Interview with Cornell H. Mayer on 21 June 1978
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The interview listed below was either transcribed as part of Sullivan's research for his book, Cosmic Noise: A History of Early Radio Astronomy (Cambridge University Press, 2009) or was transcribed in the NRAO Archives by Sierra Smith in 2012-2013. The transcription may have been read and edited for clarity by Sullivan, and may have also been read and edited by the interviewee. Any notes added in the reading/editing process by Sullivan, the interviewee, or others who read the transcript have been included in brackets. If the interview was transcribed for Sullivan, the original typescript of the interview is available in the NRAO Archives. Sullivan's notes about each interview are available on the individual interviewee's Web page. During processing, full names of institutions and people were added in brackets and if especially long the interview was split into parts reflecting the sides of the original audio cassette tapes. We are grateful for the 2011 Herbert C. Pollock Award from Dudley Observatory which funded digitization of the original cassette tapes, and for a 2012 grant from American Institute of Physics, Center for the History of Physics, which funded the work of posting these interviews to the Web.
Please bear in mind that: 1) This material is a transcript of the spoken word rather than a literary product; 2) An interview must be read with the awareness that different people's memories about an event will often differ, and that memories can change with time for many reasons including subsequent experiences, interactions with others, and one's feelings about an event.
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Transcribed for Sullivan by Pamela M. Jernegan.
Sullivan
Ok, this is part two with an almost seven year intermission with Connie Mayer on 21 June ’78 at NRL [Naval Research Laboratory]. Just throwing in some odd questions, after listening to the first interview- first of all, could we just pick up on the story about when Charles Townes came to use the NRL dish [Sullivan: in early 1969]? Just how did that come about? Was it a matter that he'd done it ten years before and why not do it again? What are your recollections of that?
Mayer
No, I don't think so. He called on the phone and said he had some stuff that looked pretty exciting and he thought that the further investigation of it could benefit greatly from using our dish because of its larger collecting area, better resolution. So he posed that we sort of throw something together and put it on our antenna. As far as I remember, we put together the RF part. His people threw together some crude [?]
Sullivan
Right.
Mayer
We started it off with the integration noise, backed up the [?] for hydrogen line stuff.
Sullivan
So it was pretty straight forward?
Mayer
It wasn't exactly straight forward and it was all done in a very short time scale. I think he called in November or something like, maybe December. We were on the air in early January, I think.
Sullivan
That's right. January 10th or 15th or something like that. What I meant was that the arrangements were pretty straight forward in terms of there was no problem with an outsider using the NRL antenna or anything like that?
Mayer
No and it was quite collaborative.
Sullivan
Right, it wasn’t just an outside... Okay. Now to go back to some things that we didn't touch on before. Can you tell me a little bit about your educational background and what sort of problems you worked on before you came in contact with radio astronomy?
Mayer
Yes. I had a B.S. in electrical engineering, and I was working on, well, first off, radar installation and testing and that sort of thing.
Sullivan
Here at NRL?
Mayer
Yes. Here and at field sites during World War II. And when not doing that we were working on mainly antenna design and tests here at the lab.
Sullivan
And was this pretty much all microwaves?
Mayer
Microwaves, yes. We were part of the Centimeter Wave Research Branch, which was under [John P.] Hagen. And pretty much the whole branch was working on centimeter wavelength radar type problems.
Sullivan
What other people that later became involved in radio astronomy besides you and Hagen here at NRL? Do you remember?
Mayer
Oh, yeah. [Fred T.] Haddock, of course. And originally Tim Decker, but he didn't last in radio astronomy. There were two or three other people who were in and out, and, of course, [Edward F.] McClain got in a little later.
Sullivan
Was he there during the war?
Mayer
Yeah. That's probably all that I can think of.
Sullivan
[Russell M.] Sloanaker?
Mayer
No, he was not part of our group then. Oh, Scotty McEwan and [J. E.] Gibson were there during the war years. And there was a fellow by the name of Ed Sees, who worked very closely with did a lot of work with Hagen like on checking out the 50 foot antenna and that sort of thing.
Sullivan
I see. How do you spell that name?
