Arthur von Hippel: The Scientist and the Man

838 MRS BULLETIN • VOLUME 30 • NOVEMBER 2005

IntroductionArthur R. von Hippel was born in

Rostock, Germany, on November 19, 1898,and died in Newton, Mass., on December31, 2003, at the age of 105. During his longlife, he joined in Germany’s pre–WorldWar I youth rebellion against the socialstratification of Victorian Germany; spenttwo years as a German artilleryman on theFrench border during World War I; op-posed the Communists and then theNazis before leaving Germany in 1933 toteach in Istanbul and then to perform re-search in Niels Bohr’s institute in Copen-hagen; and joined the faculty of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in1936, where he built the Laboratory for In-sulation Research, developed dielectricsfor radar and other World War II applica-tions, and laid the foundations for moderninterdisciplinary materials science and en-gineering. All this with half a lifetime stillbefore him.

His pioneering role in materials re-search inspired the Materials Research So-ciety to name its highest honor after himand to make him the first recipient of theVon Hippel Award in 1976. Since 1978,MRS has annually recognized a distin-guished materials researcher for those

qualities most prized by scientists and en-gineers: brilliance combined with a visionthat transcended the boundaries of con-ventional scientific disciplines.

Arthur R. von Hippel:The ManWandervögel

My father was always interested in fostering the careers and well-being of his co-workers, whom he considered his friends rather than his subordinates.This was a departure from the Victorian“upstairs–downstairs” culture into whichhe was born and the German traditionthat deemed the professor lord of his institute.

The development of this enlightened attitude may have started when von Hippel and his two older brothers joinedGermany’s pre–World War I youth move-ment, the self-styled Wandervögel (“birdsof passage”). Groups of teenagers fromupper-crust families wandered the coun-try, sleeping in barns and helping withfarm chores before they left in the morn-ing. In 1913, when von Hippel was 14 yearsold, the Wandervögel met in a large con-clave on a mountainside near Göttingenand joined in an oath that captured their

reformed version of the Victorian ideal: Inaddition to premarital chastity, it includedsocial responsibility and mutual helpful-ness. Von Hippel tried throughout his lifeto live up to these ideals. Later on, JamesFranck (who was to become von Hippel’sfather-in-law) and Niels Bohr served asmodels for the young von Hippel of non-hierarchical academic leaders and sociallyresponsible scientists.1 Another model forhim was MIT president Karl TaylorCompton, whom von Hippel consideredto be the ideal administrator:

Full of human understanding, modesty,and scientific curiosity, he walkedthrough M.I.T. in order to learn whatwas going on and where help or criti-cism was needed. He enjoyed new in-sights, was not afraid to ask “foolishquestions,” and tried to keep the facultyresponsible for its own affairs. As a re-sult, the administration of M.I.T. re-mained small, funds could be madeavailable as seed money for new initia-tives, and his door was always open forpeople in distress. When he died in1954, we cried.2

As university students, von Hippel, hisbrothers, and some of their friends organ-ized what they called the AkademischeGilde as an alternative to the singing-drinking-dueling student fraternities ofthe time. In addition to creating a positivesocial environment and lifelong friend-ships for themselves, they also tried to en-rich the lives of working-class children,who in those days completed only six ornine years of schooling. Von Hippel andhis friends put together a horse-and-buggy “bookmobile” and also set up abook stall in the town square, from whichthey sold books at low prices to familiesthat otherwise would not have boughtthem.

