I'm very happy to say
that has been the case.
I never lost that attitude.
As you probably well know, we
do evaluate our faculty
members pretty strongly,
especially in
the first few years.
And so the question always comes
up, how important is
teaching compared to research?
And I think there have been some
changes over the last 30
some years since
I've been here.
I did sometimes when I first
got here get advice, well
meaning advice from some senior
faculty as to, you know
you really shouldn't spend much
time on teaching because
research matters so much more.
Not everybody said that.
And I didn't take that advice
because it didn't
sound right to me.
It didn't sound like what
I wanted to do.
So one has to find a balance.
But I've always taken the
attitude that teaching is
very, very important.
I think now it has
evolved a bit.
It's still not as important as
research in evaluating faculty
for tenure, but it is
very important.
I would say from my years on
Academic Council the way I
would describe it is, if
someone's up for tenure and is
about to win the Nobel Prize or
seems a good bet for it, it
probably doesn't matter whether
their teaching is of
high quality or not.
The person is going
to get tenure.
If the person is a terrific
teacher but the research case
isn't close, then the person
is not going to get tenure.
Of course the real issues
are the ones that
aren't so one sided.
And so I think the right way to
put it, and there are many
people like this, if the
research case is solid.
Very, very good.
You know maybe not off-scale,
but a good
excellent research case.
And if the person is a
fine teacher, he or
she will get tenure.
And if the person is not a fine
teacher, he or she won't.
So it really does matter.
I still, once in awhile, hear
junior faculty not necessarily
in physics, but in many
departments, who don't seem to
understand the importance
of teaching.
And I always try to tell
them, you know
you're making a mistake.
You may be getting the wrong
advice, or out of date advice.
But for me from the beginning
this was one of the reasons I
came, so of course it
mattered to me.
INTERVIEWER: What do you get
out of it personally?
REDWINE: Well certainly the
opportunity to interact with
and hopefully help
young people get
excited about science.
That's very satisfying.
I give my last class this
afternoon, in 802 in fact, and
so we'll end with a
bang so to speak.
But also you always
learn something.
I mean even though I've taught
electricity and magnetism
many, many times, I always
learn something.
So that's exciting as well.
It's a very satisfying
thing to do as long
as you do it well.
I think if you don't do it well
it probably isn't very
satisfying.
 
INTERVIEWER: You've done some
work developing a treatment
for cancer with protons.
 
Can you tell me a little bit
about how that developed and
how it's going?
REDWINE: Okay, so the idea of
using protons for cancer
therapy has been around 30-40
years I would say.
And the idea is based on the
following feature of charged
particles like protons.
So typically cancer therapy
has been with photons.
Either gamma rays or x-rays from
an electron accelerator.
And if one aims gamma rays or
x rays at a tumor, you can
certainly aim them very well
and hit the tumor, but you
also are going through
tissue on the way in
and on the way out.
And that tissue gets
damaged as well.
One way to minimize that problem
is to basically aim
from different directions.
So you always hit the tumor,
but you're not always going
through the same good tissue
that you would
prefer not to damage.
This is an especially important
problem for tumors
in regions where you really want
to minimize damage to the
surrounding good tissue.
The classic example being
brain tumors.
So this problem has been
known for a long time.
And certainly damage to
good tissue causes
a problem for patients.
It limits the dose one can give
to the tumor, et cetera.
So the idea of using charged
particles like protons-- and
protons are not the only charged
particles that are
used, but they're the most
common --is that if you aim a
beam of protons into the body,
and if you arrange the energy
so the protons slow down and
stop right in the region of
the tumor, it turns out they
give most of their energy up
in the last few millimeters
that they travel.
And so if you aim correctly,
and you adjust the energy
correctly, then you can really
deliver that dose
right at the tumor.
And you minimize the dose to the
good tissue on the way in.
So that's the idea.
And there are now five machines
in the United States,
a few in Europe, that provide
protons for cancer therapy.
One such machine is at Mass
General Hospital.
And we have some colleagues from
MIT who used to work at
MIT who are there now.
Why are there not more than five
because there's a waiting
list for people to get therapy
on these machines?
And the answer is that they're
very big and expensive.
 
Many of them are machines that
were taken over, that used to
be used for high-energy or
nuclear physics that they now
use for cancer therapy.
But they typically could cost
the hospital $200 million
dollars of capital investment to
establish such a facility.
And that's just beyond the means
of all but a relatively
few large hospitals, such
as Mass General.
So many people around the world,
not just in the US,
have recognized this problem and
are trying to find ways to
make these machines smaller
and cheaper.
And the collaboration we're
involved with which is a
collaboration with a Texas
company called ProTom.
Basically, the Texas company
owns the rights to a Russian
machine that was produced
at Protvino, which is a
high-energy laboratory
south of Moscow.
And the accelerator is compact,
certainly should be
much cheaper than the typical
accelerator, but it needs to
be made acceptable to the Food
and Drug Administration before
it could be licensed to treat
patients in the United States.
So we brought the machine from
Russia and we have a lot of
really good Russian
collaborators on this and
we're basically characterizing
it and putting in a control
system that will pass the safety
standards of the USFDA
guidelines.
And so that's the process
that's going on now.
Frankly a lot of people in
the laboratory are very
excited about it.
Because it offers an interesting
technical project.
But people like to
think they're
doing good for society.
And if this thing really works,
and it's still an if,
and if you could have 50-100
of these machines in the
United States and not just
five, it would make a big
difference in cancer therapy.
 
INTERVIEWER: How far along are
you on the path to getting
this approved?
Are you five years away,
are you 15 years--
REDWINE: The goal
is two years.
It's an aggressive goal,
but that's the goal.
Two years from now.
So that's not so long.
 
There are a number of hospitals
who are already
providing funding in
the expectation
that this will happen.
 