Mayer
S-E-E-S.
Sullivan
Were you in close contact with the MIT Radiation Lab, which must have been doing similar work in many respects, or did they do some task and you did others - how did that work?
Mayer
We weren't in close contact except in some problems. You mean during the war?
Sullivan
Yes, right.
Mayer
Yes, some problems, there was some contact and some commonality of work, but not really that close a liaison.
Sullivan
Was there a coordination at the higher levels of these efforts or was one pretty much the military doing its thing and the other civilian?
Mayer
That I don't know; I wasn't at the higher levels. I assume there was some, but I don't know.
Sullivan
Okay. So you were trained then as an electrical engineer. What did you do after the war then?
Mayer
Well, it was only about a year or two, maybe three, between the time the war was over and the time when we started in radio astronomy seriously. And during that time we finished up some of these antenna projects and did some further work on microwave waveguide test equipments and techniques.
Sullivan
This decision to get involved in radio astronomy, at least to some extent after the war, pretty much something Hagen decided to do or did everyone sit down...
Mayer
No, as best I can remember, it was at least primarily Hagen's interest and he was specifically interested in the Sun. And most of the original work was on the Sun.
Sullivan
Right. We discussed that, and I have interviewed Hagen two years ago, but I was just wondering about the initial decision. Also, along this line certainly as you worked in radio astronomy in the beginning, you wouldn't call yourself a radio astronomer, What would you call yourself in the late ‘40s as you were working on these?
Mayer
Electronic engineer.
Sullivan
And electronic engineer? And what about through the ‘50s? If someone asked you at a cocktail party what are you, what would you have said?
Mayer
That’s always a difficult question even now, but probably would have said radio astronomer by then.
Sullivan
So sometime during that period you began to think of yourself more as working on astronomy and using radio techniques rather than being an engineer who was using engineering on this problem and then later would switch to another problem - you were pretty much committed to astronomy.
Mayer
Oh yes. By that time we were getting familiar with radio astronomy. In fact, probably beginning about 1948 I was committed.
Sullivan
What was the Navy's interest in supporting this branch through this period, 1948-1960 say?
Mayer
Well, I guess you'd call it applications type interest, was mainly navigation, the possibility of using radio sources. And beyond that, the Navy at that time set up ONR [Office of Naval Research] to carry on the coordination of the scientific work and there was a big interest in basic research.
Sullivan
Right, and they funded a lot of universities, of course, in the late ‘50s and so forth. I talked to [Sullivan: Arnold] Shostak about a lot of that. But did you, as you actually worked on things like Venus and solar eclipses, really think of yourself as helping the Navy with navigation or was this really just something to keep them happy?
Mayer
Well, that's two different questions.
Sullivan
Okay.
Mayer
There always was work directed toward navigation applications.
Sullivan
I see, a part of the branch, you mean?
Mayer
Yes, a part of the effort. And there were these other efforts like the eclipses and later on, other things, which didn't have any very direct bearing on it- some indirect perhaps, you had to know about the Sun.
Sullivan
So it was more a matter of the Navy...
Mayer
There was some general interest in the brightness distribution of the Sun and even more in the brightness distribution of the Moon- or maybe not even more- because they were being considered as a navigation system.
Sullivan
So it was really more a matter of the Navy being willing to sponsor the whole branch knowing that a minority was working on navigation directly; the others were doing basic research which might someday have some application?
Mayer
Yes, but of course it was a process of evolution. In the era of 1948 to probably 1953, there wasn't the whole branch - it was only two or three or four people and some of them not full-time.
Sullivan
Ah, yes. Then how did it change after that?
Mayer
Sometime around 1954 timescale the decision was made to commit a branch to radio astronomy and...
End of Tape 106A
Sullivan Tape 106B
Sullivan
Continuing with Connie Mayer on 21 June ’78.
Mayer
But there were other things going on in the branch. Doppler navigator [?] and I forget what else.
Sullivan
This was when McClain came on, I believe?
Mayer
Yes. Then there was a whole group of five or ten people who were working on other projects having to do with microwave techniques. And at that time they split off and went into a different branch of the lab. What was left was dedicated to radio astronomy.