While pondering his career alternatives,von Hippel considered social work,among other possibilities. One of his clos-est friends, Curt Bondy, did pursue a ca-reer in social work and later played aleadership role in helping Jewish boys andgirls escape Nazi Germany by trainingthem in agriculture so that they could takeadvantage of unfilled immigration quotasin countries that needed farm labor, suchas the United States. Von Hippel’s sister,Olga, also went into social work and afterWorld War II gathered 40 wandering or-phan children into an abandoned armybarracks where she raised them. Follow-ing the Second World War, von Hippeland his wife, Dagmar, spent every avail-able dollar sending care packages of foodand other essentials to tens of families of

Arthur von Hippel:The Scientist andthe Man

Frank N. von Hippel

Abstract“We will not be intimidated!” is one of the mottos Arthur R. von Hippel lived by. From

refusing to salute Hitler to starting a unique interdisciplinary university laboratory—theLaboratory for Insulation Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—vonHippel followed his principles, laying the foundations for modern materials research anddistinguishing himself as a pioneering scientist, an inspirational mentor, and a devoted family man.This article shows the personal and professional contexts within which von Hippel—the namesake of the Materials Research Society’s highest award—emergedas a scientific leader and role model of interdisciplinarity, as seen through the eyes of his son, Frank N. von Hippel, physicist, professor of public and international affairs, and co-director of the Program on Science & Global Security at Princeton University.

Keywords: Arthur R. von Hippel, dielectrics, interdisciplinary, Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, materials engineering, materials research, MIT.

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Arthur von Hippel:The Scientist and the Man

MRS BULLETIN • VOLUME 30 • NOVEMBER 2005 839

relatives and friends in Germany untilconditions there became less desperate.Throughout his life, von Hippel had greatdifficulty saying “no” to anyone in need,and he depended on others—especiallyhis wife—to bail him out when requestsfor help became overwhelming.

Von Hippel was also very conscious ofthe family as a unit offering mutual sup-port (see Figure 1). When asked by a sonwhy he had had five children, von Hippelanswered, “We were starting in a newcountry and I wanted you to have rela-tives.”

His wife, Dagmar, had another answer:“We had four boys and I wanted a girl!”

Von Hippel lived up to the motto thathe inculcated in his children, “We shall notbe intimidated!” He was both anti-Communist (requisitioning an artillerybattery to help put down a local Commu-nist uprising during the post–World War Irevolutionary period in Germany) andopenly anti-Nazi after the Nazis came topower (including a personal confrontationin which he refused to salute Hitler). And,despite the disapproval of some of hisfamily (who apologized later), he marrieda Jewish woman in Germany in 1930.

While many people live by the “kiss upand kick down” ethic of hierarchical or-ganizations, von Hippel tended to do theopposite. As a professor, he was fierce inhis defense of students when they ap-peared to be mistreated, and he was directin telling senior administrators when hethought that they were getting in the wayof progress. At one point, he became sodisgusted that he resigned from MIT withthe intention of building an independent

institute. He joked that this institutewould have sensors embedded in thewalls that would blow it up when the firstadministrator moved in. He returned toMIT, however, after the company that hadpromised to fund the new institute sud-denly went bankrupt.

Not surprisingly, given his inclinationto “tell truth to power,” von Hippel wasnot showered with as many honors by thescience and engineering establishment assome of his scientific peers. This irritatedhim during his career, but later he under-stood it as the price of his independenceand joked, when he was elected to the Na-tional Academy of Engineering in 1977,“My friends have outlived my enemies!”In fact, his students had outlived his ene-mies. Their beloved “Prof” had also bythen been uniquely honored by the Mate-rials Research Society, which named itshighest award after him.

Importance of Visual ImaginationBefore turning to science, von Hippel

spent some time studying Renaissance artin Munich after he left the German armyin 1919. Later, in his scientific work, vonHippel drew on his art training to visual-ize atomic and molecular structures, as anaid to understanding how they worked.Abstract math was not his strength. Hespent long hours in his study at home con-structing stick-and-ball models of crystalstructures (Figure 2) and pondering the in-fluence of these structures on dielectricproperties. John Mara’s beautiful dia-grams in von Hippel’s books and articlesconveyed the resulting physical under-standing clearly and elegantly (Figure 3).

Mara was the draftsman at the Laboratoryfor Insulation Research.

