Raphael M. Littauer
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Raphael Max Littauer (November 28, 1925 – October 19, 2009) was an American physicist who was a longtime Professor of Physics and Nuclear Studies at
Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
. He was involved in the development of several
particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Small accelerators are used for fundamental ...
s there, in particular the 10 GeV electron synchrotron at the Wilson Synchrotron Lab in the late 1960s, where he devised a distributed, multiplexed control system for it, and the
Cornell Electron Storage Ring The Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR, pronounced Julius Caesar, Caesar) is a particle accelerator operated by Cornell University and located 40 feet beneath a football field on their Ithaca, New York, Ithaca campus. The accelerator has contribu ...
(CESR) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, where his scheme to create pretzel-shaped orbits to increase the number of particle bunches in circulation contributed significantly to CESR having the highest
luminosity Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic energy per unit time, and is synonymous with the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object. In astronomy, luminosity is the total amount of electroma ...
of any accelerator of its era. Littauer was also known for his teaching, including the design, implementation, and installation of one of the earliest and most successful classroom response systems. An active opponent of the Vietnam War, he led a group at Cornell that published a well-regarded study on the nature and effects of the U.S. air attacks in Southeast Asia. In 1991 he became a Fellow of the
American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...
and in 1995 he received the Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators.


Early life and education

Littauer was born in
Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
, Germany, on November 28, 1925. In March 1939 he emigrated to the United Kingdom, six months before the outbreak of World War II. According to what his daughter later related, he was part of the ''
Kindertransport The ''Kindertransport'' (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, total ...
'' and was taken in by a family in England. He attended the
University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
beginning in 1943. He first received an M.A. degree, that being awarded in 1946. He then earned a Ph.D. from Christ's College at Cambridge in 1950, the title of his dissertation being ''Levels in Light Elements''. During this time he worked as an assistant in the famed
Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...
.


Marriage and family

Littauer married Salome Alexandra Kroch in 1950. Also born in Leipzig, she and her two sisters had endured a hazardous journey through Europe in order to survive the Holocaust. Littauer left England for the United States in 1950, becoming a research associate at
Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
. Together he and his wife had two children. The couple lived in
Ithaca, New York Ithaca () is a city in and the county seat of Tompkins County, New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York (state), New York, Ithaca is the largest community in the Ithaca metrop ...
. Alexandra Littauer taught French in the younger grades of the
Ithaca City School District The Ithaca City School District (ICSD) is a public school district centered in Ithaca, Caroline, Danby, and Enfield. Approximately 600 teachers work in the district, along with 300 other professional staff members, 275 paraprofessionals, ...
and later became an instructor in French at Cornell. Raphael Littauer became a
United States citizen Citizenship of the United States is a legal status that entails Americans with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by the Constitu ...
in 1956.