Sullivan
So what was the rough growth then? You say there were three or four full-time equivalents before ‘53 or ‘54 - how many once the branch was established, would you say?
Mayer
I don't remember, probably fifteen. Maybe twenty.
Sullivan
And that's the level it stayed at?
Mayer
No, then it grew. It grew to a maximum of about 25 to 28. And then it started to decline.
Sullivan
When was that peak reached?
Mayer
Oh in the ‘60s, I guess.
Sullivan
Mid ‘60s?
Mayer
Earlier, maybe.
Sullivan
Okay.
Mayer
And it stayed at about that level up until about the later part of the ‘60s. Part of the reason for that increase was the added on Radar Astronomy.
Sullivan
Oh, yes, that's right.
Mayer
Then in the late sixties, that was added off- the project was terminated.
Sullivan
Right. And then also...
Mayer
Still at that time, it was all the people in the Radio Astronomy Branch but some of the people weren’t then working on radio or radar astronomy. They were working on other things.
Sullivan
Okay. Well, while we're talking about these general questions, do you have any thoughts on what were the ingredients that contributed to the success of the Radio Astronomy Branch, particularly in the ‘50s? Well, that's the basic question.
Mayer
Two strong factors were the 50 foot dish and the technical capability. We could put together decent receivers at centimeter wavelengths and we had a good, large, centimeter wavelength antenna. So the two things together provided the facilities for doing radio astronomy in a range when nobody else had the facilities.
Sullivan
Right. You had very little competition, actually, on many of those projects.
Mayer
Yes, for quite some time. A few years at least. And I guess in addition to that, we had good people - they weren't trained in astronomy, but they were trained in either physics or electronics, and it's fairly easy to pick up basic astronomy.
Sullivan
Would another thing perhaps be just the whole supportive atmosphere? I mean, you had the Navy willing to keep you funded at a reasonably high level, of course.
Mayer
Yes, not necessarily the high level, but sustained funding was definitely a plus- the fact that you didn't have to worry about whether you were going to have any money next year.
Sullivan
Next year's grant, that's right. Along this same line, do you have any thoughts on - it's somewhat puzzling to me why U.S. radio astronomy had a very, slow start relative to British and the Australians - do you have any thoughts on how that came about?
Mayer
Well, yes, I guess more thoughts on how it came about than why. I don't know why exactly. I think one factor was particularly in places like Australia and possibly the Netherlands- they were small countries and they could only devote a certain amount of effort to science so they had to pick something where they could have a significant impact on the field so they wouldn't go into high energy physics. And radio astronomy was a good thing and they had the same kind of situation we had at NRL where they had people who were trained radar and had surplus equipment which could be used for radio astronomy. And the only other basic difference I can think of is that for one reason or another because of equipment and funding limitations, primarily I guess, they thought in terms of interferometers and got all these ingenious schemes for doing things with interferometers.
Sullivan
Right. And that's certainly...
Mayer
A lot of the impact they had particularly in England and Australia, because they were using interferometer-type techniques.
Sullivan
Yes, that's right.
Mayer
And they isolated out discrete sources and compositions on them and so forth.
Sullivan
Right. So you're saying basically that the people, for instance, in the Radiation Lab, many of which did go into nuclear physics, had many more options in that they could go into big science because more funds were available, whereas in the smaller countries you had to pick more carefully.v
Mayer
Yes, and it might even have been a national type thing, where the country went into big things and the people along with it.
Sullivan
U.S. science tended to think it was best to think biggest and best, to think along those lines. NRL, of course, was one exception to this, having gotten started very early, although it was a very small effort until the mid ‘50s, as you just said. The other exceptions I guess, Cornell had a small program. Was there anyone else besides Grote Reber?
Mayer
Well, the Bureau of Standards had a small effort for a long time.
Sullivan
Right, which was Reber.
Mayer
Later Reber, yes. For a while, not for a long time. But that was only I think at most three or four or five people at any one time.
Sullivan
And then Harvard starting in 1952 or 1953. In the late ‘40s, I think there was really only those three groups. NBS with Reber, and Cornell and here.
