The CalTech Years of Rudolf Mössbauer

In the summer of 1959, I was starting my third year as a graduate student in Physics at CalTech. I had passed all my course work and the qualifying oral exam, and was ready to begin my thesis research. I joined the group of Jesse DuMond and Felix Boehm, called Physics 34, which dealt mainly with X-rays, spectroscopy, and radioactive decay. The CalTech group that used a Van de Graaf generator as the main research tool was separate, and had a much higher profile.