Archiving physics and math history

To most, Clarence Melvin Zener and Richard Duffin aren’t household names.

But to people in the worlds of physics and mathematics, Zener and Duffin are pioneers who influenced generations of researchers in their fields — and much of their work is archived in the Clarence Melvin Zener Collection in the Carnegie Mellon University Archives.

Zener was a physics professor at CMU from 1968 until his death in 1993. Before coming to CMU, he taught at a number of other institutions, including the University of Chicago and Texas A&M University, where he served as the dean of its College of Science. He held an A.B. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University.

The list of Zener’s contributions is a long one. He discovered, for example, an electrical effect that led to the development of a Bell Labs voltage regulator, a device still used in everything from surge protectors to smartphones. He also made revolutionary discoveries in metallurgy, conducted research in ferromagnetism and elasticity and worked with the Watertown Arsenal during World War II and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation Research Labs over a period of 14 years.

Duffin began his career at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he earned both his bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. He joined Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1946, after a wartime role with the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C., where he worked on navigational equipment and mine-detecting technologies.

At CMU, Duffin worked on problems and authored publications involving graphs and networking, mathematical programming, differential equations and mathematical modeling.

Duffin began to collaborate with Zener in Pittsburgh, where they pioneered the discipline of geometric programming. Their first paper on the subject was published in 1967, and they went on to make further developments, which were useful for both pure mathematical studies as well as practical engineering and business administrative problems.

The collaborative work of both men are available for review in the University Archives; the works include many of the 125 books and papers authored by Zener, and 12 of his approved U.S. patent applications from the 1970s and 1980s.