Mayer
You may be right - I can't think of any others.
Sullivan
Do you remember any effort at that time to reason that, "Well, the U.S. should be in that and this is another reason to keep the radio astronomy effort going at NRL." In other words, were nationalistic considerations ever part of this?
Mayer
Well, I think those of us who were in it thought that way, but I'm not sure it was a national idea.
Sullivan
Yes.
Mayer
Probably still isn't.
Sullivan
Okay. Now to a few specific projects. The eclipse expeditions, which before we talked about the scientific results of them and some of the troubles you had. I was wondering if you could relate some of the details of, in particular, this one off the coast of Brazil, I believe, on a Navy destroyer and so forth. Just some of the recollections you have of getting those things together and carrying them out.
Mayer
Yes, that one I didn't participate directly.
Sullivan
Oh, you didn't go on that one? I see.
Mayer
No, that was shortly after I got involved at all. How I got involved was Hagen had been using a straight, total power receiver, and lots of problems with gain variations. He told me to see if I couldn't do something about that, so I tried with a crude DC amplifier and things that were sitting around and I told him, "I didn't think I could do anything with it and we’d have to go to the Dicke radiometer." Well, he had assigned another guy who was in the branch temporarily - it wasn't temporarily, but to he didn't stay long- to put together a Dicke system, but he hadn't gotten very far. So I took that over and put together a Dicke radiometer along with Ken Becker. And I guess- I don't remember for sure- we put two of them together: one of them was taken on this trip to the eclipse, and the other one we put in the 10 foot dish on the roof and looked at the Sun on the date of the eclipse from here.
Sullivan
[?]
Mayer
I don't think so.
Sullivan
I guess that's right.
Mayer
Just to see what the Sun was doing. No real reason. But the only thing that I know about the expedition was that they had a lot of trouble- one of the troubles being that the antenna, I think, was up on the mast and they had a hard time keeping it pointed at the Sun. And they didn't get, as I remember, any data that was very usable.
Sullivan
How would they keep it pointed at the Sun?
Mayer
I think they had two monkeys on dials or something like that.
Sullivan
They were just trying to keep their signal optimized, I mean maximized.
Mayer
So that's about all I can tell you on that one, except that Hagen did pick up an electronic technician who wanted to get out of the Navy - he came into the branch and he just retired a few months ago - Joe Nichols.
Sullivan
Oh, I see. I didn’t realize that story.
Mayer
Yes, he's an excellent technician.
Sullivan
You might be interested to know that the Russians, also, did observe that eclipse from a ship.
Mayer
Was it low frequency?
Sullivan
Right. And they were steering their array by moving their whole ship. It was at dock, and they would just change the boats and the hawsers and everything.
Mayer
As I remember, they didn't get any results, either.
Sullivan
Well, they got some minimal stuff, but it wasn't all that successful. So you didn't go on that ones. Did you go on the next one?
Mayer
Yes.
Sullivan
Which was which?
Mayer
Attu. That was in 1950. Hagen cranked up a bigger effort for that. We put together radiometers, I believe they were 10 centimeters and 3 centimeters, maybe just 3, but at least 3 centimeters and 8 mm with portable antennas. And Grote Reber put together a system, I forgotten but something like 600 megahertz which he took along. And in addition, Hagen borrowed a big eclipse telescope from the Bureau of Standards, a huge tube about a foot and a half in diameter and 20 foot long. So we set, up all this junk and on an airstrip sticking out in the ocean at Attu. And we got it all working. The day of the eclipse we had a typhoon, but we took data anyway. Needless to say, it wasn't much good.
Sullivan
I gather this was the only place the eclipse was hitting land.
Mayer
I don't think it was the only place, but it might have been one of the few places where it was feasible to set something up.
Sullivan
Yes, I've seen those pictures where you're rather heavily attired and it’s raining and cold.
Mayer
We were wrapped up in plastic sheets. Anyway, we got very ragged eclipse curves, very marginal usefulness.
Sullivan
Nevertheless the effort persisted.
