Scope and Content Note
The papers of the physicist Louis Nicot Ridenour (1911-1959) span the years 1917-1960, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the postwar period, 1945-1959. The collection includes correspondence, draft and published writings, photographs, journals, reports, scientific papers, and printed matter arranged alphabetically by type of material.
Ridenour led the team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory that in the early 1940s developed the SCR 584, a radar device that was key to the first effective gun laying antiaircraft system. During 1944-1945 while chief of the Advisory Specialist Group of the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe commanded by Carl Spaatz, Ridenour adapted the SCR 584 to the close control of Allied fighter bombers in foul weather. He pioneered the development of airborne radar and radar controlled bomb sights. Journals from the World War II service file in the collection are a daily record of Ridenour's activities in the European and North African theaters of air operations.
In the postwar period Ridenour endeavored to familiarize the general public with the science and policy issues related to the new technology of atomic weapons and digital computers by writing for publications such as Atlantic Monthly, Fortune, Saturday Review of Literature, Scientific American, and in preparing numerous encyclopedia articles. He also sought to reach other scientists and technologists, especially engineers, through articles in specialist publications and by editing and cowriting books such as Modern Physics for the Engineer and Radar Systems Engineering.
These papers mainly document the writing and editing phase of Ridenour's career. Some of Ridenour's early fiction from his high school and college days and his correspondence as the editor of the University of Chicago's Daily Maroon is included in the early education file. Ridenour's long-term writing projects and consultant relationship with publishers generated a substantial correspondence with editors, coauthors, sources, and readers. Notable correspondents represented in the speeches and writing file include Lyman Bryson, Norman Cousins, Peter H. Davison, Dennis Flanagan, Hiram Haydn, Byron K. Ledgerwood, Larry Lessing, Lawrence M. Levin, Herrymon Maurer, Charles W. Morton, A. J. Muste, Oliver A. Nelson, Isabel Paterson, Gerard Piel, Herbert Solow, and Edward Weeks.
Ridenour's writing and editorial activities also occasioned many letters in the general correspondence. Editors, publishers, and writers not previously listed include Joseph Alsop, Cary F. Baker, Curtis G. Benjamin, Hugh H. Handsfield, Carl G. Nagel, James M. Reid, Leon Svirsky, Orin Tovrov, Thornton Wilder, and Philip Wylie. Scientist with whom Ridenour corresponded include Ralph D. Bennett, Edward L. Bowles, B. Vivian Bowden, and Kenʼichi Shinohara.