INTERVIEWER: Are there other
particular challenges in your
field that interest you?
Like the next 10-15 years?
REDWINE: Like I said before,
there's never a dearth of
interesting things to do.
Sure, I wish I could be around
forever to do these things.
I'm working on experiment
now which is
a little bit different.
Looking for what's called
an electric dipole
moment of the neutron.
This is something we teach our
students about, electric
dipole moments, in 8.02.
In the last couple of years I've
talked a bit about this
experiment to the students
as well.
Because there are very stringent
limits currently.
By experiments over 50 years
looking for the electric
dipole moment of the neutron.
It's been an interesting problem
for a long time.
The current techniques, at least
the basic idea, were
pioneered by Ed Purcell
and Norman Ramsey at
Harvard in the 1950s.
And the reason we're interested
in this is, if the
neutron has an electric dipole
moment, then it's actually an
example of time reversal
violation.
So that basically the physical
processes, the physics would
look different if you
run time backwards
as opposed to forward.
Now there are some
examples known.
Very rare examples of time
reversal violation, and they
are built into the Standard
Model of particle and nuclear
physics that is often
referred to.
But the type of time reversal
violation that would be
represented by a neutron
electric dipole moment is much
larger and would involve
extensions to
the Standard Model.
Which lots of people are looking
for in many ways.
For example, the Large Hadron
Collider in Geneva is looking
for extensions to the
Standard Model.
This is a lower energy
experiment that's
complementary.
This is a terrific experiment in
terms of the science, it's
a very challenging technical
experiment where a lot of hard
things have to work
at the same time.
And in an integrated fashion.
So that's another project.
 
INTERVIEWER: When you think
about the research you've done
over the last few decades, are
there specific contributions
that you are most proud of?
REDWINE: Well I have tended
to be someone who doesn't
specialize in just one part of
an experiment, but try to
really be useful in many
parts of an experiment.
And again, these are within
large collaborations.
 
I think certainly in my younger
days when I spent more
time actually at the experiment
and less time doing
administration, what I was known
for actually was that
somehow things always worked
when I was there.
I'm not sure whether that was
a coincidence or not.
But if the electronics was
messed up and nobody can
figure out why the computer was
crashing, I was usually
the one who was able
to get it through.
So again, I enjoyed that.
I think my collaborators
did, too.
INTERVIEWER: Like
a lucky charm?
REDWINE: Yeah maybe
that's all it was.
 
INTERVIEWER: You spent some time
at Princeton and Rutgers.
I'm interested to know what it
is about spending time at
another university that
is of value to you.
What do you bring back to MIT?
REDWINE: So I was on sabbatical
during that year.
I spent about half that time
at Rutgers, about half the
time at Princeton.
And I think in many ways it
was a classic sabbatical.
I actually was overdue for it.
 
It's a chance to get away.
To think, to recharge a bit.
And also to think about
different things.
To interact with different
colleagues.
I had also planned to get
a long way toward
writing a book that year.
My first son was born right
at the beginning of it.
And the son got more attention
than the book
did, but that's okay.
INTERVIEWER: As it should be.
REDWINE: As it should be.
 
INTERVIEWER: So I'd like to talk
about your administrative
experiences.
What do you see as the pros and
cons of administration?
REDWINE: So first of all
I should say I got into
administration without
expecting to.
I came to MIT assuming that I
would basically do my career
as a typical faculty member,
doing research and teaching.
Of course that is what I did
for the first decade or so
after I came to MIT.
I never, to be honest, once
thought about any significant
administrative role.
In retrospect, I'm not
quite sure why I
didn't, but I didn't.
 