Mayer
Yes, the next one was Khartoum, and I guess that was an even bigger effort. I put together two radiometers for that one: one at 10 and one at 3, this was 9.5 and 3 or something like that, centimeters. And by that time, we'd gotten more sophisticated and had a built-in trailer so the whole trailer could be transported, antenna and all the equipment. And then Hagen and McEwan and Gibson put together an 8 millimeter system with a cylindrical parabola fan beam. The idea was to line up the fan beam with the track of the Moon and get less of a sector scan and more of a strip scan.
Sullivan
Right.
Mayer
And I guess we still had the eclipse camera plus the eclipse movie camera, I didn't go on that trip either. And the results there were fairly good, but I guess as I remember the main problem there was too much solar activity. They had this big jog in the eclipse curve that was covering active regions.
Sullivan
Yes, you mentioned that before. Was this all shipped using U.S. Navy ships?
Mayer
I think so.
Sullivan
So you probably had to have it ready several months beforehand?
Mayer
Oh, yes. It was like a year's effort to get everything built and put together and packed up, and we had to provide spares for everything- motor generators, and cables.
Sullivan
And then the persons themselves probably had to be gone for at least a month, or six weeks - they didn't just fly over in those days, I guess.
Mayer
Oh, yes. By MATS- I guess for Khartoum they actually had a big troop transport planes, the type that would carry them over and bring them back.
Sullivan
So...
Mayer
Yes, they were tremendous efforts.
Sullivan
In retrospect, it would seem to me that they probably weren’t worth it. Would you agree with that? The man-years that went into them versus the scientific results that were obtained...
Mayer
Well, up until that point we never got a clean eclipse curve, but the next one in Sweden - the Sun was reasonably well behaved and the weather was reasonable and we got good results, we had, good clean eclipse curves and more respectable scientific output. Yeah, I personally would probably not have opted to put the effort in that direction.
Sullivan
Okay. Another question I had was the detection and linear polarization in the Crab Nebula. I notice in the abstract for two different articles, that in the first one published in 1957 you quote 7% at 3 cm wavelength, and then in 1959 with Sloanaker, a AAS talk, you quoted 3%. I was wondering do these actually refer to the same thing and you had improved your measurements or are these different?
Mayer
The 7% at 3cm and the 3% is at 10 cm or 9 cm.
Sullivan
Oh, okay.
Mayer
I believe.
Sullivan
Yes, that sounds right. What was the critical thing that allowed you to detect this polarization, would you say?
Mayer
Oh, going to a higher frequency where the degree of polarization is higher plus depolarization, Faraday rotation.
Sullivan
So the polarimeter itself wasn't that tricky to build once you had the high frequency radiometer?
Mayer
During the initial detection we didn't use the polarimeter at all. The initial detection was during the measurements of Venus, which were carried on for a period of three or four weeks. So we had the opportunity to use the Crab Nebula as a calibration object. And with the linearly polarized antenna and the altitude-azimuth mount, we got a change of parallactic angle, I forget, by a sizable amount, 60° or something like that. So we saw a definite, systematic variation across the sky, and midway through the first experiment, we rotated the whole receiver by 90° and the systematic variation turned around to be what it should be for polarization. That was the initial detection. Then we immediately set up a radiometer with a rotating beam to get further measurements. That was all at 3 cm.
Sullivan
Was this accidentally discovered?
Mayer
No, we were looking for it. See, people had been looking for a number of years - particularly I guess, [Gart] Westerhout and Charlie [Charles L.] Seeger and [?] had, at least, one or two tries.
Sullivan
Right, at 21 cm I believe.
Mayer
Maybe, yeah. So it had been something that people were looking for.
Sullivan
Why would you use it for a calibration source, though, if you suspected you might detect polarization?
Mayer
Well, we used it- the calibration was primarily pointing not intensity.
Sullivan
Oh, okay.
Mayer
In other words, we wanted to feel secure that we were looking at Venus.
Sullivan
Right. And before you rotated it 90°, was there some doubt that it might be due to an antenna gain effect that you didn't know about?
Mayer
There was no doubt in my mind.
Sullivan
Just the rest of the world.
