Courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne National Laboratory, with its deceptive old-world name, had grown out of the Metallurgical Laboratory of the Manhattan Engineering Project, based at the University of Chicago in World War II. There, the immigrant Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi, had directed the first successful, controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in 1942, a scientific breakthrough that had led to the construction of nuclear reactors producing plutonium and the whole new development of nuclear and atomic research. With the war’s end and the establishment of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1946, the Government chose Argonne to become its principal national laboratory for long-term research on atomic power for peaceful purposes and for the design and development of nuclear reactors. To this was tied fundamental research across the board on low energy neutron physics; theoretical and high energy physics; the chemical and physical properties of newly discovered and newly available elements; the effects of radiation on liquids, solids and gases; and the biological effects of radiation.

There was a curious symmetry in this particular trajectory in Joe Moyal’s career. Foiled in his desire to join the British research effort in the wartime nuclear field on his arrival in England in 1940, he was now selected for his competence in advanced atomic theory and his original contributions in quantum mechanics, mathematics and stochastic processes, to enter the leading arena of nuclear research and ‘a centre of scientific excellence’.^[1]

Conditions at Argonne were highly conducive to research. The Division of Applied Mathematics, then directed by Dr Wallace Givens, stood at the hub of a range of multi-disciplinary and multi-program approaches and activities which drew on and extended Joe’s research. Here he applied his fundamental work on random processes and statistical physics to analyse practical problems in high-energy physics, radiation biology and the analysis of the scattering and multiplication of particles in nuclear reactors.^[2] ‘My main interest’, he summed up later, ‘has been in the theory of stochastic processes and its application to physics. Before and after joining Argonne I had been working in the theory of stochastic population processes (or point processes) and its application to physical problems such as neutron diffusion and multiplication, cascades, etc.’ In his latter years at Argonne, his research interests ‘gradually switched to problems connected with the foundations and mathematical methods of quantum theory … and in particular to quantum field theory’.^[3]

In addition to his work carried out in connection with multidisciplinary Laboratory projects, consultancy, and in-house reports,^[4] Joe became leader of a small probability and statistics group and published a series of innovative research papers including ‘A general theory of first-passage distribution in transport and multiplicative processes’ and ‘Multiplicative first-passage processes and transport theory’ in 1966 and 1967. His postgraduate student from the ANU, Peter Brockwell, joined him at the Laboratory and together they produced `A stochastic population process and its application to bubble-chamber measurements’, and `The characterization of criticality for one-dimensional transport processes’ in 1966 and 1968. At the same time, in the active tradition at Argonne of extending knowledge to staff members across research fields and offering cross-disciplinary contact, Joe launched a seminar lecture series in the Applied Mathematics Division on Transport Theory and Stochastic Processes and a working seminar series on Mathematical Methods of Quantum Theory.^[5]

At a personal and professional level, Joe formed a close connection across Divisions with Dr Hans Ekstein. A refugee from Hitler’s Germany who had worked in France and arrived in America in 1941, Ekstein had moved to Argonne as senior physicist in the Physics Division in 1956. He was the conceptual founder of the theory of rearrangement collisions and scattering in quantum field theory but, by the mid ‘60s, had come to focus predominantly on the borderline between physics, mathematics and philosophy and the search for the foundations of quantum mechanics. Through him, Joe was able to establish stimulating connections with Professor Daniel Kastler at the Theoretical Physics Department of the University of Aix-Marseille, France. Joe visited his Department in the European summer of 1966 to discuss work on quantum mechanics and participated in a Summer School on Theoretical Physics in Corsica. He later brought Kastler as a visitor to Argonne.

Argonne offered its research staff singular opportunities for interaction with the university world. It was associated integrally with the University of Chicago, which had been appointed as the Laboratory’s original ‘operating contractor’ in 1946 and later became additionally linked with a Council of participating universities and the Argonne Universities Association. Joe made rapid contacts with Chicago University academics, notably  with  William  Kruskal,  Professor  of  Statistics,  an  influential presence on numerous professional and governmental advisory committees and commissions, and members of his Department, and the eminent Indian physicist-mathematican, Professor Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

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Chandrasekhar had been a postgraduate student of Ralph Fowler’s at Cambridge in the early 1930s and, in Fowler’s frequent absences, with Dirac, and shortly afterwards had developed the celebrated theory in astrophysics of white dwarfs. He went on to specialize in the physical conditions in the interior of stars. Coincidentally, he had as a postgraduate student (Dirac’s biographer tells the story) ventured into certain questions of quantum statistics and submitted a paper to the Royal Society of London, which Dirac saw as critical of his ideas. On this occasion, confronted with Dirac’s objection, the young Indian physicist withdrew his paper from publication on the grounds that his argumentation was mistaken.^[6] He was a man much cherished by Chicago University and one with whom Joe found much common ground.