In 1960, when a colleague gave him acopy of M.C. Escher’s first book, Grafiek enTekeningen, von Hippel was “thunder-struck by his wonderful mastery and orig-inality” in an art form that he felt wassimilar to his own efforts to representthree-dimensional crystal structures intwo.3 He arranged Escher’s first visit tothe United States, for a lecture at MIT, and received from him a woodcut, The Thinker (Figure 4), which he felt cap-tured his struggle to visualize crystalstructures.4

Throughout his career, von Hippel alsoenjoyed the dendritic beauty of Lichten-berg figures (Figure 5). Georg ChristophLichtenberg was a professor of astronomyin Göttingen and a scientist and philoso-pher in the 18th century who, by accident,discovered in the dust of his laboratorythe pattern created by an electrical dis-charge. These illustrations became knownas Lichtenberg figures, and a selection ofphotographs of Lichtenberg figures, madein von Hippel’s laboratory with Fred Merrill, appeared in the same volume asvon Hippel’s memoirs under the titleLightning Strokes in Other Worlds.5 Thesespectacular images have become quitepopular. One is displayed on the wall ofMIT’s Kendall Square subway station. Re-cently, some have even been exhibited inan art museum.6

Von Hippel was concerned that his stu-dents and children have careers that theywould find as meaningful and enjoyableas he had his own, and he encouragedthem with remarkable effectiveness to

Figure 1. (a) Arthur von Hippel’s wife Dagmar with their five children on the front steps of the house where they lived from 1938 to 2003, circa1947. Left to right: Peter (now a professor of molecular biology at the University of Oregon), Frank (now a professor of public and internationalaffairs at Princeton University and author of this article), Dagmar with Maianna on her lap (now a social worker and novelist), Eric (now a professor of innovation in the Sloan School at MIT), and Arndt (now a retired chest surgeon in Alaska). Photo by Arthur von Hippel.(b) Arthur von Hippel on his 95th birthday celebration in 1993 with his children. Back row, left to right: Frank, Arthur von Hippel, Eric, and Peter. Front row, left to right: Arndt and Maianna.



pursue interests that he felt matched theirtalents. He correctly pointed out to two of his boys that molecular biology and

astrophysics were on the threshold of ex-citing revolutions such as he had livedthrough in physics. Although he was athird-generation professor, he saw non-academic careers as equally valuable. Hesaw the possibilities for creativity and ad-venture in virtually all professions. His re-action to a grandchild going into aprofession that no other family memberhad tried was “Wonderful! It is high timesomeone in the family did that!”

Love of the WildernessVon Hippel’s reading as a youth of

James Fenimore Cooper’s LeatherstockingTales7 in German translation imprintedhim with a love for the American wilder-ness. He realized a dream when, afterWorld War II, he had his own log cabinbuilt on the bank of the Swift River at theedge of the White Mountains National For-est in New Hampshire (Figures 6 and 7).Cliff Pratt, a jack-of-all-trades with a 6thgrade education, built the cabin. Prattlived with his wife, Mabel, in their ownlog cabin a few miles away and was forvon Hippel the personification of the self-reliant, pioneering spirit that he most ad-mired.

Von Hippel’s preference for leaving thebeaten path led to a number of near-fatal

incidents on mountains and glaciers—aswell as scratches on colleagues who foundthat a walk in the woods behind his housesometimes included a scramble through abramble patch. His last narrow escape oc-curred in 1975 at the age of 76, when hefell through the ice while skiing on theSwift River. He enjoyed that adventuremore than did the son who hauled himout, and the excitement of it pulled himout of a depression over the loss of hiswife earlier that year.