Mayer
Well, you have to do it.
Sullivan
Yes. It was pretty clear right at first?
Mayer
Well, both the Venus and the Crab Nebula experiments were planned experiments; they weren't just chance.
Sullivan
I knew the Venus was, but...
Mayer
And the reason the Venus one was planned for several weeks up to inferior conjunction was to see if there was a phase effect.
Sullivan
Was this your second time on with Venus?
Mayer
No, the first.
Sullivan
That was your first. That's right, you had to quit right at inferior conjunction. I remember you were saying you didn't have as much time as you would have liked to have. I got the impression from re-listening to your tape that there was sort of 'your' group and then there was Hagen and McClain and I guess [A. Edward] Lilley - their group, sort of competing for telescope time. With you having a somewhat lower hand since you weren't in charge of the Branch. Another question I was wondering after re-listening, was why you didn't go on to the 84 foot when it came into existence? In fact, I'm not quite sure what you worked on in the early ‘60s and very late ‘50s.
Mayer
Well, we worked on mainly extensions of polarization measurements and measurements of planets. We looked at Venus several times, chasing this elusive phase effect.
Sullivan
With the 50 foot?
Mayer
With the 50 foot.
Sullivan
This is even after the 84 foot existed?
Mayer
Oh, probably; I guess so, yes. And the polarization led to other sources and other wavelengths to try to pin down the Faraday rotation- Then also to see what the polarization of other sources was. And for example, one thing that we were doing at that time period with polarization was the general variation of polarization at various wavelengths wasn’t all that interesting, except for the possibility of getting the Faraday rotation and making some kind of estimates about magnetic [?]. But Cygnus A turned out to have this very peculiar polarization spectrum where it dropped very sharply at longer wavelengths. And later on it turned out that it could be all puzzled out by having independent polarization on the two main components, which probably counter-rotate. At least the counter-rotation idea was the simplest.
Sullivan
Has that held up since then?
Mayer
Yes, as far as I know.
Sullivan
Yes.
Mayer
And then we extended the polarization measurements from 3 to 10 centimeters and then we went after other planets. That was primarily what we were doing. Now as to why we didn't go on the 84 foot- we did actually, but it wasn't very useful for polarization measurements because the instrumental polarization was high.
Sullivan
I see.
Mayer
It was something around 3%, I remember.
Sullivan
Also, I guess it couldn't go shorter than 10 cm or something like that?
Mayer
Yes. But we did use it to some extent.
Sullivan
Were you involved in the 300 foot observations?
Mayer
No.
Sullivan
That was Bologna and Sloanaker.
Mayer
Yes, they started that up with McClain while I was at Caltech.
Sullivan
Were you on a sabbatical type thing at Caltech? What did you do there?
Mayer
Not much of anything, in terms of supposedly useful work. I was fooling around with trying to get a cool paramp working that they had gotten about that time, without a great deal of success. Unfortunately, it was bought in pieces. And I wasn't all that successful in getting that put together.
Sullivan
What year was that?
Mayer
I don’t know- 1961-62, something like that.
Sullivan
It would be interesting to know what your appraisal of the Caltech group was- from an outsider's point of view. Were you impressed with what they were doing?
Mayer
Oh yes. Very much so.
Sullivan
What were their strong points, would you say?
Mayer
I guess at that time their basic program was looking at radio source survey type things.
Sullivan
They were doing CTA and CTB surveys?
Mayer
Right. And along about that time Moffett was doing his thing with source structure and [Kenneth I.] Kellermann was doing his thing with source spectra - they were graduate students and [Alan T.] Moffet, maybe, was a post-doc then. Barry Clark was doing something that nobody could figure out what he was doing exactly, and I guess some of the things that they had done along about that time had quite a bit of impact other than general source structure stuff and surveys. They had done this interferometer stuff on Jupiter.
Sullivan
Oh, yes.
Mayer
And locking in with the polarization and the whole bit pretty well identified with radiation belts.
Sullivan
Did you ever try polarization of the planets?
Mayer
Oh, yes.
Sullivan
Was this Jupiter just below sensitivity?
