![]() ![]() So, we're on a farm on the banks of the Delaware River, near a fairly small town and just across the river from a very large city. My parents actually raised eight children including two young cousins. I was the second child of a large family – an older brother, three sisters, and another brother. When I was six my family moved from the Germantown section of Philadelphia to the New Jersey farm where my father had grown up, just across the Delaware river. Tell me a little bit about your family background. Great, and a topic that you have written much about, and I'd love to hear it in your own voice. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University. To start, please tell me your title and institutional affiliation. Joe, thank you so much for being with me today. It is my great pleasure to be here with Professor Joseph Taylor. This is David Zierler, Oral Historian for the American Institute of Physics. Taylor discusses his tenure as Dean of Faculty at Princeton, and in the last part of the interview, he describes his current and recent interests in WMAP, and why he welcomes the strides his field has taken toward greater diversity. He discusses the long period of time between his research and the Nobel Prize for which he was recognized, and he discusses the impact of the prize on his life and his research. Taylor describes the intellectual origins of discovering gravitational radiation, and he explains his decision to join the faculty at Princeton which centered around its strength in gravitational physics. He describes the fundamental advances in pulsar research in the 1970s, and he recounts his early and soon to be significant interactions with Russell Hulse, and he describes the logistical challenges of setting up research at the Arecibo Observatory. Taylor describes the impact of the discovery of pulsars, just as he was completing graduate school, and he explains his decision to join the faculty at the University of Massachusetts to start the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. Taylor discusses his graduate work at Harvard, and why the mid-1960s was an exciting time for radio astronomy, and he describes his thesis research under the direction of Alan Maxwell on observing radio galaxies and quasars to create two-dimensional maps. He describes his undergraduate experience at Haverford, where he developed his interest in physics and in experimental radio astronomy specifically. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Princeton University, recounts his upbringing in and around Philadelphia, and the centrality of Quakerism throughout his childhood. In this interview, Joseph Taylor, the James S. Disclaimer: This transcript was scanned from a typescript, introducing occasional spelling errors. Please bear in mind that: 1) This material is a transcript of the spoken word rather than a literary product 2) An interview must be read with the awareness that different people's memories about an event will often differ, and that memories can change with time for many reasons including subsequent experiences, interactions with others, and one's feelings about an event. Please contact us for information about accessing these materials. For many interviews, the AIP retains substantial files with further information about the interviewee and the interview itself. If this interview is important to you, you should consult earlier versions of the transcript or listen to the original tape. The AIP's interviews have generally been transcribed from tape, edited by the interviewer for clarity, and then further edited by the interviewee. This transcript is based on a tape-recorded interview deposited at the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics. This transcript may not be quoted, reproduced or redistributed in whole or in part by any means except with the written permission of the American Institute of Physics.
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