Around 1992, I guess it was,
the Laboratory for Nuclear
Science had had a director
for nine years or so.
These are typically two
or three-year terms.
It turned out that most people
in the laboratory--
the previous director
was a theorist.
--Felt that the next one should
be an experimentalist.
Not that the previous director
had done anything wrong, but
everybody has strengths
and weaknesses.
They thought it was time to
emphasize some of the aspects
an experimentalist
might do better.
It also turned out at that time,
1992, without going into
details, this was a time when
the superconducting
supercollider was having a lot
of difficulties: political,
financial, et cetera.
The project ended up
being closed about
a year or two later.
But there was more than one MIT
group involved heavily,
high-energy groups, with the
superconducting supercollider.
And there was actually strife,
serious strife, between the
two MIT groups, two high-energy
experimental MIT groups.
Because of that, it really
wasn't practical to have the
new director be from
experimental high-energy physics.
So all of this narrowed
down very quickly.
And I didn't see it coming until
right at the end where
basically the choices
for a new director
were relatively few.
It actually only struck me about
three days before I was
offered the job.
So it happened pretty quickly
from my point of view.
The person who offered me the
position as LNS director was
Bob Birgeneau, who was the dean
of science at that time.
He's now chancellor
of UC Berkeley.
We talked about it a lot.
He knew I had no experience in
administration, and I'm sure
he didn't know exactly how
I was going to do.
But that's often the case at
MIT, and I'm sure at other
universities.
Many of our lab directors and
department heads have had
limited experience at
administration.
Some of them do very well,
some do less well, but at
least you find out
at that level.
By the time you appoint a dean,
you usually are picking
from a group of people who
have proven that this is
something they like to do
and can be effective at.
At any rate, it was interesting
to me that rather
quickly after I started I found
out I actually liked it.
Not that I went home and said,
God this is a great job.
But I found out that I was
thinking about different
issues, I was talking
to different people.
Probably I had not realized
that perhaps I had
become a bit stale.
I needed a new challenge, a
different set of issues and
problems to think about.
So for me it actually turned
out really well.
It opened my eyes and I decided
fairly quickly that I
was not going to stay doing the
same thing for too long
the rest of my career.
While it didn't mean I wanted to
do administration the rest
of my career, I wanted to make
a change once in a while.
It worked out fine.
The only problem with being LNS
director was that the kids
were still pretty young and LNS
has activities literally
all over the world.
So I was spending a lot of time
traveling and that was a
bit hard on the family.
INTERVIEWER: So you spent
about eight years at the
laboratory, and then you moved
directly to become dean for
undergraduate education?
REDWINE: That's right.
As you said, it had been eight
years, and I had planned on
doing nine years.
Again it's a three-year
term, typically
renewed once or twice.
I had made it clear to the
dean of science after six
years that I would do it again
for three more years, but not
after that.
And then there was a search
for a new dean for
undergraduate education.
This was to succeed Rosalind
Williams, who had been dean
for a number of years.
Again I wasn't thinking
about that at all.
The first inkling I had was when
a couple of members from
the search committee
came to talk to me.
One of whom I knew reasonably
well, the other I
didn't know at all.
And I was really surprised.
Because, as I hope it's clear,
I really care a lot about
teaching and education.
But as LNS director I had not
spent much time thinking about
undergraduate education
for some years.
I had taught a seminar once in
awhile just because I wanted
to keep my hand in and
not be completely
divorced from teaching.
But it was very hard to do
research, administration at
that level, and full
time teaching.
So I had not been doing that.
I mentioned before the issue
about the travel associated
with being LNS director.
And that was getting to be
a problem for the family.
And I'll be honest, one of the
reasons I started to think
seriously about it
was at least the
dean job was in Cambridge.
It wasn't traveling.
But then when I talked more to
people, including Chuck Vest
and Bob Brown, who were
president and provost then,
and Larry Bacow, who
was chancellor--
the more interesting
it sounded.
It really hit a lot of things
I cared a lot about from the
beginning of my career.
As I mentioned before, I had
already decided I didn't want
to do the same thing for too
long and this was a very
different thing.
So in the end I got more and
more excited about it and they
seemed to want me,
so I said yes.
INTERVIEWER: What was it
that interested you?
REDWINE: Well, I think first of
all the opportunity to have
an impact on MIT undergraduate
education.
Larry Bacow and I, in
particular, talked a lot about
specific things.
The Cambridge- MIT Institute
was coming up.
It was clear the dean's office
would play a big role in the
undergraduate exchange
program.
Alex and Brit D'Arbeloff had
donated a significant amount
of money for undergraduate
education, so there would be
resources to do it.
Over the years I had gotten to
know a number of faculty,
colleagues in different schools,
and one thing about
undergraduate education at MIT
is it really is centrally
oriented with the general
Institute requirements, the
part of that, et cetera.
I think more than many other
universities, we view it as an
institutional responsibility,
not just the responsibility of
one or two departments.
And that's attractive.
Because even though I wouldn't
be hiring and firing faculty,
obviously I think there's a
large bully pulpit for the
dean to have influence
over major issues in
undergraduate education.
INTERVIEWER: So can you
summarize what your
responsibilities were as dean?
REDWINE: There is a significant,
and this
continues to be the case with
Dan Hastings, my successor,
there is a significant
administrative responsibility
for the dean.
There are something like
12 offices that
report through the dean.
Including admissions, the
registrar's office, office of
minority education, student
support services--
I'm sorry, student financial
services.
Something on the order of 300
individuals in various offices
who report to the dean.
And that is a significant
part of the job.
Because you do have to make sure
the trains run on time.
Sometimes the trains need
software that needs to be
replaced, so there can be real
investments that need to be
made that you have to get
resources for as well.
In addition, of course, there
are endless committees that
one probably should
be involved with.
But again, the important thing
is crossing departmental
boundaries, crossing School
boundaries, trying to organize
from a central point of view
the best use of resources.
As I'm sure we'll talk more
about, Chuck Vest and I talked
a lot about a review of the
general Institute requirements
that we did indeed launch
after a couple of years.
After I had been dean for
a couple of years.
That process took a huge amount
of effort from me and a
lot of other people over
several years.
 
To be honest, the calendar
was just totally full.
 
I wouldn't say I wasn't allowed
to touch my own
calendar, but it didn't
make sense for me to
touch my own calendar.
Basically I had an assistant--
I don't think it was a very nice
job --but basically I had
to continually churn the
calendar because at any given
time it's full for the
next three months.
But of course you can't
not be flexible.
Things come up you
have to fit in.
So my assistant was always
churning the calendar trying
to fit things in.
It wasn't a particularly
nice job.
INTERVIEWER: So tell me more
about the task force and how
undergraduate education changed
from that study.
 
REDWINE: It's a long and
somewhat complicated story.
Again Chuck and I talked, and
others, but he really was very
interested in this project.
MIT had not really had a
significant change in the
structure of its general
Institute requirements since
the early 1950s.
It depends a little bit on how
one defines significant.
Certainly in the 60s we did make
some changes in the sense
that we went from two
years of physics
to one year of physics.
One year of chemistry to one
semester of chemistry.
We also added a biology
requirement
in the early 1990s.
So those were important
changes.
They weren't trivial by any
means, but the basic structure
had remained the same
for quite a while.
We just thought that it was
probably important to take a
look and see if this is
the best that MIT
can do at this point?
One of the main drivers was that
we realized the character
of our student body had
changed significantly.
In the 50s and 60s, basically
it was mostly white guys who
came here as undergraduates.
Obviously, and we're very happy
about this, we've become
much more diverse than that.
And we by any measure I've seen
have the most diverse
undergraduate student population
of any major
research university.
 