Through visitor contacts offered by Argonne, Joe spent two months as a visitor with Professor Harvey Cohn in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona in 1966; he also renewed links with Herbert Robbins in New York, and met a medley of mathematicians, frequently Jewish, who were igniting Applied Mathematics Departments around America. He enjoyed, too, the lively stimulus of renewed contact with Professor Mark Kac at Rockefeller University, a pioneering probabilist keenly interested in the applications of mathematical probability to statistical physics and the role of dimensionality, whom he had first met in Los Angeles in 1961. In addition, at the Laboratory itself he found a congenial colleague in the hard-working Dr Joe Cook, and, with the highly advanced Digital Computing Center installed within the Applied Mathematics Division, he collaborated in computational mathematics research with the talented Margaret Butler and J.W. Butler.

The Australian National University had provided Joe with research opportunity and the rewarding supervision of postgraduates. America’s leading national Laboratory now opened larger and more dynamic frontiers. It was, as Peter Brockwell recorded, `an ideal environment for Joe Moyal. Applications of stochastic processes in the analysis of the scattering and multiplication of neutrons in a reactor, the behaviour of high energy particles, and the multiplication of biological cells subject to radiation, were all subjects of great interest to Argonne, as was quantum mechanics in general, particularly quantum field theory and the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics.’ Joe `became deeply involved in all these areas and contributed substantially to the development of both the underlying theory of the stochastic processes involved and the solution of specific problems raised by researchers in the other divisions of the Laboratory.’^[7] Argonne, Ann wrote in her autobiography, ‘was Joe’s scientific homecoming … and he went forth gladly each morning’.^[8]

For recreation, Joe headed for summer water-skiing on neighbouring Klinger Lake and, when deep winter fell on the frozen lake beside the Moyals’ apartment in Lisle, a small rural outpost near the Laboratory, took up skating on the frozen lake and along the icy winding streams. In the arctic month of December, when mists and ice wrapped `the windy city’, Joe and Ann would leave the blizzards to dive and snorkel about the islands of the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands, and St. Croix. Chicago, with its splendid Art Museum and Symphony Orchestra, its jazz and country music, offered a rich cultural life. Yet as the Vietnam War dug deep into American life, as Bobby Kennedy fell to an assassin’s bullet, and Richard Nixon entered the White House in November 1969, for those like Joe interested in political democracy and openness in government, and now a permanent resident of America, there was some cause for disquiet.

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U.S. policy for science itself underwent change over the seven years from Joe’s arrival at Argonne late in 1964. The original missions of the Laboratory — basic research involving fundamental studies and theoretical and experimental investigations of interest to the atomic energy program, and applied, programmatic and development work in the nuclear energy field — shifted under external pressure. The creative research environment built since 1961 by the Director of the Laboratory, Dr Albert Crewe, a former Physics Professor from the University of Chicago, under which the original research of the senior scientists and the Laboratory’s international standing flourished, altered with Crewe’s return to his university post in 1967. His successor, Dr Robert Duffield, a chemist drawn from industry, while proclaiming the Laboratory’s commitment to basic research, gave increasing currency to a management style of administration, common in industry, which was seen as antipathetic to a climate of scientific research.

Hence, even before the Nixon Administration ushered in severe research program cuts in science across the board in America, the US Atomic Energy Commission — the Laboratory’s authorial supremo in Washington — had begun introducing more directional approaches at Argonne with changing missions and a heavy emphasis on the development of a fast breeder reactor. The change had a significant impact upon senior research staff who saw their creativity weakened and devalued. Amid tension and misgivings, some scientists and engineers were given altered priorities and positions, while a number of senior researchers began to seek teaching positions in the universities.

For Joe, these developments signalled a serious departure from the purposes that had motivated his move to Argonne. He had taken up his post at a time soon after President Johnson’s public statement of the importance of building the Laboratory into `the nucleus of one of the finest research centers in the world’, and when the Argonne Universities Association's authority to assist in developing the Laboratory’s long-range objectives and policies and its co-operative research and educational progams with the scientific community, had been placed firmly among its goals.^[9] For Joe, like many of his colleagues, Duffield’s advent heralded a series of negative trends, including a threat to the continuity of some existing research programs and plans, and a distinct distancing of the director from the opinion of creative senior scientific staff. By temperament no leader of staff opinion, Joe nonetheless shared the general consensus that a narrowing of Argonne’s research focus to more applied tasks was destructive of the best interests of science.

