Frautschi, Steven Clark (Theoretical physicist)
Dates
- Existence: 1933 - 2222
Biographical/Historical
Background: Caltech Professor of Physics 1962-present; Executive Officer for physics, 1988-1997; Master of Student Houses, 1997-2002.
Biographical/Historical
Description: Steven Frautschi grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and attended Harvard College, where he earned an AB in physics under J. van Vleck (1954). After a year in Europe on a traveling fellowship, Frautschi entered the physics graduate program at Stanford, where he finished his PhD in three years, working with Sidney Drell (1958). He spent his first postdoc year in Japan and two subsequent years at Berkeley. After one year at Cornell, he received a job offer at Caltech following a meeting with Murray Gell-Mann at Berkeley's Rad Lab and collaboration with Gell-Mann and Frederik Zachariasen on a paper on Regge poles. At Caltech he taught various physics courses and served terms as executive officer in the Division of Physics, Math and Astronomy (PMA) and as Master of Student Houses. His "statistical bootstrap" theory paper (early 1970s) is discussed in his oral history, along with other aspects of his work on particles.
Biographical/Historical
Collection Notes: Oral History 2006. This 37-page interview with Shirley K. Cohen was recorded in 2003. It includes some personal biographical matters but concentrates on his career in theoretical physics and his life as a professor and administrator at Caltech.