Career as physicist


Accelerators and positions

Littauer's arrival at Cornell in 1950 was in order to do work on an electron accelerator at Cornell's Laboratory for Nuclear Studies, which had been founded after World War II by scientists returning to academic life following their efforts at Los Alamos. The director of that laboratory,
Robert R. Wilson Robert Rathbun Wilson (March 4, 1914 – January 16, 2000) was an American physicist known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, as a sculptor, and as an architect of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), w ...
, was instrumental in bringing Littauer there. At the time Cornell had a 300 MeV electron synchrotron, which was followed in 1952 by a new 1.3 GeV synchrotron. In 1954, Littauer departed Cornell to work on a synchrotron at the
General Electric Research Laboratory General Electric Research Laboratory was the first industrial research facility in the United States. Established in 1900, the lab was home to the early technological breakthroughs of General Electric and created a research and development environ ...
in
Schenectady, New York Schenectady ( ) is a City (New York), city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the United States Census 2020, 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-most populo ...
. But in 1955, Littauer returned to Cornell for good, being appointed a member of the faculty as a Research Associate Professor of Physics. Once again, Wilson played a role in his return. In 1963, Littauer was named a research professor. Then in 1965, he became a full professor, being named a professor of Physics and Nuclear Studies. Littauer was awarded two postdoctoral fellowships from the
National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
. The second of these, in 1968, involved work at the
Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati The INFN National Laboratory of Frascati (LNF) was founded in 1954 with the objective of furthering particle physics research, and more specifically to host the 1.1 GeV electrosynchrotron, the first accelerator ever built in Italy. The La ...
in Italy. There he spent a semester working on the laboratory's new 1.5 GeV electron-positron
colliding beam accelerator In physics, a collision is any event in which two or more bodies exert forces on each other in a relatively short time. Although the most common use of the word ''collision'' refers to incidents in which two or more objects collide with great for ...
. Later in 1968, Cornell's Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory saw the dedication of its new 10 GeV
electron synchrotron A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator, descended from the cyclotron, in which the accelerating particle beam travels around a fixed closed-loop path. The strength of the magnetic field which bends the particle beam i ...
, the largest and most powerful such one in the world, with Littauer highlighted as one of the people who helped develop it. The ring was built underneath
Schoellkopf Field Schoellkopf Field is a 21,500-capacity stadium at Cornell University's Ithaca campus that opened in 1915 and is used for the Cornell Big Red football, sprint football and lacrosse teams. It is located just north of Cascadilla Creek on the sout ...
and other athletic facilities on campus. Among Littauer's responsibilities were monitoring and adjusting the steering coils located around the synchrotron's ring . As part of his work, Littauer created a time-sharing, distributed, multiplex control system for the synchrotron that helped reduce both the initial and ongoing costs of the system. The
Cornell Electron Storage Ring The Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR, pronounced Julius Caesar, Caesar) is a particle accelerator operated by Cornell University and located 40 feet beneath a football field on their Ithaca, New York, Ithaca campus. The accelerator has contribu ...
(CESR) came into operation at the end of 1970s but initially featured disappointing
luminosity Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic energy per unit time, and is synonymous with the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object. In astronomy, luminosity is the total amount of electroma ...
, so over the next several years several improvements to it were made. One of them, put into place in 1983, was Littauer's development of a scheme for so-called "pretzel orbits" (a name he came up with). This involved having multiple bunches of particles in a
storage ring A storage ring is a type of circular particle accelerator in which a continuous or pulsed particle beam may be kept circulating, typically for many hours. Storage of a particular particle depends upon the mass, momentum, and usually the charge o ...
, but introducing
electrostatic separator An electrostatic separator is a device for separating particles by mass in a low energy charged beam. An example is the electrostatic precipitator used in coal-fired power plants to treat exhaust gas, removing small particles that cause air poll ...
s at key places in the ring such that two counter-circulating beams are displaced in eccentric and opposite directions, thereby limiting the number of collisions in a rotation and increasing the number of bunches that can be in circulation. With this among other improvements, throughout the 1990s, CESR had the highest luminosity of any colliding-beam system in the world and became valuable as a
synchrotron light source A synchrotron light source is a source of electromagnetic radiation (EM) usually produced by a storage ring, for scientific and technical purposes. First observed in synchrotrons, synchrotron light is now produced by storage rings and othe ...
The pretzel orbits scheme was subsequently embraced and successfully incorporated into the
Tevatron The Tevatron was a circular particle accelerator (active until 2011) in the United States, at the Fermilab, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (called ''Fermilab''), east of Batavia, Illinois, and was the highest energy particle collider unt ...
particle accelerator at
Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle phys ...
and the
Large Electron–Positron Collider The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed. It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland. LEP collided electr ...
at
CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...
. Also "American Physical Society beams recognition", p. 14. Overall, the physicist Maury Tigner has described Littauer as someone who was "very much interested in accelerators and was ... a pioneering controls designer and builder." In 1974, Littauer was elected chair of Cornell's department of physics, a department which held 47 faculty members at the time. He remained in that position for three years.


