John Clarke Slater (December 22, 1900 – July 25, 1976) was an American physicist who advanced the theory of the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and solids. He also made major contributions to microwave electronics. He received a B.S. in physics from the University of Rochester in 1920 and a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard in 1923, then did post-doctoral work at the universities of Cambridge (briefly) and Copenhagen. On his return to the U.S. he joined the physics department at Harvard. In 1930, Karl Compton, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, appointed Slater as chairman of MIT's department of physics. He recast the undergraduate physics curriculum, wrote 14 books between 1933 and 1968, and built a department of international prestige. During World War II, his work on microwave transmission, done partly at the Bell Laboratories and in association with the MIT Radiation Laboratory, was significant in the development of radar. In 1950, Slater founded the Solid State and Molecular Theory Group (SSMTG) within the physics department. The following year, he resigned the chairmanship of the department and spent a year at the Brookhaven National Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission. He was appointed Institute Professor of Physics and continued to direct work in the SSMTG until he retired from MIT in 1965, at the mandatory retirement age of 65. He then joined the Quantum Theory Project of the University of Florida as research professor, where the retirement age allowed him to work for another five years. The SSMTG has been regarded as the precursor of the MIT Center for Materials Science and Engineering (CMSE). His scientific autobiography and three interviews present his views on research, education and the role of science in society. Slater was nominated for the Nobel Prize, in both physics and chemistry, multiple times, and he received the National Medal of Science in 1970. In 1964, Slater and his then-92-year-old father, who had headed the Department of English at the University of Rochester many years earlier, were awarded honorary degrees by that university. Slater's name is part of the terms Bohr-Kramers-Slater theory, Slater determinant and Slater orbital.
Early life and education Slater's father, John Rothwell Slater, was born in Virginia and had been an undergraduate at Harvard, and had become head of the English Department at the University of Rochester, which would also be Slater's undergraduate alma mater. Slater's youthful interests were with things mechanical, chemical, and electrical. When Slater entered the University of Rochester in 1917 he took physics courses and as a senior assisted in the physics laboratory and did his first independent research for a special honors thesis, a measurement of the dependence on pressure of the intensities of the Balmer lines of hydrogen. He was accepted into Harvard graduate school, with the choice of a fellowship or assistantship. He chose the assistantship, during which he worked for Percy W. Bridgman. He followed Bridgman's courses in fundamental physics and was introduced into the then-new quantum physics with the courses of E. C. Kemble. He completed the work for the Ph.D. in three years by publishing his (1924) paper Compressibility of the Alkali Halides, which embodied the thesis work he had done under Bridgman. His heart was in theory, and his first publication was not his doctor's thesis, but a note (1924) to Nature on Radiation and Atoms. After receiving his Ph.D., Slater held a Hamard Sheldon Fellowship for study in Europe. He spent a period in Cambridge, England, before going to Copenhagen. He did not have a happy time working with Bohr who he found domineering and regretted that his name was attached to the ill-fated Bohr-Kramers-Slater (BKS) theory. Slater already had the idea that it was the photon that carried radiation energy. As he relates:
Bohr was very nice, he invited me to Christmas dinner, I told him about my [photon] ideas, he felt these were fine, “But, you see, they’re much too definite." Now we cannot have this exact conservation. We must not think too specifically about the photons. We don’t have photons like that.” In other words, he wanted to make the whole thing just as vague as he could. Kramers was always Bohr‘s “yes-man” and wanted to do exactly the same thing. He said “This is a fine idea, if we will modify it in such and such ways.” That was the last I saw of it. Bohr and Kramers wrote the paper, they invited me to sign it, the letter to Nature was the first paragraph out of the paper, they invited me to sign it, take it or leave it. This was my experience with Mr. Bohr and Mr. Kramers. Since then, it has developed in a very interesting way, namely, that I was right and they were wrong. They didn’t realize this until Mr. Bothe came along with his experiment showing that the photons were really there. So I completely failed to make connection with Bohr. I could have made connections with Kramers if it hadn’t been for Bohr, but Kramers was completely playing Bohr’s game. On the plus side, Slater's name was now well known by association with Bohr. On returning to America, Slater joined the Harvard Physics Department.
Professional career
Chairing the Department of Physics at MIT When he became president of MIT, Karl Compton "courted" Slater to chair the physics department. "Administration (of the Department) took up a good deal of time, more time than he (Slater) would have preferred. John was a good chairman." The following items from the successive issues of the annual MIT President's Report trace the growth and visibility of the Department under Slater's leadership, before World War II, and the ability of the department to contribute to defense during the war. The first two quotations are from chapters written by Compton in the successive reports. The other quotations come from the sections about the department, that Slater wrote. These include statements affecting policies in physics education and research at large, and show his deep commitment to both.
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