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Charles Stark Draper, 59, head of M.I.T.'s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and of its Instrumentation Lab, was once trying to spell out the meaning of dyne centimeter, a tiny unit of torque (twisting force). "A dyne centimeter," said Draper, a sociable chap, "is just about the amount of torque that would have to be applied to my arm to get me to take a drink." Draper's contributions to aeronautic and missile technology include the A-4 gunsight that gave U.S. Sabre jets clear superiority over Russian MIGs in Korea and the inertial guidance systems that control far-ranging U.S. missiles, including the Polaris. Says Draper: "I've been accused of being the mother and father of inertial guidance."
William Shockley, 50, is that rare breed of scientist, a theorist who makes no apology for a consuming interest in the practical applications of his work. "Asking how much of a research job is pure and how much applied," says Shockley, "is like asking how much Negro and white blood Ralph Bunche might have. What's important is that Ralph Bunche is a great man." Hired by Bell Telephone Laboratories right after he graduated from M.I.T. in 1936, Theoretical Physicist Shockley was one of a team that found a use for what had previously been a scientific parlor stunt: the use of silicon and germanium as a photoelectric device. Along with his partners, Shockley won a Nobel Prize for turning hunks of germanium into the first transistors, the educated little crystals that are fast replacing vacuum tubes in the country's booming electronics industry.
Emilio Gino Segrè, 55, was a promising young Italian engineering student when he was invited to become the late great Physicist Enrico Fermi's first graduate student. The invitation paid off. Fermi and Segrè collaborated with three other Italian scientists in perfecting the slow neutron process that was essential to the production of the atomic bomb. In 1938 Segrè came to the U.S., and six years later, like Fermi, became a U.S. citizen. Although he feels certain that most scientists do their best work before they are 30, he excepts himself, continues with his Nobel-prizewinning work in the weird never-never land of "anti-matter." Says he: "When God made the universe—if you assume he did—is there any rea-sjon to believe he preferred matter to anti-matter?"
Charles Hard Townes, 45, saw no reason to waste time while he waited for a restaurant to open one morning ten years ago. So he sat on a park bench and pondered a problem in physics: how to produce microwaves shorter than any that had previously been generated. Before he got to breakfast, Townes thought he had the answer—and four years later he completed a device that proved he was correct. It was a maser, in which hopped-up ammonia molecules were made to serve as an atomic clock of unequaled accuracy. Since then, Townes's maser has been used to check Einstein's theory of relativity. It may soon revolutionize radar and open up new channels for communication. Townes is currently on leave from Columbia University to work at the Institute for Defense Analysis in Washington.