Research

In addition to his work on accelerator construction and operation, Littauer was the author or co-author of a number of articles in physics journals. In 1958, he was one of several groups that published results regarding nucleon resonances, finding and establishing the properties of the state latter known as N(1520).


Teaching

Littauer had a longtime interest in how the teaching of physics, and teaching in general, could be improved. This included giving out lecture notes that emphasized scientific understanding coming out of mathematical formulae and experiments that could be performed in class. Having seen that large
lecture hall A lecture hall or lecture theatre is a large room used for lectures, typically at a college or university. Unlike flexible lecture rooms and classrooms with capacities normally below one hundred, the capacity of lecture halls can sometimes be m ...
courses such as those given at Cornell tended to result in disengaged or absent students, during 1971 Littauer designed, built, and introduced an electronic classroom response system into his teaching of physics. It allowed the instructor to pose multiple-choice questions to the students, from which they would push buttons at their seats to anonymously register what they thought the answer was, giving the instructor immediate feedback as to students' level of understanding of the material being presented. The system was meant for large lecture classes and was permanently installed, with the location being the Rockefeller B room in the campus's Rockefeller Hall. As such, it was the first such response system at Cornell, and one of the first such anywhere in the country. In Fall 1972, Littauer published an account of the system, including photographs of the apparatus as it appeared both to students in their seats and to the teacher at the lectern, in the journal ''Educational Technology''. He continued to use it in all his classes. More so than with most such early efforts, Littauer's system was successful, with one later analysis attributing that success to the fact that the designer of the system was also the teacher who used it. At pp. 79–80, 85. Although other
audience response Audience Response is a type of interaction associated with the use of Audience Response systems to facilitate interaction between a presenter and their audience. Systems for co-located audiences combine wireless hardware with presentation softwar ...
technologies emerged over time and were utilized at Cornell, Littauer's system was still in place and in use within Rockefeller B some three decades later.


Anti-war activities

In 1962, Littauer was one of two dozen Cornell professors that signed onto a Committee for Peaceful Alternatives, an entity that was looking to run a candidate for
New York's 33rd congressional district New York's 33rd congressional district was a congressional district for the United States House of Representatives in New York (state), New York. It was eliminated as a result of the 1990 United States census, 1990 census. It was last represent ...
in the
1962 United States House of Representatives elections The 1962 United States House of Representatives elections was an election for the United States House of Representatives on November 6, 1962, to elect members to serve in the 88th United States Congress. They occurred in the middle of President of ...
who would have better ideas for finding a solution to the
nuclear arms race The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this same period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuc ...
. Littauer also became a national council member of the
Federation of American Scientists The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is an American nonprofit global policy think tank with the stated intent of using science and scientific analysis to attempt to make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1945 by a group of scient ...
. With
opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1965 with demonstrations against the escalating role of the United States in the Vietnam War, United States in the war. Over the next several years, these demonstrations grew ...
being a major issue on American campuses, Littauer became one of the more outspoken members of the faculty in this regard. This including him being one of a number of physics faculty who stated they would not engage in teaching activities during the
Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam was a massive demonstration and teach-in across the United States against the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. It took place on October 15, 1969, followed a month later, on November 15, 196 ...
in October 1969 and instead encouraged others to join them. Starting in May 1971, Littauer headed the Air War Study Group, which was sponsored by Cornell's Center for International Studies and consisted of a 19-person group of professors and students who investigated the nature of the air attacks being conducted by the
United States in the Vietnam War The involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War began in the 1950s and greatly escalated in 1965 until its withdrawal in 1973. The U.S. military presence in Vietnam peaked in April 1969, with 543,000 military personnel stationed in th ...
. They used only unclassified sources and discussions; as part of this Littauer made trips to Washington to interview participants. The report from the five-month study was distributed privately in November 1971; it established that despite the ongoing
Vietnamization Vietnamization was a failed foreign policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, a ...
of the ground effort, the United States was still maintaining the air war with large numbers of munitions being delivered, akin to 1967 levels, but that these attacks were ineffective at halting Communist operations in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The report was written in a matter-of-fact way; while it was motivated by opposition to the war, Littauer said the study group was trying to be scholarly and fair in their work. Also carried by other papers, see for instance The study was subsequently revised and updated and published as ''The Air War in Indochina'' in August 1972 by the
Beacon Press Beacon Press is an American left-wing non-profit book publisher. Founded in 1854 by the American Unitarian Association, it is currently a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association. It is known for publishing authors such as Jame ...
. By now the study group comprised some 21 scholars encompassing a number of different academic fields. Littauer was joined as editor of the volume by
Norman Uphoff Norman Uphoff (born 1940) is an American social scientist now involved with agroecology serving as a Professor of Government and International Agriculture at Cornell University. He is the acting director of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs ...
, a young professor of government at Cornell. A lengthy, front-page assessment of the volume in a positive vein appeared in the ''
New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
''. In a September 1972
op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted a ...
run by the Los Angeles Times News Service, Littauer decried the air war as "remote, inefficient and indiscriminate", especially in the use of aerial gunships,
cluster bomb A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects smaller submunitions. Commonly, this is a cluster bomb that ejects explosive bomblets that are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehi ...
s,
napalm Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical (usually gasoline or diesel fuel). The name is a portmanteau of two of the constituents of the original thickening and gelling agents: coprecipitated aluminium ...
, and B-52 Arc Light saturation bombing. Littauer did acknowledge the advent of "smart"
laser-guided bomb A laser-guided bomb (LGB) is a guided bomb that uses semi-active laser guidance to strike a designated target with greater accuracy than an unguided bomb. First developed by the United States during the Vietnam War, laser-guided bombs quickly pro ...
s as an improvement, but noted that their existence was not lowering the amount of conventional bombing being done. Decades later, the study was still being used as a source for analyses of the U.S. air effort.See for instance and