And before I leave that subject
the thing we're
especially proud of is that,
by any measure we know like
SATs, et cetera, the quality of
the students has just gone
up and up during that process
of increasing diversity and
we're extremely happy
about that.
One of the thoughts was, well
maybe we're teaching exactly
the right thing in the right
way, but maybe we're not given
that the students have changed
and the fields that they go
into have changed a lot.
That's really true.
And so we ought to take
a look at this.
And if the answer is we're doing
everything the way it
should be done, that's fine.
But if the answer is we should
change something then we
should be aware of that.
So that's really the
launch of it.
It was jointly sponsored by the
chair of the faculty and
the president's office.
We set up a task force, which
was chaired by Bob Silbey, who
was dean of science
at that time.
And it was in many ways
a remarkable process.
One of the things I cherish most
about my years as dean
was the opportunity to interact
with a number of
faculty from around
the Institute.
And students, and staff, and
others who really care about
education and who just put a
huge amount of effort into
trying to understand
the issues.
In the end the task force made
a number of recommendations.
I would say none of them
was apocalyptic.
We didn't find that
things were badly
broken by any means.
We did make some recommendations
that were
adopted by the faculty.
We came up with some
recommendations that were not
adopted by the faculty.
I think it has lead to some
significant change.
Probably most of all in the
School of Humanities, Arts,
and Social Sciences, the way
they structure their
requirements.
But it probably didn't change as
much as some people in the
task force would have liked.
Mostly in terms of introducing
more requirements or different
requirements in the science
and engineering area.
That's not to say that some of
those things aren't happening,
but they're not happening as
part of the General Institute
Requirements.
One way I like to look at it is
in several faculty meetings
and the discussions there, we
had about equal numbers of
people telling us, the task
force, that we were trying to
change things too much.
And we had about the same number
of people telling us we
weren't bold enough.
So probably we got
it about right.
INTERVIEWER: So what was
the nature of the
changes that were done?
 
REDWINE: Probably the major
change was in humanities,
arts, and social sciences.
There were several
issues there.
One of them was the impenetrable
aspect of this to
faculty and students.
Why do we have these
requirements, what's the
motivation, et cetera?
So I think the faculty there
and others really wanted to
simplify things.
To be very clear about
what it was.
And to define three areas in
particular of distribution:
humanities, arts, social
science, that students had to
take at least one subject
from each of those.
I think basically it is
simplifying and articulating
goals for the most part.
There also had been an issue in
practice that had developed
over many years which we really
wanted to address.
And was addressed.
Which is the situation where
students were too often
choosing a HASS subject based
on what fit their schedule
after they filled the things
in with science and
engineering.
As opposed to picking it because
they're interested in
it, or it made educational
sense, et cetera.
So we did some rearranging of
the schedule and schedule
constraints so as to free up
more time for the HASS
subjects in good parts
of the day.
And not relegate them to late
afternoon or evening, this
sort of thing.
And I think that really made
a lot of educational sense.
INTERVIEWER: With some years now
that have passed, do you
look at that as an important
change that the
Institute has made?
REDWINE: I think it's
an important change.
Again I don't think
it's apocalyptic.
I think to the outside world
it appeared to be a very
modest change.
Probably was to the
outside world.
I think in many ways the process
was important as well.
The process of getting a lot
of faculty and others from
around the Institute together
in the same room to talk
through educational issues.
Even if, in the end
the requirements
didn't change that much.
I think it was important
to have gone
through that process.
That has led to a number of
collaborations and followup
which will certainly
be important.
INTERVIEWER: Other
changes you mean?
REDWINE: Well, collaborations
like people from different
schools jointly teaching
classes.
I mean something that doesn't
necessarily appear as a
structural change, but is a good
educational development.
 
INTERVIEWER: So from those five
years that you were dean,
what are the things that you
feel best about when you look
back that you were able
to put into place?
 
REDWINE: Well, I think there
had been a lot of
reorganization in the dean's
office just prior to when I
became dean.
Roz Williams actually was
the dean of students and
undergraduate education.
Shortly before I became dean
as part of the final
discussions on this, but not all
of the discussion, it was
decided to split the two offices
into the office of the
dean for student life and the
office of the dean for
undergraduate education.
And so my portfolio was actually
significantly smaller
then Roz's which was
a good thing.
Because she really had
an impossible job.
There was some history as to why
it had developed that way,
including untimely
deaths of senior
administrators years before.
She really had signed on to
one job and within a few
months she had a much bigger
job than she'd expected.
I give her a lot of credit for
holding that together, but it
was clear that it was too big a
job and so they were split.
A lot of what I tried to do in
the first couple of years was
basically just to
solidify that.
At that point an awful lot of
people, staff in the offices,
were feeling pretty harassed.
You know, what are we doing?
Who am I working for?
How is this all going
to work out?
I just wanted to solidify it,
make sure people felt
comfortable, and then we
can build from there.
I was dean for five
and a half years.
I actually planned to be
dean for five years and
that was the term.
I should say that this
particular deanship typically
at MIT it's filled by someone
who we want the faculty to
view as one of them.
Not someone who has gone over
to the dark side never to
return, to be blunt.
And I really viewed
it that way.
I mean I kept up my research
to the extent possible.
I never expected to stay
longer than five years.
I wasn't necessarily trying
to get another
administrative position.
In fact I pushed headhunters
away all the time as I'm sure
that Dan Hastings
has to as well.
 
