Harrison McAllister Randall

Harrison McAllister Randall (December 17, 1870 – November 10, 1969) was an American physicist whose leadership from 1915 to 1941 brought the University of Michigan to international prominence in experimental and theoretical physics.

Randall was born in Burr Oak, Michigan on December 17, 1870. His family then moved to Ann Arbor, where he spent his formative years and most of his life. He graduated from the Ann Arbor High School (now Pioneer High School) in 1889, and then earned his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Michigan in 1893. A year later he completed a master's degree, then spent a few years teaching in high schools in West Bay City and Saginaw, living with his girlfriend Ida Muma who had a degree in classical studies from Michigan.

On August 24, 1898 he married Ida, then in 1899 he returned to the University of Michigan to work as an instructor and finish his doctorate. He completed his PhD in physics in 1902, and immediately took a position on the faculty of the University, where he remained for the next 38 years.

In 1910 Randall moved abroad to work under Professor Friedrich Paschen at the University of Tubingen—55 years before Tubingen and Ann Arbor would become sister cities. This was shortly after Paschen had discovered what is now called the Paschen series in the spectrum of hydrogen, and about 20 years after the discovery of what is now called Paschen's Law of electrical discharges. Randall said that he knew nothing about spectroscopy at the time and Paschen simply handed him a spectrometer and expected him to get to work—which he ultimately did. Even to the end of his life Randall considered Paschen his greatest mentor.

Prior to 1910, the Michigan Physics Department had focused on precision metrology. Dr. Randall, who took all of his degrees at Michigan, initially specialized in that subject. In 1902, his PhD thesis measured the coefficient of expansion of quartz. During his 1910-11 sabbatical year in Tübingen, Germany he met Friedrich Paschen and became an expert in infrared spectroscopy. Quantum mechanics did not yet exist as a field, and the study of atomic spectra was largely ad hoc experimentation with very little theoretical underpinning. This was also the training Randall received as a young physicist. But Randall came home from his 1910 sabbatical at Tubingen with new ideas (as well as some new equipment Paschen had helped him develop), and went on to lead a radical overhaul of physics research at Michigan.

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