Later years and honors

In 1991, Littauer was elected a Fellow of the
American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of ...
. The citation for the achievement read, "For outstanding contributions to accelerator control systems, architecture and electronics, and in the use of feedback to cure instabilities." In 1995, Littauer was awarded the Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators. The citation on the prize, also from the American Physical Society, read, "For his many contributions to accelerator technology, in particular his innovative conception and implementation of a mechanism to provide multifold increases in the luminosity of single-ring colliding beam facilities by the establishment of separated orbits of opposing, manу-bunch, particle beams. ..the concept has been adopted, equally successfully, at the other high energy physics facilities of the world." Littauer became a professor emeritus of Physics, but remained active in efforts to improve undergraduate education at Cornell. As part of this he maintained an interest in networked classroom technology. Littauer died on October 19, 2009, at his home in
Trumansburg, New York Trumansburg is a Administrative divisions of New York#Village, village in Tompkins County, New York, Tompkins County, New York (state), New York, United States. The population was 1,797 at the 2010 census. The name incorporates a misspelling of th ...
. Also availabl
here
His wife Alexandra had died four years earlier.


Selected publications

* ''Accelerators: Machines of Nuclear Physics'' (Anchor Books, 1960) o-author with Robert R. Wilson* ''Pulse Electronics'' (McGraw-Hill, 1965) *
The Air War in Indochina
' (Beacon Press, 1972) o-editor with Norman Uphoff


References


External links


Cornell Interactives: Physics tutorials provided by Raphael Littauer, Professor Emeritus of Physics, and Cornell University

''Three Sisters: A True Holocaust Story of Love Luck and Survival'', biographical account of S. Alexandra Littauer during World War II
{{DEFAULTSORT:Littauer, Raphael 1925 births 2009 deaths People from Leipzig Kindertransport refugees Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom Alumni of the University of Cambridge Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge German emigrants to the United States Cornell University faculty Scientists from Ithaca, New York General Electric employees 20th-century American physicists Particle physicists American anti–Vietnam War activists Fellows of the American Physical Society People from Trumansburg, New York