Sidney D. Drell, 1926-2016

Linda Bernard

Sid was a real Mensch. I miss him so much already! I loved running into him in the hallways at Hoover and chatting a bit. Our ongoing joke was that I always asked him: "Sid, did you just get back from Washington, and which medal did you get this time?" He would chuckle, but more often than not, he HAD just received another prestigious award! Most of all, he was a magnificent human being.

Matt Allen

I was a physics grad student at Stanford 1955-1959. I took the 3 quarter QM course in 1956/7 given by Sid since Leonard Schiff was on Sabbatical that year. Professors lectured in jackets and ties those days. 
Sid entered the room took off his jacket rolled up his shirt sleeves loosened his tie and gave, for the next 50 minutes, a clear lecture delivered with great enthusiasm for the subject. He was the best!

Susan Ngarian

I first met Dr. Drell during my job interview on November 1st, 2016. He asked about pronouncing my name and how he should address me. I said to him "Just call me Su" and he laughed. OK, he said, "call me Sid" and from then on he called me Su and I called him Sid. I truly loved working with Sid. He was indeed a remarkable person. A true pioneer and an expert in the field of nuclear nonproliferation, Dr. Sidney Drell left behind a legacy for many of us to continue the great work he was so committed in and the great cause he had been fighting for for so long.

Ricardo Jara

Dr. Drell was one of the kindest, smartest, friendliest men I have had the pleasure of getting to know through my time here at the Hoover Institution, we would usually talk about sports, in that manner he was just one of the fellas, but i knew he was more than just a regular guy, so accomplished in everything he did, a brilliant man, a true leader, he always had time for a kind greeting & banter on any subject that was of interest, he always was in great spirits, I will truly miss him & our conversations, my thoughts & prayers are with DR.Drell & his family, a huge loss not only to our Stanford family, but more so to the World. REST PEACEFULLY, GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN

Jim Hoagland

Being in Sid Drell's presence was to take a master class in the meaning of character and essence. Sid believed passionately in ideas, in science, and in human dignity. I came to know Sid through George Shultz, and once wrote about them being the ultimate Odd Couple in outward style. You always knew what Sid was thinking---he would tell you at the drop of a hat---but you frequently have no idea of what George thinks at any given moment, you only know that he is thinking, and deeply. Their lasting bond is basing their approach to everything on bedrock integrity.

And to sit with Sid and Harriet was to be with the Perfect Couple, to engage on and explore music, literature, human endeavor and human foolishness of every sort. You also came to understand their love of their most tightly knit of families. I frequently thought that Sid was wise to marry this Southern woman, a true steel magnolia, whose intellectual heritage would include a taste for a strong-willed mate who would be passionate about all his causes, even extremely difficult ones.

Jennifer Navarrette

I had the pleasure of designing covers for a few of Sid's books over the years. He was such a wonderful author and man to work with. A very kind soul that will be missed!

Hu Side

Since the late 1980's, Chinese nuclear scientists have begun to communicate with their American counterparts in the field of nuclear arms control. As the chairman and member of the Chinese Scientists Group on Arms Control (CSGAC), I learned from the exchanges with the National Academies CISAC and Stanford CISAC over the past three decades that there were many well-known physicists in the arms control field in the United States, among which Dr. Drell was an outstanding representative. As a top advisor to the US government on military technology and arms control, he expressed independent and insightful opinions on many important issues. In particular, his views on the issue of ballistic missile defense and his proposals for consultation with China on strategic security were both far-sighted and impressive.

I met Dr. Drell twice during our team's visit to CISAC at Stanford University in 2009 and 2013. In my conversations with him on the "nuclear-weapons-free world" initiative, I felt his concern about the various nuclear risks posed by nuclear weapons and his courage and wisdom in promoting a deep and stable process of nuclear disarmament. I found that I shared a lot of common views with him in using scientific and technological knowledge to serve national security, world peace and stability.

Today, at a time when the international nuclear arms control is facing difficulties, I miss Dr. Drell even more. His insights and courage in advancing nuclear arms control inspire us to continue our efforts. I sincerely hope that the cooperation between Chinese and American scientists and arms control experts will be strengthened to inject new vitality into China-US relations and arms control process.

