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William P. Jesse Collection, 1947-1984
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 Archives and Special Collections, |
Descriptive Summary
| Repository: | Benedictine University Library, Archives and Special Collections |
| Creator: | Jesse, William P. |
| Title: | William P. Jesse Collection, 1947-1984 |
| Language of Materials: | Materials in English |
| Abstract: | William P. Jesse was a nuclear physicist who assisted on the Manhattan Project during World War II. After the completion of the war, Jesse continued his work at Argonne National Laboratory, and upon his retirement continued his research at St. Procopius College. |
| Collection consists of a personal collection of physics papers written by other scientists, lantern slides from lectures, lab notebooks kept throughout Jesse's post-Manhattan Project career, and publications written by Jesse. | |
| Extent: | 6 linear feet, 8 records center boxes |
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Administrative Information
Access Restrictions
None
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Copyright Notice
Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
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Preferred Citation
[Identification of item] William P. Jesse Collection, ARCH-104, Archives and Special Collections, Benedictine University, Lisle, IL, USA
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Acquisitions Information
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Processing Information
Processed by Jennifer E. Merriman, November, 2010
Encoded by Jennifer E. Merriman, November, 2010
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Additional Descriptive Resources
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Biographical Note
William Polk Jesse was born on March 14, 1891 in New Orleans, La. Jesse received a B.S. in physics from the University of Missouri in 1913, and continued his graduate work at the University of Chicago in 1919 upon the end of World War I. In 1921, he became an instructor for Yale University, and received his PhD in 1924. After teaching at various institutions for ten years, Jesse returned to the University of Chicago, and transferred to the Metalurgical Laboratory to assist with the Manhattan Project during World War II.
After the war, Jesse joined Argonne National Laboratory and began making accurate measurements of W, the energy required to produce an ion pair. A result of this research has now become known as the "Jesse effect". After retirement from Argonne, Jesse continued his research at St. Procopius College until 1972.
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Collection Overview
The collection documents most of William Poke Jesse's post World War II, and Manhattan Project activities. Publications collected by Jesse are included, which include his notes and notations. Publications written by Jesse are also included, as well as a collection of glass slides which correspond to his articles and lectures. The bulk of the collection is comprised of a series of 48 lab notebooks which document the work of Jesse between the years of 1947-1972. Scrapbooks have been left intact, and include mostly notations, graphs, and experiment notes, procedures and results.
Photographs are organized by date and are mostly of visitors to Erlenborn's office, either in Illinois or Washington, D.C., but also included here are photographs of important Presidential and Congressional events. Gerald Ford, King Peter II of Yugoslavia, Richard Nixon, Helmut Schmidt, Orrin Hatch, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and the winners of various "Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow" competitions are some of the individuals appearing with Erlenborn in this series.
Collection Arrangement
In most cases items have been placed in chronological order.
| 1. Publications, 1932-1966 |
| 2. Slides 1960-1967 |
| 3. Lab Notebooks, 1947-1972 |
| 4. Personal Papers and Publications, 1950-1964 |
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Online Catalog Headings
These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.
| Jesse, William Polk |
| Nuclear physics |
| Nuclear physics--History--20th century |
| University of Chicago. |
| Argonne National Laboratory |
| Manhattan Project (U.S.) |
| Nuclear physics--Measurement |
| Nuclear physics-Research |
| St. Procopius College (Lisle, Ill.) |
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Detailed Description of the Collection
| 1. 1.Publications, 1932-1966 About 100 items. |
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| Arrangement: Chronological by year of publication, then alphabetical | |||||||||
| Publications and papers which belonged to Jesse, and contain his notations, but were not written by him personally. | |||||||||
| Box 1 | Publications 1960-1972 | ||||||||
| 2. 2. Slides 1960-67 About 50 items. |
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| Arrangement: Original Order. | |||||||||
| Included are lantern slides from all of Jesse's major lectures and presentations. Slides are kept in the original boxes, in the original order. Slides consist mostly of charts and graphs, with a few slides containing mathematical formulas. Boxes are labeled with the name and date of the lecture | |||||||||
| Box 2 | Lecture Slides | ||||||||
| 3. 3.Lab Notebooks, 1947-1972. About 48 items. |
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| Arrangement: chronological, | |||||||||
| This series contains all lab notebooks kept by Jesse during his tenure at Argonne National Laboratory, and at St. Procopius College. The notebooks contain his notations from experiments, as well as results, calculations conducted during experiments. Pages are dated and numbered | |||||||||
| 3.1. Committee on Government Operations, 1967-1984. About 1,100 items. |
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| Box 3 | Lab Notebooks 1-12 | ||||||||
| Box 4 | Lab Notebooks 13-24 | ||||||||
| Box 5 | Lab Notebooks 25-36 | ||||||||
| Box 6 | Lab Notebooks 37-48 | ||||||||
| 4. Personal Papers and Publications 1950-1964 | |||||||||
| Arrangement: chronological | |||||||||
| Publications are organized chronologically by year, and are generated by Jesse approximately once a year between 1950 through 1968. They discuss Jesse's findings primarily during his work at National Argonne Laboratory and St. Procopius College, doing work with determining accurate values of W for beta particles. | |||||||||
| Folder 7.1 | Distribution List | ||||||||
| Folder 7.2 | The Range-Energy Curves for Alpha Particles and Protons, 1950 | ||||||||
| Folder 7.3 | The Ionization in Argon and in Air by Single Alpha-Particles as a Function of The Energy, 1950 | ||||||||
| Folder 7.4 | Techniques in the Constitution and Use of Integrating Ionization Chambers, 1951 | ||||||||
| Folder 7.5 | Alpha Particle Ionization in Mixtures of Noble Gases, 1952 | ||||||||
| Folder 7.6 | Alpha-Particle Ionization in Pure Gases and Average Energy to Make n Ion Pair, 1953 | ||||||||
| Folder 7.7 | Ionization by Alpha Particles in Mixtures of Gases, 1955 | ||||||||
| Folder 7.8 | Ionization in Pure Gases and the Average Energy to Make in Ion Pair for Alpha and Beta Particles, 1955 | ||||||||
| Folder 7.9 | Recoil Particles from Po and Their Ionization in Argon and Helium, 1956 | ||||||||
| Folder 7.10 | The Backscattering of Beta-Particles from Gases, 1957 | ||||||||
| Folder 7.11 | Absolute Energy to Produce an Ion Pair by Beta Particles from S | ||||||||
| Folder 8.1 | Absolute Energy to Produce an Ion Pair in Various Gases by Various Particles from S^35, 1958 | ||||||||
| Folder 8.2 | The Ionization by Polonium Alpha Particle in Air and the Average Energy to to Make an Ion Pair, 1960 | ||||||||
| Folder 8.3 | Alpha-Particle Ionization in Polyatomic Gases and the Energy Dependence of W | ||||||||
| Folder 8.4 | An Isotope Effect in the Probability of Ionizing a Molecule by Energy Transfer from a Metastable Noble-Gas Atom, 1962 | ||||||||
| Folder 8.5 | Isotope Effect in the Ionization of Polyatomic Gases by Beta Particles, 1963 | ||||||||
| Folder 8.6 | Isotope Effect in the Ionization of Polyatomic Gases by Metastable Atoms, 1964 | ||||||||
| Folder 8.7 | Alpha-Particle Ionization in Argon-Methane Mixtures and the Energy Dependence of the Ion Pair Formation Energy, 1968 | ||||||||