So I think that the first
couple of years were
solidifying things, and the last
three years were really
the task force.
And trying to take that really
hard look at undergraduate
education in all of its facets
and how we should be doing.
INTERVIEWER: And what is it
like trying to balance
research with being
an administrator?
REDWINE: Well, it's in
general very hard.
The calendar is indeed very
full, and it could be as full
as you want to let it go.
You have to fence off some time
if you're going to do
research at all.
I had an advantage
in many ways.
I've already mentioned that my
type of research involves
large groups, large
collaborations,
and large time scale.
This means that there are very
few, if any, people who are
absolutely critical.
There are other people who
can do it if you can't.
I was fortunate enough to have
an extremely good principal
research scientist, Doug Hasell,
who still works with
me, who, while I was dean, did a
lot of managing the group on
a day-to-day basis.
So I could cut back to 10 or
20 percent level and still
keep touch.
And be able then, at the end of
the five and a half years,
to ramp back up again.
Many faculty with different
types of research if you cut
back to 10 percent-20
percent, it's over.
You know you can't do it.
So I can't speak for how they
would balance such a thing.
But I just think it was
possible for me.
Not easy, but it was possible
for me and it may be
impossible for other
areas of research.
 
INTERVIEWER: So you've spoken
about the unsung heroes of
MIT, the ones in the
administrative and support
positions, and I wonder
if you'd talk a little
bit about them now.
REDWINE: So I actually
consider myself
very lucky in a way.
Because as a faculty member
doing these administrative
roles, I've had the opportunity
to get to know and
to work with a lot of these
staff members, the support
staff and administrative
staff.
And I think a lot of
faculty don't.
And probably because of that,
they don't necessarily
appreciate as much as they might
how much these people
really matter.
And how much they care
about MIT as well.
And that actually was one of the
aspects of being dean that
I enjoyed the most,
the opportunity to
work with these people.
I had an absolutely terrific
administrative group that
supported me directly.
Two people in particular, one
doing financials, the other
doing human resources.
One of them I inherited from Roz
Williams, and the other I
brought in from the Laboratory
for Nuclear Science after I
became dean.
And they were just terrific.
I remember when I was talking
to Dan Hastings when he was
succeeding me.
We talked about a lot of things,
as you might imagine.
I told him, by the way you're
inheriting the best
administrative team
at the Institute.
He looked at me, as you might
imagine, thinking
yeah well, we'll see.
I would have had the
same reaction.
Six months later we were talking
and he said, by the
way you were right about that
administrative team.
So that's gratifying as well.
But I think the important thing
is that there are just a
lot of people who are at MIT,
maybe they don't understand
the science in every detail, of
course none of us does, but
they can't really speak to
the science directly.
But they know that important
things are going on here in
research and in education.
They're very proud of that.
And they really want to do
their part and they do.
And they're just as dedicated
as the faculty are.
 
INTERVIEWER: What are your
thoughts about the Cambridge-
MIT Institute program?
REDWINE: Well I should in all
honestly say I really haven't
had much contact with it
in the last few years.
So what I will say is
a bit of history.
But I found that to be an
extremely good set of
opportunities for
our students.
And also a real educational
experience, not just for
students, but for us.
One of the problems we've had,
and I'm really talking here
primarily about the
student exchange.
There are other aspects to the
Institute but I was less
involved in those.
One of the issues we've had
for a long time and we
probably always will have
is the difficulty for
undergraduates studying science
and engineering to
have the opportunity
to study abroad.
I mean a significant study
abroad opportunity without
risking a delay in graduation.
Because the curriculum
is pretty full.
And if you can't match things
up pretty carefully, and you
know you can transfer a credit,
then you're going to
risk delaying graduation.
Many universities in the United
States, most of their
students will do a junior
year abroad.
Not all, but many
universities.
And until Cambridge we were
down around a few percent
level, typically.
So Cambridge was an opportunity
to see if we could
really make this work for a
larger number of students.
And the idea was that, because
a lot of resources were
involved, we could work
department by department to
understand how the curricula
between Cambridge and MIT in
different fields matched up or
didn't, and see if we could
tell students, okay if you go
and study abroad at Cambridge,
if you take these subjects, you
will be on track when you
come back to finish your
degree on time.
So it required a lot of work.
It wasn't just the dean's
office by any means.
We had to get faculty from many
different departments
involved in working with their
corresponding colleagues at
Cambridge to make it work.
But they really pitched in
and did a great job.
And I think it turned out to be
a wonderful opportunity for
many students.
I found that when I went abroad
as a postdoc that it
was life changing.
Not just professionally, but
personally, to realize fairly
early on that very intelligent,
well meaning
people can have very different
views on things depending upon
their background.
That's really what I
took away from it.
And I think our students are
taking that away as well.
I wish sometimes all of our
political leaders had that
opportunity.
 
INTERVIEWER: Now there's a whole
different conversation.
 
Let me ask one more question
before I move on.
 
You spoke about the change in
diversity you saw over the
years that you've been here.
Can you speak to the value of
that to the MIT community?
REDWINE: So one way to look at
it is when we make admissions
decisions, we first of all
define a group that we think
are academically qualified.
Which is a large group, a lot
larger than we can offer
admission to.
Which is unfortunate in
a way because we have
to make tough decisions.
 
But then we ask what
is this individual
going to bring to MIT?
And what is the individual
likely to take away?
And this has many dimensions.
 
We're not the first ones to
realize that bringing in a
diversity of backgrounds and
experience and taking away
that is important, not just
for the education of
individuals at MIT,
but also what
happens to them afterward.
It really matters whether our
students live next to someone
who has exactly their same
background or not.
It's educationally valid, even
if you're not even talking
about the classroom to
have that diversity.
I think many studies
have shown this.
I remember one of the issues I
dealt with when I was dean was
we ran two programs.
We still do.
One for high school students,
the MITES program, and another
for incoming freshmen called
Project Interphase.
And these are targeted
to minority students.
 
