Addison Hughson White (1909 - 2001)

Born 13 Oct 1909 in Enterprise Colony, California, United States

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 14 Mar 2001 at age 91 in Summit, New Jersey, United States

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Biography

Addison was born in 1909, in a very small town in California called Clovis. He was the son of Arthur White and Alice Hughson. His father was in the grape-growing business, and Addison grew up "on the ranch," as it's said in California.

1920 Census: ^[1]

According to an interview with AIP^[2], his interest in science and technology stemmed (somewhat) from his father:

My father was very interested in responding to any and all questions that his sons asked him, and I would say he was one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever known. And so he led me, naturally, to a broad range of intellectual interests, although he was only a high school graduate himself. And this led me to believe from the very first days of my childhood that I would go on to college on my own. It was made clear to me from the beginning that that would be my own financial responsibility to go to college, unfortunately, because the grape business turned very bad in the mid 20’s. And so largely in the interests of satisfying general curiosity, I went to Occidental College, a small college in southern California, and took the gamut of courses, more or less, but settled down to major in chemistry, and minor in physics and math. (The reason I chose chemistry) was that I needed jobs, and I could get a laboratory assistant’s job in chemistry. So that’s the only reason I majored in Chemistry. I had never any calling of any kind towards science, any more than anything else. I just was curious.

Following his college experience, he had planned to return to his family's farm: my father had prejudiced me in favor of the complete independence of the farmer as regards his moral character. In the Spring of 1930, a man from Bell Laboratories (Addison recalls his name as Heffner) was recruiting at Occidental College. He went to work for a group headed by Stan Morgan, with a long-term goal of understanding dielectric constants to improve electrical capacitors. In 1936, he briefly studied quantum mechanics at Columbia (while still working for Bell Labs).

Throughout his career in Bell Labs, his career emphasis was solid-state physics. He had the opportunity to work on molecular rotations and dipole moments, deposited carbon on filaments, X-ray diffraction in crystals, and even a sub-divided project of the Manhattan Project.

He passed away in 2001.

Sources

1. ↑ ["United States Census, 1920," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHH9-RT3 : 14 December 2015), Addison White in household of Arthur T White, Dinuba, Tulare, California, United States; citing sheet 14A, NARA microfilm publication T625 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,820,152.]
2. ↑ https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4960#ftn.4

• Book: Three Degrees Above Zero: Bell Labs in the Information Age