The neighborhood children and grand-children adopted von Hippel as their belovedgrandfather—as did a neighbor’s cockerspaniel, who spent his days underfoot inthe house and on the walks in the woods(Figure 8).8

After his official retirement from MIT in1964, von Hippel regularly visited his far-flung children and grandchildren andhis sister in Germany. He especially en-joyed visiting his son Arndt in Anchorage,Alaska. Arndt owned a small plane, andtogether father and son flew low and fast,taking in the beauty of the surroundingmountains and bays. Later, when travel-ing became more difficult for him, vonHippel’s children and grandchildren vis-ited him in the house in which he andDagmar had raised their family andwhere he continued to live with a house-

Figure 3.Arthur von Hippel’s efforts to visualize atomic crystal structurewere aided by the elegant illustrations of John Mara, the draftsman atthe MIT Laboratory for Insulation Research. Shown here is adiagram drawn for von Hippel by Mara, describing atomic vibrationsassociated with different absorption bands in BaTiO3 and Fe3O4.22

Figure 4. M.C. Escher’s The Thinker, which Escher presented toArthur von Hippel for arranging his first visit to the United Statesfor a lecture at MIT.Von Hippel felt the woodcut captured hisstruggle to visualize crystal structures.4

Figure 2. Arthur von Hippel working witha stick-and-ball model, which he used tohelp himself visualize crystal behavior.(circa 1970).Photo by Dagmar von Hippel.



keeper–caregiver, Margaret Kavanaugh,until his death.

The ScientistEarly Years

After rejecting social work, law, medi-cine, and art as potential career fields, vonHippel decided upon science. His thesisresearch was carried out in the Institute ofApplied Electricity in his hometown ofGöttingen, where his father was a profes-sor of law and his grandfather and unclehad been professors of ophthalmology.9With the broadcasting age just beginning,von Hippel chose as his thesis problem theinvention and theoretical description of anew, more inertia-free “thermo-microphone”that would allow the transmission ofradio broadcasts with as little frequencydistortion as possible. Using the Institute’smachine shop and the many odds andends collected from the war, he built a fre-quency sensor of a nearly invisible mesh-work of thin Wollaston wires, measured

and analyzed its frequency response, de-veloped its theory, and obtained a patenton the device.10

After receiving his PhD degree in 1924,von Hippel joined Max Wien’s institute inJena, where he researched cathodic sput-tering and established that the metal wasbeing released in the form of atoms. He thenreceived a Rockefeller Foundation fellow-ship to spend a year (1927–1928) at a U.S.university. He chose the University of California at Berkeley so that he would beable to see the wonders of the United Statesand Canada in two cross-country trips.

At UC–Berkeley, he measured the ion-ization cross section of atomic mercury asa function of electron energy, firing a beamof electrons perpendicularly at a beam ofmercury atoms. He also was befriendedby James Franck, then a visiting professorwho had just been awarded the 1926Nobel Prize in physics with Gustaf Hertz.When von Hippel returned to Germany,he joined Franck’s physics institute in

Göttingen. In 1930, he married Franck’sdaughter, Dagmar.

Von Hippel’s research while in Franck’sinstitute laid the foundations for the un-derstanding of electrical breakdown ingases, liquids, and solids. In the course ofthis work, he learned how to record andinterpret the physics behind the shapescreated by the branching electron cascadesthat developed during breakdown. This iswhen he developed his lifelong fascina-tion with Lichtenberg figures.5

In 1933, after the Nazis seized power inGermany, von Hippel left the countrywith his family—now including two boys(Peter and Arndt)—first for a teaching po-sition in Istanbul and then, in 1935, for aresearch position in Bohr’s institute inCopenhagen. There, he continued his re-search on phenomena associated withelectrical breakdown.

Dielectric Properties of MaterialsIn 1936, von Hippel returned to the

United States and joined MIT as an assis-tant professor of electrical engineering. Ayear later, with a start-up grant from thenMIT president Compton, von Hippel es-tablished the Laboratory for InsulationResearch (LIR).11 His area of researchquickly broadened beyond breakdownphenomena into an effort to understandthe electric properties of materials moregenerally.