Benjamin Svetitsky

I came to SLAC from Princeton as a graduate student in 1976. I thought Sid was especially nice to me because of his Princeton roots but of course he was that nice to everybody. Every time he met my wife Sara, a Princeton graduate, he would shake his head afterward and mutter, "I still can't believe they have women at Princeton."

The graduate students occupied desks scattered around a large open area at the end of the hall. Sid often told visitors that "the graduate students are the most important people here. That's why they have the biggest office."

As deputy director, Sid's office opened off the director's suite and thus was guarded by the secretaries of the director's office. I suppose they limited access severely but Sid had a back door that opened into the students' "office." This door was always open; I guess more senior people were welcome to use it as well as the students. It was only closed when Sid had to take a confidential phone call, and this wasn't too frequent. As Sid's student, I wandered in and out fairly freely. If Sid had things to do at his desk, it didn't bother him if students and collaborators just kept on arguing in his office.

When I arrived, the project that was recently wrapped up was the SLAC bag model of hadrons (Roscoe Giles did his PhD on this before I got there). Sid observed that every few years, he made the mistake of tangling with strong coupling physics. But from the SLAC bag he went to lattice gauge theory, a recent invention that was tailored for strong couplings. We worked on lattice theory during my four years at SLAC, collaborating with Marvin Weinstein and Helen Quinn. All the work was analytical, since Monte Carlo methods had not been introduced.

Sid set the tone for seminars. If things were too quiet he started asking naïve questions. The seminar exchanges generally stayed friendly. (When Sid went away for a few months the atmosphere was noticeably different.) Early in my career I asked Sid a question about the seminar that had just ended. He said, "Why don't you go find the speaker and ask him." Thus I learned to approach total strangers and start discussions. At SLAC, shyness was not regarded positively.

Then as now I enjoyed reading stories about the golden age of quantum mechanics, the adventures of Niels Bohr and his gang in Copenhagen (e.g., Gamow's books). I thought it would be great to be alive back then. But I realized that what we had at SLAC was just as extraordinary ‐ the excitement of physics in the 1970's as well as the close community of one of the great centers of theoretical physics in the world. One shouldn't discount the presence and contributions of many prominent and not-so-prominent people. Nonetheless, there was wide agreement that Sid was crucial for the success of the SLAC theory group.

Herman Winick

I came to Stanford in summer 1973 as the Technical Director for the first beam line of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project (SSRP). This beam line began research in March, 1974 as a parasitic, secondary program to exploit the synchrotron radiation produced during e+/e- colliding beam operation for high energy physics experiments on the SPEAR storage ring at SLAC. SPEAR had two colliding beam interaction regions, each equipped with a detector. 

The West interaction region was occupied by the Mark I detector used by a team led by Burt Richter, who also led the team which designed and built SPEAR. The East interaction region was open to others to propose and build detectors for use there. Since these two teams had different scientific objectives they often had different preferences about the SPEAR stored beam energy. To work out these differences and to determine the SPEAR energy and schedule, Panofsky asked Sid Drell to meet with spokespersons for the two high energy physics experimental groups. 

SSRP strongly preferred the highest energy since this produced the most synchrotron radiation, but, as parasites, SSRP had no say in this. However, as a courtesy, Sid invited a spokesperson for SSRP to attend these meetings, essentially as an observer. Because SPEAR was at the frontier of high energy physics, there was great excitement and anticipation of important results, and the two experimental groups were each very eager to have SPEAR operate at energies that were optimal for their experiments. 

As the spokesperson for SSRP I had an opportunity to observe Sid navigating between the often conflicting demands, and sometimes loud voices, of the two high energy physics experimental groups. On rare occasions, when there was no clear solution to the conflicting demands of these two groups, Sid would favor the higher energy preferred by SSRP. I sometimes think that Sid may have had insight to the important results that would come from photon science at SLAC over the next decades at SSRP, and the growth of photon science when SSRP became a laboratory (SSRL) rather than a project, followed by the rebuilding of SPEAR as a dedicated light source and the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), which used the SLAC linac to drive the world's first x-ray free-electron laser.

