Typescript of "A Physicist of the Lucky Generation," by John C. Slater

John Clarke Slater, 1900-1976, AB 1920, University of Rochester; AM 1922, PhD 1923, Harvard University, taught physics at Harvard from 1924 to 1930. In 1930 Slater came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as head of the Department of Physics at the invitation of Karl Compton soon after the latter assumed the presidency of MIT in 1930. Working with President Compton, Professor Slater was involved with expanding and strengthening science curriculum and research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1951 Slater was named Institute Professor, the first faculty member to hold that title. In 1966 he retired as Institute Professor emeritus and continued to be active professionally at both MIT and the University of Florida.

From 1940 to 1945 John Slater was a staff member of the government's radar research Radiation Laboratory housed on the MIT campus, and leader of Group 43, Theoretical Group. At MIT after the war he helped in the transformation of the Radiation Laboratory into the Research Laboratory of Electronics and helped to establish the Laboratory for Nuclear Science. His research focused on atomic and solid state physics, in which he made fundamental contributions to the science underlying the transistor.