He began to explore with collaboratorsthe propagation of electrons in crystalstructures as a wave phenomenon. Hisfirst PhD student, Julius Molnar, studiedthe color centers of alkali halide crystals anddiscovered the M bands that are namedafter him.

The approach of World War II drew vonHippel into applied research, starting witha consulting contract with InternationalTelephone and Telegraph that resulted inthe invention of an electrolytic process forproducing selenium rectifiers and the in-vention of the selenium photocell.

A group within LIR, later led byWilliam B. Westphal, began to developtechniques to measure the dielectric prop-erties of materials from dc to microwavefrequencies, research that led to the devel-opment of the MIT Coax Instrument12 andwhose results were summarized in theLIR’s “Tables of Dielectric Materials.” Thetables were later declassified and pub-lished—approximately 150 pages’ worth—in Dielectric Materials and Applications.13

This work was stimulated by and foundwidespread application in the U.S. radardevelopment program, which was alsobased at MIT.

The interdisciplinary nature of the workat LIR attracted physicists, chemists, and

Figure 5. (a)–(d) Examples of Lichtenberg figures, made in Arthur von Hippel’s laboratorywith Fred Merrill.5



ceramists as well as electrical engineers.By the end of World War II, the LIR washome to about 40 researchers. Von Hippelbuilt platforms in the crowded rooms thatLIR occupied in MIT’s original high-ceilinged building so that research couldbe carried out on two levels.

Measuring dielectric properties led naturally to the search for materials withdesired properties and also to serendipi-tous discoveries. For example, the devel-opment of high-dielectric-constant ceramicsfor capacitors and delay lines led to thediscovery and exploitation of the ferro-electric and piezoelectric properties of barium titanate.14

By the end of World War II, the contri-butions of the LIR were so valued by theU.S. military that the laboratory receivedthe first three-service (Army–Navy–AirForce) contract to enable it to continue itsoperations. Von Hippel received the U.S.President’s Certificate of Merit fromPresident Truman in 1948.Figure 6.The von Hippel log cabin, built on the bank of the Swift River at the edge of the

White Mountains National Forest in New Hampshire, circa 1948.

Figure 8. Arthur von Hippel at 98, walking in the woods with a neighbor’s granddaughterand cocker spaniel.

Figure 7. Arthur von Hippel with acaulking gun, working on the cabin,circa 1948.



Materials Science and EngineeringHaving discovered the power in the

combination of physical insight and inter-disciplinary research in the designing ofmaterials with specific desired properties,von Hippel dedicated his two post–WorldWar II decades at MIT to developing andpromoting “the molecular designing ofmaterials and devices.”2 With continuingsupport from the U.S. military—now en-gaged in a technology race with the SovietUnion—the number of researchers in theLIR grew to about 80, including refugeescientists from Eastern Europe and visi-tors and students from Western Europeand Japan. Alexander Smakula, anotherPhD graduate from Göttingen (1927), wasamong those who came and stayed, as theLIR expert on growing pure crystals.15

Under von Hippel’s leadership, the labo-ratory systematically developed a funda-mental understanding of the structuraldeterminants of the dielectric propertiesof crystals, glasses, polymers, and the spe-cial couplings that result in ferroelectricand ferromagnetic properties.

To communicate this evolving under-standing in a systematic way, von Hippelwrote a textbook, Dielectrics and Waves(1954),16 copiously illustrated with elegantdiagrams produced by Mara. This bookwas translated into a number of lan-guages, including Russian.17 It is a testi-monial to the book’s lucidity that, 50 yearslater, it is still in print.

Von Hippel also organized three sum-mer symposia to examine the range of ap-plications of the molecular design ofmaterials and edited the presentationsinto books: Dielectric Materials and Applica-tions (1954), Molecular Science and Molecu-lar Engineering (1959), and The MolecularDesigning of Materials and Devices(1965).4,13,18 Two of these books—DielectricMaterials and Applications and The Molecu-lar Designing of Materials and Devices—arealso still in print.

