Dick Crane's California Days

摘要

Horace Richard Crane (1907-2007) was born and educated in California. His childhood was full of activities that helped him become an outstanding experimental physicist. As a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (1930-1934), he had the good fortune to work with Charles C. Lauritsen (1892-1968) just as he introduced accelerator-based nuclear physics to Caltech. They shared the euphoric excitement of opening up a new field with simple, ingenious apparatus and experiments. This work prepared Crane for his career at the University of Michigan (1935-1973) where in the 1950s, after making the first measurement of the electron's magnetic moment, he devised the g-2 technique and made the first measurement of the anomaly in the electron's magnetic moment. A man of direct, almost laconic style, he made lasting contributions to the exposition of physics to the general public and to its teaching in high schools, community colleges, four-year colleges, and universities. I tell how he became a physicist and describe some of his early achievements.