Arye Carmon

Sid was an exceptional human being who combined an incredible mind, intellect and academic talent with enormous soul and heart. His internal beauties always reflected over anyone around him. 
I was so fortunate to have been introduced to him by George Shultz over a dozen years ago (2003), and together with George and myself he was among the founders of the International Advisory Council of the Israel Democracy Institute, later to participate in meetings in Israel, at Stanford and the East Coast. 
Tzipa and I feel so lucky to have been able to spend an evening two months ago (October 2016), with Harriet and Sid over dinner. We will always cherish his memory.

Bob Jaffee

I'd like to share the talk I gave at Sid's retirement celebration in 1998. It contains many stories about Sid and in also has a couple of wonderful photos of Sid that Harriet was kind enough to make available to me. 

One Theorist's Perspective on Four Eras of Electron-Proton Scattering by Robert Jaffee...A transcription with minor alterations of the talk presented to honor Sid Drell on the occasion of his retirement.

Thomas Henricksen

Sid Drell's smile is something I will remember about him as long as I live. For me, one of my strongest memories of Sid was the help he gave me with a conference paper and later essay in the book, IMPLICATIONS OF THE REYKJAVIK SUMMIT ON ITS TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY, which he edited with George Shultz. I learned that he was less enamored of missile defense as requirement for a nuclear-free world than I was. Despite his reservations about my point of view, he willingly helped me with technical parts of my argument, saving me from committing amateurish errors. He was more than civil; he was generous and charitable to me. It was a memorable experience.

Stan Brodsky

One of Sid Drell's pioneering accomplishments in theoretical physics at SLAC was his derivation with Anthony C. Hearn of an "Exact Sum Rule for Nucleon Magnetic Moments".

The Drell-Hearn paper was published in Physical Review Letters in April, 1966. Their remarkable sum rule relates a dynamical process -- polarized photoproduction reactions on a proton or neutron, summed over energy, to a fundamental property of the nucleon -- its magnetic moment. (The sum rule was derived independently in Russia by S. B. Gerasimov and is now known as the DHG sum rule.)

However, a year later, in 1967, Professors Gabriel Barton at the University of Sussex and Norman Dombey at Harvard University published an article in the Physical Review claiming that even if the DGH sum rule is valid for nucleons, it is false for nuclei ! 

I never saw Sid so mad! Sid emphasized that his derivation with Tony Hearn was based on fundamental physics principles, - a rigorous dispersion relation and the low energy theorem for Compton scattering. Sid said it was inconceivable that the DHG sum rule would not also hold for nuclei. 

Sid asked his student at the time, Joel Primack -- now an astrophysicist at UC Santa Cruz -- to uncover Barton and Dombey's error. Joel brought me into this topic, and we discovered a fundamental theoretical mistake -- Barton and Dombey had boosted the nuclear wavefunction from rest to a nonzero momentum incorrectly. We showed that the boost of a nuclear wavefunction cannot be written as the product of boosts of the individual nucleons, a common misconception in physics -- there is an additional dynamical contribution due to nuclear binding. 

When one performs the boost of the nucleus correctly, not only is the DHG sum rule completely valid, but one also verifies the low energy theorem for Compton scattering on composite systems. 

Sid Drell was absolutely right. Barton and Dombey were, in fact, grateful and relieved to understand the new insights into boosting the wavefunctions of composite systems. 

Primack and I published two papers in Physical Review and Annals of Physics in 1968, which are primary references for computing the electromagnetic interactions of composite systems. In our acknowledgements, we wrote "We especially wish to thank Professor S. D. Drell for his continued encouragement and many helpful suggestions. "

Mike Woods

I only had a few physics interactions with Sid, most notably for determining the sign of an asymmetry in Compton scattering and understanding sign conventions for left and right polarization and spin in optics and particle physics. 

For many years I had the pleasure to interact with Sid and Burt Richter for SLAC's Annual Theory vs Experiment Softball Game. I'd enjoy visiting their offices to determine what dates they'd be available so we could decide when to schedule it. Begun in the 1950s as a Faculty versus Students game on the Stanford campus, Sid and Burt brought this tradition to SLAC and respectively led Theory and Experiment teams to compete for bragging rights in the Research Division. 

With superior numbers and statistics, Experiment prevailed far more often than Theory. The 1st Theory win was in 1974, year of the November revolution. Their 2nd win came in 1982 and their final win was in 2003. Then in 2007, the competing Experiment and Theory teams merged to become the Research team which now competes against a new Accelerator team -- and we now have lab-wide participation in SLAC's Annual Softball Game. 