In the case of the high school
program, to get them
interested in science
and engineering.
Excited about it whether they
come to MIT or not.
In the case of Interphase,
it's to really smooth the
transition for students who may
need a smoother transition
to the big change to their
freshman year at MIT.
For years, not always every
year, but many years, these
programs were exclusively
minority.
We had a complaint filed.
We never found out who filed the
complaint, but it was with
the Department of Education
civil rights office, that we
were basically discriminating.
This was something that
I ended up spending
a lot of time on.
Chuck Vest spent a
lot of time on.
Jamie Lewis Keith, who was head
of the legal office at
that time spent a
lot of time on.
And I remember one meeting in
particular where we were
meeting with a representative
from the civil rights
division, who was actually
a very intelligent,
well-meaning person.
I think he was looking for
arguments as opposed to
telling us we were wrong.
He was saying, I can understand
why if you're
studying law, for example,
it is important to have a
diversity of backgrounds
and experience.
But if you're studying
chemistry,
why does that matter?
So I mean we talked
about that a lot.
I think the arguments are
actually very similar and
carry over to any sort
of life work.
That diversity brings different
ways of looking at
things and different
perspectives that can be
important educationally
as well as otherwise.
But it was an extremely
interesting time.
Jamie and I would go down to
Washington, we would meet with
them here, and in the end,
interestingly enough, they
dropped the complaint.
And nobody would have bet
on that, in fact.
It was still the Bush
White House.
They ended up dropping
the complaint.
 
INTERVIEWER: That's
probably something
to put on your resume.
 
In terms of publishing,
is that something
that's fun to do?
Is that tedious to do?
Is it just an offshoot
of research?
 
REDWINE: I would say at least
from what I do it is a natural
end game of research.
It's not difficult.
By the time you get to the point
of writing up results it
sort of comes out almost
easily at that point.
The really hard part is doing
experiments and interpreting
them, et cetera.
I should also say that MIT, and
I can only speak for MIT,
but we don't spend a lot of time
sitting around counting
publications when we're
evaluating people.
I mean, if someone never
publishes, that's not good.
Because you want to disseminate
your results and ideas.
But one really important
publication can be more
important than 20.
I know some institutions
do a lot of counting of
publications.
Typically we don't.
We're really looking
for quality.
Is the person changing the field
and leading the field?
I actually like writing
scientific papers.
I found out early on when I was
in high school that I'm
really bad at creative
writing.
And in those days, that's
all you did.
If you were in english class
it was creative writing.
What I found out later on was
I'm actually really good at
writing technical papers.
Things that just
describe facts.
No creative writing.
INTERVIEWER: I have a really
long list of awards you've
received and committees
you served on.
 
Is that recognition of
awards important?
Are some of them important?
Are some of them not
so important?
How do they fit in?
 
REDWINE: First of all you should
understand that in
these fields, like my field of
nuclear physics, I probably
know most of the people in the
United States and many
overseas who are really
active in the field.
So these are not tens of
thousands of people.
These are relatively
small fields.
And that's great, actually so I
think it's important in the
sense that it's real recognition
for your work, by
your colleagues, et cetera.
I think more importantly are the
committees in particular.
It's usually a lot of fun and
interesting to interact with
people from other institutions,
other issues.
One committee I'm on now, it's
a fairly recent one, is
something called the Physics
Policy Committee, which is
part of the American
Physical Society.
Basically we meet in Washington
every two or three
months to talk about issues
of funding for physics.
What we may do about it.
I spend time on Capitol Hill and
OSTP talking, representing
the community, et cetera.
This is actually pretty
interesting.
Believe me, talking to a
Congressional staffer is a
very different proposition than
talking to scientific
colleagues.
These people are usually
very smart.
They may be pretty young, but
they're usually very smart.
But they are completely
overloaded with things to do.
So to get their attention in
a way that is effective and
might stick is actually
a trick.
You have to figure out how
to make that connection.
And you usually have about three
minutes to do it before
they get turned off if the
connection hasn't been
made by that time.
INTERVIEWER: Three minutes
can be a long time
with a young audience.
 
Part of what you've done has
been serving on national
committees, too.
Has it been important to
you to be involved
in the public sector?
Or is it like a byproduct of the
other interests you have?
REDWINE: I think it's
a bit of each.
Over the years I think I have
some talents that can be
effective in that regard.
I think that's enjoyable
whenever you think you're
having some positive effect.
But I think initially it sort
of comes as a byproduct.
After you prove that you can do
good experiments, then they
begin to ask you to serve on
things like program advisory
committees that evaluate other
people proposing experiments.
And then if you actually
demonstrate that you can work
effectively on a committee with
people you don't know,
then they ask you to do
committees that maybe go
beyond science but start to
get in the public policy.
So it's a bit of a
gradual thing.
Before you know you're on
a lot of committees.
INTERVIEWER: So now that you've
been here for 31 years,
what keeps you at MIT?
 
REDWINE: I think there are
several answers or several
aspects to the answer of that.
I mentioned before that
headhunters do come.
Certainly when I was dean
I would get contact from
headhunters pretty often for
positions as provost or
president at different places.
And again I'm sure anyone
in that position would.
That wasn't unique to me.
And so most of the opportunities
were not
interesting right away.
But a few were.
So I actually had to go
through the process of
thinking about this seriously.
One thing that's important is
that I had children somewhat
later in life than
many people do.
I'm 62 now and I have two sons,
my younger one is 16.
So he's still a sophomore
in high school.
 
In my mid 50s, sort of the prime
time to be plucked away
for a significant administrative
role somewhere
else, the kids were
both still home.
I could see, quite directly
interacting with Chuck Vest
and Bob Brown, what it
would mean to be
president or provost.
I remember Chuck's last child
had just gone to college when
he became president of MIT.
So it was a good time for him.
I could not have done that.
I mean I really did
think through it.
Do I want to shut off
this opportunity?
And I decided in
the end I did.
The priorities of the family
were just too great.
And life's full of
compromises.
We all make them.
 
