Quantum Leap

The alarm clock never had a chance. Long before it could fulfill its routine function Tuesday morning, shrill telephone rings disturbed the peaceful slumber of John H. Van Vleck.

With the understandable gruffness of one deprived of sleep, Van Vleck, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Science Emeritus, answered the phone and found, of all things, a Boston Globe reporter at the other end.

The eager reporter asked Van Vleck for his reaction to the news, but the half-asleep physicist, who had not made much news since his retirement in 1969, had no idea what the journalist meant.

Within minutes the puzzle, like so many puzzles Van Vleck had confronted in a half-century of scientific work, was solved. Van Vleck had won the Nobel Prize for Physics, the reporter told him.

"I was startled and asked him, 'Are you sure?' because I remembered what happened to Bridgeman," Van Vleck said yesterday. Percy W. Bridgeman, who preceded Van Vleck as Hollis Professor, once received an erroneous report of his selection for a Nobel Prize. The incident proved quite embarrassing when the Swedish Academy officially announced a different winner for that year, although Bridgeman did receive the award several years later.

Remembering the Bridgeman affail, Van Vleck accepted the reporter's congratulations with a healthy skepticism.

But in retrospect Van Vleck admits he may have been "too cautious." Congratulatory telegrams poured in throughout the day, and buried in the pile of wires was the official acknowledgement of the Swedish Academy. He was, indeed, a Nobel laureate.

The rest of the day passed at a roadrunner's pace. The Harvard News Office hastily scheduled a press conference at 11 a.m. Amid a bevy of microphones and whirring television cameras, Van Vleck expressed his personal pleasure and noted that his selection was a "recognition of the importance of pure science."

He declined to attempt an explanation of his scientific work in laymen's terms, saying such explication was "impossible."

Van Vleck did not receive the Nobel Prize for a particular discovery, but for "highly valuable contributions" in a career that spanned three decades. He is known as the "father of modern magnetism," the first physicist to apply the theory of quantum mechanics to magnets.

He was the first American to write a Ph.D. thesis on quantum theory, a topic suggested to him by Edwin C. Kemble, professor of Physics Emeritus and Van Vleck's mentor in the '20s.

After the press conference, Van Vleck returned home to catch his breath and plow through the growing mountain of telegrams.

At 5:30 the Physics Department hosted a reception for Van Vleck. Nobel laureates William N. Lipscomb, professor of Chemistry, and Edward M. Pureell, Gade Professor of Physics, joined in toasting their colleague.

After Tuesday's hectic pace Van Vleck's life has calmed down again. But he says he is "still in a state of surprise"--which may persist until he arrives in Stockholm on December 10 to accept the most coveted of prizes.