Physicstory

YouTube: FPMAlbany History Playlist 

If you're at or near the Empire State Plaza in downtown Albany, New York, USA, and have any interest at all in technology, it would be a shame to skip the short walk over to the "Birthplace of Modern Electricity," as the New York State Education Department calls the Old Albany Academy Building (OAAB), where Joseph Henry, a titan of 19th-century physics, conducted his epochal investigations into magnetism. The life story of Joseph Henry is inspiring, fascinating, and, insofar as he was a white man of the 19th century, a little depressing, too.

While doing fundamental research in the OAAB, Joseph Henry essentially invented the telegraph, the first killer app of electricity. Herman Melville was a star pupil of Henry, seems to have been inspired by him, and wrote about technology in his famous works. The OAAB was then also the "national center of work on meteorology," an effort on which Henry collaborated, in the 19th-century version of exploration via big data. Unfortunately, Joseph Henry was a racist who later denied audiences the chance to hear Frederick Douglass speak at the Smithsonian on the basis of Douglass's skin color. Fortunately, Albany has Henry Johnson, whose story could be told beside Joseph Henry's, in part to explain why, today, there's less of the virulent stupidity that afflicted Albany's otherwise great son Joseph Henry, whose rags-to-first-rank-scientific-glory arc is so inspirational as to be suspicious. 

Albany is also the birthplace of M. N. Rosenbluth (1927-2003), recipient of the National Medal of Science and key figure in the development of fusion energy. Should fusion ever fulfill its promise by becoming an important source of energy for our technological civilization, Albany's place in the history of modern electricity will grow even more important.

But that's not all! With General Electric in Schenectady just a few miles away, Albany claims two great stories about giants of 20th-century physics Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman, who worked at GE after World War II. 

Physicist Hans Bethe, who later received the Nobel Prize, performed a groundbreaking calculation to initiate a new era in the field of quantum electrodynamics in 1947 on a train from a conference on Shelter Island to his home in Schenectady. On this memorable journey, his train would have stopped at the now-defunct Union Station at 575 Broadway in Albany. Here is Hans Bethe talking about the calculation. Here is my take on naming things for physics heroes in Tech Valley.

Above are images from the spot called the "Birthplace of Modern Electricity" by the New York State Education Department. The Old Albany Academy Building and shrine to Joseph Henry are on the far side of Academy Park from Washington Avenue and almost invisible from the sign announcing the significance of the place. Other notable students at Albany Academy include Learned Hand, Stephen Vincent Benét, and Herman Melville.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist and gifted raconteur Richard Feynman tells the story in American Institute of Physics oral history of coming to Albany to be tested for fitness for compulsory military service. I think parts, though definitely not all, of this yarn are at least as funny as Arlo Guthrie's in the song "Alice's Restaurant." Did Prof. Feynman pass his draft-board evaluation? If not, which part of the evaluation do you think caused the trouble? Find out in Prof. Feynman's tale of a day in Albany, quoted from the AIP Oral History Interview of Richard Feynman. The location of this event in Albany will be tracked down and posted here eventually. So far, telephone listings from 1945 show Selective Service offices in three buildings on the steep portion of State Street east of the Capitol, but there is an old armory located at the corner of Washington Avenue and Lark Street.

Times Union essay "Science history is part of Albany's story"