It was a specific decision, but
I think it was exactly the
right decision.
It was right for me, it was
right for the family.
I've never regretted it.
I feel very lucky.
Again, we all have to make
compromises and choices, but
I've surely been very lucky in
terms of the opportunities
that I've had and what
I've been able to do.
INTERVIEWER: I bet your family
is appreciative of as well.
REDWINE: I think so.
INTERVIEWER: I want to talk a
little bit about MIT as an
Institution.
What do you think makes
MIT unique?
 
REDWINE: Well, every place
is unique in its own way.
We have to be a little
careful about that.
I think there's a tendency
sometime for people at MIT to
think everything was
invented here or
should have been, anyway.
I've tried to resist that
over the years.
That said, I do think it's
a very special place.
No doubt about that.
I think good students attract
good faculty, and good faculty
attract good students.
We've gotten into a situation,
partly I think by good fortune
and timing after the
second world war,
where we've got both.
Believe me, many institutions
are trying to figure out how
to duplicate that.
I had a talk three weeks or so
ago with a visiting group from
the University of Barcelona
in Spain.
And this was exactly the
question they were asking.
They were interested in
significantly improving their
profile and abilities in this
area, and they were saying,
how do you do it?
It's not so easy.
There have been many
universities that have tried,
some have had some success.
But if you look at certainly in
my own field of physics, I
mean the top eight schools,
eight or 10 schools in the
United States in that area are
pretty much the same ones that
they were 30 years ago.
Obviously things don't
change quickly.
I do think excellent faculty
will attract excellent
students and vice versa.
And this is the key.
I think people here are
really dedicated to
getting the job done.
Getting good results.
We try to figure things out
and we try to get it done.
That's I think a goal
that's shared by
almost everyone at MIT.
So we should count ourselves
lucky because we have
certainly been lucky in terms
of the funding, massive
funding increase that occurred
after the second world war to
MIT and a few other places.
Because that really is
what got us going.
But we also should pay attention
to keeping it going.
It's a pretty special
situation.
I interact with colleagues all
the time in other places.
There are lots of good faculty
at many universities in the
United States.
But if you ask where the best
graduate students go, and to
some extent undergraduates,
it's to a relatively small
number of universities.
They would love to have
our students.
But they just can't figure out
how to take them away from us.
INTERVIEWER: It's interesting
the impact of reputation once
its established.
It cannot change when it ought
to, and when you want it to
change it's very difficult.
 
So over the years that you've
been here, are there
significant changes that you've
noticed in terms of
either students, faculty,
administration?
 
REDWINE: Well a couple of them
we've mentioned already.
Certainly the diversity of
especially the undergraduate
population is something we
can be very happy about.
Very proud of.
The same thing has not happened,
at least to that
extent, with the graduate
population.
And certainly not with
the faculty.
As many people have said, we
need to pay as much attention
to it as we can.
We can't solve the problem
immediately.
It's not just our problem.
But we have to do everything
we can to do that.
I do think we've had a
significant improvement in not
just numbers but environment
for women faculty
since I've been here.
Again I give Bob Birgeneau and
Chuck Vest a lot of credit for
leading that effort.
That really made a
big difference.
Not just at MIT,
but elsewhere.
I'm always happy to hear young
male faculty worrying about
the same work/family issues
that young female faculty
worry about.
And in general we're
seeing that.
We really are.
That's the way it should be.
I haven't mentioned it, but my
wife is actually a faculty
member here as well.
And I've seen her go through
it directly.
Having children while
she was still
getting tenure, et cetera.
It is not easy.
To the extent we can help that,
and I think we do for
the most part, that is exactly
what we should be doing.
I mentioned the increased
importance of teaching.
And again that's not to say
it has the same weight as
research; it doesn't.
It probably never will and
probably never should for us
to maintain the quality in
research that we need to.
But it absolutely matters,
and I think that's
pretty well known now.
Much more so than when
I came 30 years ago.
As far as other changes are
concerned, for staff, again I
think it would be great
to get more diversity.
Especially in terms of
under-represented
minorities on staff.
There have been some
improvements in that
direction, but not as much as
a lot of us would like.
And it's interesting, I think
the last two presidents have
come from outside MIT.
Something that was not typical
of the Institute.
And that has been very positive
in many ways, but
it's also been challenging.
Especially for those
individuals.
Because if you don't
know a place
there's a learning curve.
INTERVIEWER: How about the
School of Science?
What would you say are
its major strengths?
 
REDWINE: I think probably the
insistence on very high
standards in terms of hiring
and promoting faculty.
That is probably
the main role.
 
It's not just the School
of Science.
This is certainly true in the
other schools as well.
Those discussions within the
school council are really
critical in terms of making
sure the right
decisions are made.
Standards are maintained.
So it doesn't become that one
department is significantly
different than another
department.
So the school councils
are really
important in that regard.
Otherwise, I mean to be honest,
in day-to-day stuff,
it's far more the department
that affects
you than the School.
INTERVIEWER: So let's
talk about the
Department of Physics.
So if there are a handful of
schools with prominent physics
departments, what's good
about the one at MIT?
REDWINE: Certainly one feature
at MIT is we are a relatively
large department.
Not the largest in the country,
but one of the
largest in the country.
And that means that basically
you can be really good at
essentially all areas
of physics.
Smaller departments, of
necessity, have to specialize.
Individual areas, but
not all areas.
And that's what you see.
For example, Princeton is a
much smaller department.
They're absolutely excellent,
no question, but they're not
excellent in as many
areas as MIT is.
I think this is good, size is
helpful in terms of just being
exposed to colleagues who do
a lot of different things.
It also I think is in many
ways good for graduate
students coming in because
they have a big choice.
And if they want to shift
emphasis they usually have the
opportunity to do that.
But of course it has to be
organized and administered in
a sensible way.
We actually have four
separate divisions.
That's kind of invisible to
people outside the department,
but those divisions have a major
administrative role in
terms of hiring and promoting
faculty, and organizing
teaching for example.
 