LIR helped populate the new field ofmaterials research. In addition to themany postdoctoral fellows who joined inthe interdisciplinary work there, about 60PhD and 48 master’s theses were com-pleted in the LIR, as well as a very largenumber of bachelor’s theses. Many of theLIR alumni went on to become leaders inmaterials research. A number of thesealumni remained at MIT, which, with thesupport of the Department of Defense’sAdvanced Research Projects Agency, builta large Center for Materials Science andEngineering with 40 professors and theirresearch groups.19 Six of the LIR researchgroups joined the new Center in 1963,when von Hippel reached MIT’s retire-ment age.

From Atoms to Living SystemsAfter becoming an MIT Institute Profes-

sor in 1962 and “retiring” in 1964, vonHippel kept one of his research groupsand started a new line of study that hecontinued until 1980. That research re-flected his desire—shared with a numberof other physicists—to help build a phys-ical foundation for the new biology. In his own case, he decided to try to under-stand the dielectric properties of waterthat make it a medium in which the mo-lecular reactions of life can take place. Hislast scientific paper, published in 1979,was titled “From Atoms toward LivingSystems.”20

Up until 1984, von Hippel participatedin the Von Hippel Award presentations at MRS’s Fall Meetings, in which he gavea short address, often reflecting on the interdisciplinary nature of materials research. In 1992, Ferroelectrics (vol. 135)published a special issue with a series ofarticles paying tribute to von Hippel’s lifeand work. Earlier, when the Center forMaterials Science and Engineering was established at MIT, it dedicated the Arthur von Hippel Reading Room in hishonor (Figure 9).

Von Hippel remained active, intellectu-ally and physically, until very near the end of his long, productive life. He wrotetwo memoirs, one subtitled “A ScientificAutobiography” (Materials Design andMolecular Understanding: A Scientific Auto-biography, 1980) and the other a highlyreadable and detailed personal history,Life in Times of Turbulent Transitions (1988).Both works are accessible on the MRS

Web site dedicated to the memory of vonHippel.21

The indomitable spirit that gave rise tohis motto “We will not be intimidated!”remained unquenched throughout my fa-ther’s life. He continued to walk or skitwice a day in the town forest behind hishouse in Weston, Mass., until he was wellover 100. When told on his 100th birthdayof the Chinese saying that if one walks 100paces each day after dinner, one will liveto 100, he asked, with a twinkle in his eye,“What if I walk 200?”

Notes and References1. James Franck, who was Jewish, resigned hisposition as professor (a government appoint-ment in Germany) when Hitler came to powerbut did not leave Germany until he had beenable to place his Jewish assistants and von Hip-pel, who had married his daughter, Dagmar,safely abroad. Both Franck and Niels Bohrjoined the secret U.S. nuclear weapons devel-opment program during World War II and sep-arately tried to influence U.S. policy in adirection that they hoped would prevent apostwar nuclear arms race with the SovietUnion. Von Hippel’s book Dielectrics and Waveswas dedicated to Franck and Bohr, and his firstU.S.-born child, the author of this article, wasnamed after them.2. A.R. von Hippel, Materials Design and Molec-ular Understanding: A Scientific Autobiography(© 1980 Arthur R. von Hippel), http://vonhippel.mrs.org/ (accessed October 2005).3. A.R. von Hippel, Life in Times of TurbulentTransitions (© 1988 Arthur R. von Hippel), http://vonhippel.mrs.org/ (accessed October 2005).4. A.R. von Hippel, ed., The Molecular Designingof Materials and Devices (MIT Press, Cambridge,Mass., 1965) p. 1.