... more comments with pictures and links in attachment. + info on SLAC softball at http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/softball/default.htm

Inga Karliner

I came to graduate school at Stanford University as a young refugee from Poland, helped by Professors Robert Hofstadter and Leonard Schiff. I wanted to work in elementary particles theory. In the middle of my second year, my advisor Professor Schiff died suddenly. There were no other particle theory tenured faculty at the Physics Department so I asked SLAC theory faculty if I could work with them. Professor Fred Gilman welcomed me and I joined other graduate students in SLAC Theory Group in the summer 1971. 

Sid Drell was the head of Theory Group. Sid's warmth and accessibility were striking. I remember "My name is Sid !", in his loud voice, to anyone who called him "Professor Drell," be it students or secretaries. His office was always open to all. Sid's style helped made the theory group at SLAC supportive and friendly for all, including graduate students. Sid also organized talks by graduate students, where we learned, in a protected setting, to give talks and to think on our feet, with no faculty or postdocs allowed. The only PhD in the room was Sid, supportive and constructive in his responses. 

The open atmosphere extended to politics. While people at SLAC had different opinions about Vietnam and about President Nixon, Sid was open to talk, and I remember listening to many discussions. During the Watergate era we were all watching in horror and fascination the uncovered facts about people holding the highest offices in the country. For me, perhaps the most memorable moment from that time involving Sid Drell came at a public discussion of disarmament at Stanford, with professors and government advisors Sid Drell and Edward Teller on the panel. Teller tried to assert that he knew things the audience did not have access to, so we should trust his argument. Sid Drell, who had the same clearance as Teller, bellowed: "You and I know it's not true !". I still think "Wow!" when I remember it. For me, a recent refugee from an authoritarian country, this was amazing. 

Sid used to pretend and joke that he tried to prevent his daughter Persis from becoming a physicist. But he asked me to meet Persis, then in high school, at a party in his house, so that she would meet a woman physicist. At the time I was the *only* female physicist at SLAC. 

Finally, another topic, given frequent assumption of "superiority" of theorists, I remember Sid's enormous respect for Pief. When Pief took a sabbatical and Sid was the acting director, Sid loudly counted days and new gray hairs, and wondered how Pief managed all this without getting as exhausted as he did.

Shimon Yankielowicz

In the fall of 1974 I finished my Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute and came to SLAC as a young post-doctoral fellow. At the time, the book of Bjorken and Drell was THE modern book on Quantum Field Theory. It was the book from which all of my generation learned QFT. Clearly I studied it well and redid all the calculations carefully. 

I thought I found somewhere in the calculation of some scattering amplitude a mistake by a factor that I no longer remember. When I came to SLAC and I was just starting to know Sid, I entered his office carrying the book. Sid was an idol for me and I was quite shy and uneasy. 

"Look", I started, "I think, I believe, maybe ... there is one mistake of some factor in this formula in your book". 

Sid looked at me with his bright eyes and good father-like smile on his face and responded: 

"Say no more, I'll assume you are right and this is the only mistake in the book. How much did you pay for the book in Israel ?". 

I was caught off guard and felt confused. I started to state, 

" Well I'm not sure, I do not remember..." 

Sid looked again with his good smile, took out a quarter coin, handed it to me and said: 

"I think this will compensate you for buying defective goods, a book which carries one mistake. It's roughly the royalty I get for each book."

Lance Dixon

Sid was a great mentor to me from the time I arrived at SLAC in 1986. His personality set the tone for the SLAC theory group: open doors, a friendly atmosphere, and long-running seminars with the audience constantly peppering the speaker with questions. 

Sid was also a very busy guy in those years, deputy director of the lab and busy with many high-profile arms control issues. And of course he had certain diplomatic skills. At the SLAC theory seminars, Sid always sat near the door to the seminar room. I began to notice that about 15 minutes into basically every seminar, he would get a note from his administrative assistant, Bonnie Rose, indicating that he had received a phone call. If the seminar was a good one, Sid would crumple up the note and continue to listen. But if not, he would discreetly leave the room in order to return the "phone call". I always wanted to find one of those crumpled-up notes to see if anything was actually written on it...