Oral Histories

Interview of Margaret G. Kivelson

UCLA professor of space physics.
Subtitle:
But You Don't Look Like a Physicist
Series:
Interviews not in a series, part one
Topic:
UCLA and University of California History
Science, Medicine, and Technology
UCLA Faculty
Biographical Note:
UCLA professor of space physics.
Interviewer:
Hathaway, Neil D. and Walker, Raymond J.
Interviewee:
Kivelson, Margaret G.
Supporting Documents:
Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.
Language:
English
Copyright:
Regents of the University of California, UCLA Library.
Abstract:
Growing up in New York City; Jewish ancestry; schooling and summer camp; attends Radcliffe College and majors in physics; student life at Radcliffe and Harvard University; meets and marries Daniel Kivelson; constraints on women scientists in the forties and fifties; Kivelson earns a doctorate in physics at Harvard with Julian S. Schwinger as her adviser; dissertation on the bremsstrahlung of ultra relativistic electrons; birth of children and child rearing; Daniel Kivelson is hired by UCLA and Margaret Kivelson joins the physics department at the RAND Corporation; the cold war security obsession; RAND's ties to the military-industrial complex; studies plasma oscillations with Donald F. DuBois; spends a year at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study conducting research on many-body systems with Paul C. Martin; accepts a position at the UCLA branch of the University of California Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics; studies space plasma physics using data from spacecraft; investigates whether Io has its own magnetic field; sabbatical at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London; with David J. Southwood, develops models of magnetosphere movement; collaborates with scientists at the California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory to obtain data from the Jupiter space probe; technical problems with the probe; computer analysis of data; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; the UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences; the status of female scientists in academia.