For his own part, he extended his central research themes, publishing several papers in the international literature — `Mean ergodic theorems in quantum mechanics’ in 1969 and (with Avishai and Ekstein)`Is the Maxwell field local?’ — and researching a major paper, `one I have been thinking about for the last 8 months’,^[10] on particle populations and number operators in quantum theory.

Early in 1971, Ann Moyal, with some personal knowledge of the Laboratory and its personnel, and writing under her then professional name as a science historian, Ann Mozley, had responded to the opportunity of conducting a historical and contemporary study of Argonne National Laboratory as a case study in science policy which examined a major scientific organization in the process of change. In doing this she reaped benefit from having access to a wide range of key administrators and scientists, including Argonne’s director, Dr Duffield, central figures at the University of Chicago including former director Albert Crewe, Division heads at Argonne, and a spread of scientists across different fields. All gave their opinions in extensive oral interviews, and her paper ‘Change at Argonne National Laboratory. A Case Study’ was published in Science in October 1971.^[11] Its findings, critical and independent, exposed a deep malaise among scientists at Argonne and raised fundamental questions about the management, independence, and future of the national laboratory.

Even before its official publication, news of the study circulated widely in Washington and at the Laboratory. Ann was in Australia immediately before the study came out when Joe wrote to her on 29 August.

Amid avid Laboratory interest and a report on the study in The Chicago News, the bails flew. Argonne and Washington bureaucrats reached for their bats. But the new A.E.C. head, Dr.Schlesinger, telexed a rapid message to the Argonne directorate: ‘there were to be no attacks ad hominem [ad feminam in this case] as the historical study was [he said] a valuable one’.^[12]

‘My dear’, Joe wrote to Ann exuberantly on 18 October:

The paper, relying as it did on carefully researched evidence and a wide canvas of collected opinions, highlighted many of the troubling deficiencies and problems at Argonne and its effect was compounded by the fact that Argonne’s contract to run the fast breeder reactor had, concomitantly, not been renewed. Yet, inevitably, the study and its reception would impact on Joe himself, wrongly judged by the Argonne administration to have been the driving power behind it. ‘They cannot conceive’, he commented drily, ‘of a weak woman delivering such a vigorous critique without male encouragement!’

There were more departures of talented scientific staff; colleagues close to Joe were put off, and he had little doubt, he noted as October moved into November, ‘that I would have already been sacked if Administration had not been in such a dicey position and I certainly will be if present incumbents are confirmed in power.’^[13] For him it became a period of considerable uncertainty and disappointment. Yet, at the same time, he was buoyed by Einstein’s dictum — that the central being of a scientist ‘lies precisely in what he thinks and how he thinks, and not in what he experiences or does’^[14] — for his mind was deeply engaged with his paper on particle populations and number operators in quantum theory, his `magnum opus’ or `monster’ paper, as he dubbed it. Extending as it did from his original opus, ‘The general theory of stochastic population processes’ of 1962, he admitted to drawing great heart from a conference on related topics that he attended, in August 1971, when the opening address was directed almost entirely to a review of that original paper. ‘As a result’, he wrote cheerfully, ‘I was treated as an elder statesman!’^[15]

For the original scientist, such retrospective public plaudits are rare. His own new paper, he reported, `went off quite well but is a rigorously new departure and was on the whole above the heads of the audience who appeared slightly dazed. Ah well, in another 10 years perhaps I will be an elder statesman at another conference based on this new stuff!’ With some laborious revision, he would crystallize and extend it for publication in Advances in Applied Probability in 1972. The rough and tough of scholarly concentration offered a welcome diversion in the upheaval and disquiet of Argonne.

The much discussed article on the Laboratory prompted a few measures of reform, but it ushered in high administrative change. By late 1972, the journal Science and Government Reports was noting, ‘A high-level management shake-up is underway at Argonne National Laboratory … After cliff-hanging negotiations which left the Laboratory’s status in doubt for many months, a new contract was signed which ties the Laboratory more closely to the AEC’s developmental missions, and in a related move … Robert B. Duffield, Director of the Laboratory for the past five years, is being forced out because of disenchantment with his management performance.’ In December 1972, Dr. Duffield resigned.

Joe had weathered the institutional turmoil, but at a cost. The altered state of the Laboratory, the exodus of important colleagues, and the uncertainties implicit in institutional change represented a professional misfortune and he faced a period of black depression. Spurred then by an offer to Ann of an academic position in Sydney, ^[16] Joe contemplated ways of returning to a university appointment in Australia.