Mayer
No, it was done. But that was at 21 cm.
Sullivan
That's right.
Mayer
That was done not by us, but by McClain and Lock and Bruce Gary and Al Miller, using the 84 foot.
Sullivan
Yes, that's right. Okay, one final question is to do with the amalgamation of radio astronomy into optical astronomy or traditional astronomy. What recollections do you have about how that came about? Do you think it still maybe has not yet come about? In the ‘50s, in particular, and also in the ‘60s.
Mayer
Well, it was always there to some extent. There were always optical astronomers who were interested and eager to get results.
Sullivan
Were there any that you personally were in touch with in the ‘50s?
Mayer
Yeah.
Sullivan
Who were they?
Mayer
I guess, the main ones were [Charles H.] Townes and [Gerard] Kuiper and to some extent, [Donald H.] Menzel and [Bart J.] Bok. Of course, you know Bok was interested.
Sullivan
Oh sure.
Mayer
And to a minor extent, [Jesse L.] Greenstein. But there always was that kind of interest; I don't really know what you mean by your question. There was also a lot of skepticism, of course.
Sullivan
Which was the dominant attitude? If you gave a paper at an AAS [American Astronomical Society] meeting, was it only the radio astronomers in that room that you were talking to in that room to begin with or...
Mayer
Well, that probably is true and it was probably also true that in the earlier days there probably weren't many papers given at astronomical society meetings. They'd be more likely to be given at URSI [International Union of Radio Science]. The radio astronomy commission at URSI was very strong.
Sullivan
Right.
Mayer
And it was a good meeting place for radio astronomy. A lot of the things they were talking about were mainly of interest, at least the details, to the radio astronomer. But yes, I think certainly the things like the initial identifications of radio sources with optical objects, the Crab Nebula and Cygnus A, were certainly of great interest to astronomers.
Sullivan
So how do you look back upon it? There were a minority of them that were very interested and the others sort of didn't have much to do with this upstart or...
Mayer
Probably a few that were kind of basically interested in the technique and in the way of looking at things. And there were others who would become interested when it touched on what they were interested in.
Sullivan
Yes, yes.
Mayer
Greenstein was interested when we measured the radiation of H II regions. Kuiper was interested when we measured Venus. But yes, I think by and large people regarded it as a possibility for new information but until things got a little bit sorted out, nobody knew what it meant and everybody was sort of confused and didn't know what to make of it. Probably a little bit like X-ray astronomy has been the last few years.
Sullivan
Yes.
Mayer
It was kind of like a separate group of people, and other people get interested when they see something that's along their line that maybe they can use...
Sullivan
What era would you place this getting sorted out for radio astronomy. When did this transition take place, would you say?
Mayer
Oh it didn't take place all at once. When Cygnus A was first recognized or for that matter when galactic radiation was first recognized, nobody really had any good way to explain it. Then when people started getting ideas like synchrotron radiation and so forth and seeing that it could be explained as non-thermal radiation and things got a little better sorted out.
Sullivan
I see.
Mayer
As long as nobody had any idea what it was. There wasn't much to talk about, except, "Isn't that wonderful?"
Sullivan
Do you think that was the basic reason for this communication gap - that the traditional astronomer just was not familiar at all with radio techniques?
Mayer
I don't think so. I think as far as I know by and large- now, there probably are exceptions- the idea of non-thermal radio radiation in astronomical sources probably hadn't really been considered that much.
Sullivan
Well, I agree to that. I think maybe you misunderstood my question; I was asking a more general question. With the fact that most traditional astronomers did not pay much attention to radio astronomy, do you think that was aided by the fact that it was just so foreign to them as to what an antenna did and antenna temperature and so forth, that it was just too much for them to comprehend what was going on, so they just ignored it?
Mayer
Well, you can probably say it that way, but I would say it differently.
Sullivan
Okay. How would you say it?
Mayer
It's just not their thing. They watch what the people who are doing it are doing. I watch X-ray astronomy. That's not my thing.
Sullivan
Okay, well that pretty much covers what I wanted to do. Thank you very much. That ends the interview with Connie Mayer on 21 June ’78.