INTERVIEWER: When you think
about MIT nationally or
globally, does it have a
particular role to play?
REDWINE: I think so.
I'm always amazed at
the reputation.
It just opens doors when you
say you're from MIT.
A lot of this has to do with the
quality, a lot of it has
to do with the success we have
had in rolling out, to the
commercial world, technical
developments.
And again, many universities are
trying to figure out how
to do that.
You know, people should not
underestimate the effect that
has on the way we're viewed
around the world.
I think OpenCourseWare
was a wonderful idea.
This was something also
happened, I had just become
dean and got involved in
these discussions.
I'll never forget the meeting.
It was not the full Academic
Council but a subset.
There had been a project
involving a consulting firm,
basically to try to figure out
whether it made sense for MIT
to go big time into
online education.
And there were people who were
arguing strongly to do so.
What we were trying to
understand is what would the
business model be?
Would it make sense?
It was interesting, the answer
came back basically it doesn't
make sense.
We can't figure out a
business model that
actually would work.
It turns out they
were dead right.
At that time there were a number
of other universities,
Columbia was prominent, who
had started large online
education programs expecting
to get rich.
None of them got rich.
So that was the right answer.
And then somebody in the room
said, well why don't we give
it away then?
And it was amazing.
The idea caught on
very quickly.
Chuck loved it.
Of course we had to figure out
how to get the resources to
give this away, but it turns
out a number of foundations
were really interested
in this early on.
So I think that has been
a great thing and
continues to be.
INTERVIEWER: Any hopes
and dreams for MIT
that you want to share?
 
REDWINE: No.
 
I'm very confident MIT will
continue to flourish.
I really am.
INTERVIEWER: So we have
a few minutes left.
Is there anything we haven't
talked about that--
REDWINE: You didn't
talk about 9/11.
INTERVIEWER: Tell
me about 9/11.
REDWINE: That was an
interesting time.
Not just at MIT.
So I was dean during
that time.
And I had been dean a
little over a year.
 
And it turns out that morning
I was on the phone with my
sister who lives
in New Jersey.
One of our cousins, her husband
had passed away the
previous day and they live in
Alabama and we were talking
about how we were going to get
there for the funeral.
We coordinate things
typically.
We fly to Atlanta and
then rent a car.
Of course we ended up not
being able to get there.
But at any rate, this news
started coming in about planes
hitting the towers.
I thought at first it must be
a small plane off course.
And then you realize there's
a lot more going on here.
So actually at that time,
Chuck was on vacation in
western Canada, and Bob Brown
was in California.
And, as you may remember,
telephones weren't working too
well that day either because
they were just overloaded.
So it was decided that basically
the Academic Council
would get together and at least
try to figure out where
we are and what this
means to us.
There were people talking
about canceling classes,
sending the students
home, send the
staff home, et cetera.
And so we got together to talk
about this, and in the end I
think we made the
right decisions.
We did do some canceling of
classes that afternoon just so
we could have a community
gathering in Killian Court.
But I argued strongly not to
close all the offices.
Because our students are here.
They had nowhere to go.
And so we couldn't just
abandon them.
And so we kept some people,
some went home if they had
issues with children.
But for the most part we kept
the staff here and the offices
open, and I think that was
exactly the right thing to do.
But I do remember it was decided
to get the Academic
Council and people around
together in the Simonides
conference room, which is
across the hall from the
president and provost's
office.
I was heading up there and my
office was on the Infinite
Corridor in Building 4.
And I walked out of the office,
heading up to the
Simonides room, and I ran right
into Alex D'Arbeloff the
chair of the Corporation,
and he had actually
been teaching a class.
He was teaching for the Sloan
School at that time.
And just chatting with him, he
said where are you going?
I realized he knew nothing at
all about the crisis because
he had been unable
to see the news.
So I tried to explain to him
as quickly as I could
as we walked up.
I said look, you should come
with me to this meeting.
But also I tried to explain
what was happening.
But it was hard to explain.
We didn't really know
the extent of it.
In the Simonides room there's
a television.
And there were people there
already gathering and of
course they had the television
on the news.
And I happened to be sitting
with the television behind me
and Alex was facing me so he's
looking at the television.
He's still trying to understand
the magnitude of
this thing when they replayed
the film of one of the planes
hitting the tower.
And I remember the
look on his face.
His jaw just dropped.
Any of us would have been in
the same situation had we
known so little about
it at it that point.
It was really a very
tough time.
In the end I actually ended up
spending the night at MIT
because the campus police wanted
some senior officer on
site because they weren't
guaranteed to be
able to reach anyone.
We still couldn't talk to Chuck
or Bob very much so I
actually had a sleeping
bag and I slept on
the floor of my office.
And they knew where they
could find me.
Fortunately nothing happened.
There were rumors that MIT was
going to be a target like some
other places were going to be a
target, but fortunately none
of that happened.
It was a hard time.
We all knew that things
had changed forever,
that was for sure.
I was awfully glad when Chuck
and Bob managed to get back.
INTERVIEWER: I bet.
Anything else we haven't
talked about?
REDWINE: Since I mentioned Alex
D'Arbeloff, I really do
want to say what a
transformative gift the
D'Arbeloff fund was
for education.
Alex and Brit deserve a huge
amount of credit for that.
I remember talking with Alex
about the question of whether
it should be an endowed fund
or an expendable fund.
The difference is the endowed
funds you basically can spend
only at a rate that keeps the
buying power the same.
So typically 5 percent a year we
would be able to take out.
And he said, we want to
make a difference.
So if you can spend it well
and a few years from now
there's nothing left but a lot
of good has been done, that's
what we want.
So that's what happened.
INTERVIEWER: That must have been
a treat to be able to do.
REDWINE: It was.
He was a wonderful man.
 