Figure 9. Mildred S. Dresselhaus, then director of the Center for Materials Science andEngineering at MIT, with Arthur von Hippel in the Arthur von Hippel Reading Roomdedicated in his honor (circa 1982). Note the framed Lichtenberg figure from Figure 2b onthe wall above Dresselhaus.



5. A.R. von Hippel, Lightning Strokes in OtherWorlds (© 1982 Arthur R. von Hippel) http://vonhippel.mrs.org/ (accessed October 2005).6. M. Kemp, Nature 435 (2005) p. 888.7. A series of novels by James Fenimore Coopernamed after their hero, Natty Bumppo, whoalso was known as “Leatherstocking” and“Hawkeye”: The Pioneers (1823), The Last of theMohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), ThePathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841).8. P.T. von Hippel, “A Man of Habit,” in Life inTimes of Turbulent Transitions (© 1988 Arthur R.von Hippel) p. 145, http://vonhippel.mrs.org/(accessed October 2005).9. Von Hippel’s father, Robert, is still wellknown in German jurisprudence as a pioneer inintroducing the idea that prisons should beused for reforming as well as punishing crimi-nals. His uncle, Eugen von Hippel, was co-discoverer of von Hippel–Lindau disease. 10. A. von Hippel, Ann. Phys. 75 (4) (1924)p. 521; A. von Hippel, Ann. Phys. 76 (4) (1925) p. 590.11. K.L. Wildes and N.A. Lindgren, eds., ACentury of Electrical Engineering and ComputerScience at MIT, 1882–1982 (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1986) p. 166.12. The MIT Coax Instrument measured dielec-

tric constants as a function of frequency by fill-ing a section of a cylindrical standing-wavecavity with the material of interest and measur-ing the effects on the standing wave, first whenthe material was placed against the metal con-ductor at the closed end of the cavity and thena quarter wavelength in front of it. See A.R. vonHippel, Dielectrics and Waves (John Wiley andSons, New York, 1954) p. 74. 13. A.R. von Hippel, ed., Dielectric Materials andApplications (Technology Press of MIT, Cam-bridge, Mass., 1954, reissued by Artech House,Norwood, Mass., 1995).14. A.R. von Hippel, Rev. Mod. Phys. 22 (1950)p. 221.15. “[I]n the early 1950s, manufacturers of tran-sistors were having problems in producingpure crystals of germanium and silicon. It wasat this time (1952) that von Hippel broughtAlexander Smakula . . . into LIR. Smakula . . .contributed to solving the problem. (Inciden-tally, Smakula had been the inventor of the an-tireflection coating for optical lenses so widelyused today in camera lenses.).” K.L. Wildes and N.A. Lindgren, eds., A Century of ElectricalEngineering and Computer Science at MIT,1882–1982 (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1986)p. 172.

16. A.R. von Hippel, Dielectrics and Waves (JohnWiley & Sons, New York, 1954).17. “Two books written by Professor von Hippel were translated and published in theSoviet Union shortly after the Second WorldWar. These excellent books were popularamong students in their final years, postgradu-ate students, and specialists in the fields of elec-trical engineering, physics, and dielectricmaterials.” Lev A. Shuvalov, “A Tribute to Professor Arthur von Hippel,” Ferroelectrics 135(1992) p. 19.18. A.R. von Hippel, ed., Molecular Science andMolecular Engineering (Technology Press of MITand John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1959). 19. K.L. Wildes and N.A. Lindgren, eds., A Cen-tury of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sci-ence at MIT, 1882–1982 (MIT Press, Cambridge,Mass., 1986) p. 177. 20. A.R. von Hippel, Mat. Res. Bull. 14 (1979) p. 273.21. “In Memoriam: Arthur Robert von Hippel(1898–2003)” Web site, http://vonhippel.mrs.org/ (accessed October 2005).22. A.R. von Hippel, ed., Molecular Science andMolecular Engineering (Technology Press of MIT and John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1959) p. 273. ■■

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Arthur von Hippel: The Scientist and the Man

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