so for the q&as:

As far as we know you are a scientist in the field of atomic and molecular physics and the field of physics of ionized Gases, could you please explain to our readers what it actually is and how does it affect their lives, since we are experiencing increasing role of the science in modern societies?

This question is difficult for me to answer as I don’t really like describing to non-technical people what I do. I’d much rather talk about biking, skiing, shooting pool, cars, books, or even other areas of science. But, since I volunteered to do this interview, I’ll try to say something about the esoteric area of science within which I work. Ionized gases, or plasmas (not the same as blood plasma but the word has the same origin according to the Oxford English Dictionary), are merely gases of atoms and molecules in which some fraction of the atoms and molecules have had an electron removed. Such at atom or molecule is called an ion. So we have a gas consisting of atoms and molecules, ions, and free electrons. Such gases conduct electricity, which makes them very useful. The common example of the use of such a gas is the fluorescent lamp, which contains argon gas and some mercury atoms and some ions and electrons so that the gas conducts electricity when a voltage is applied across the lamp. As electricity passes through the gas it produces ultraviolet light, which is then converted to visible light by a phosphor that coats the inside of the lamp tube. It may be currently the world’s most profitable application of plasmas.

The earth’s upper atmosphere is a plasma as are stars and interstellar gas clouds. Plasmas of complex molecular gases are used for processing silicon wafers in the making of computer chips. That’s what I and my company deal with. We simulate on computers the physics and chemistry of such plasmas. In doing so we must know a lot about the physics of atoms, molecules, ions, and electrons and the chemical reactions of one kind of species with another. That’s atomic and molecular physics.

Although what we work on is only a small esoteric field, the general fields of atomic and molecular physics and of plasmas and their applications have a profound role in peoples lives. My major reason for liking to work in applied physics is that, in the end, what I do is related to something that’s part of the real world that people live and work in. It something that I can hang my hat upon, so to speak (see below about hats).

Something that is particular about you is that you operate your own company Kinema Research. Is it not unusual for a scientist not to be affiliated with some University or Institute or Industrial research laboratory? How does you private company for doing science operate, do you think that such system will expand in future and is it applicable in undeveloped countries such as Yugoslavia?

In the U.S. it is much more common than in other countries for a person to run a research company rather than be associated with a government institution of some sort. There are many, many companies of my kind. There are, however, few in the areas in which I work as most of them are associated with the defense and computer industries. My company derives part of its income from doing contract research for others, mostly industry and not government, and part from marketing specialized physics modeling software. I have tried to be diversified and not be too dependent on any one customer. I prefer dealing with industry rather than government. One must, in this business, be patient because it requires time to develop a market and customers for one’s services and products. This is very different from working at a university or a government laboratory but it is, in some ways, a much better environment for doing high quality research.

When I was in Belgrade in 1990, after the collapse of communism but before evil times befell Yugoslavia, people at a party that I attended were very hopeful of becoming entrepreneurs and developing and marketing ideas that they had. Those hopes were shortly to be dashed but, perhaps, the future is now brighter and such dreams can soon become realities. There is certainly risk associated with such entrepreneurship compared to working for an institution but, I think, it leads in the long run to more creative and generally better work. It is not clear to me why the U.S. in the only country where that kind of model is common but I think that it is something that others might explore to their great benefit.

Do you as a scientist have your favourite molecule, process, equation or experimental technique?

There are a number of molecules the physical and chemical properties of which interest me greatly. My favorite is probably H₂O, which has lots of very interesting properties. My favorite for consumption, as many other physicists can attest to, is CH₃CH₂OH disguised as beer or wine.

My favorite equation is Boltzmann’s equation, which describes the transport of atoms, molecules, and electrons in gases. My income for most of the past 30 years has been related in one way or another to the solution of Boltzmann’s equation.

My favorite process is the recombination of positive and negative ions, the physics of which the late Professor Sir David R. Bates of The Queen’s University of Belfast and I worked on for a number of years.

As I’m no longer an experimentalist, rather than a favorite experimental technique I do have a favorite computational technique. That is what is known as the Monte Carlo method, which amounts to simulating physical phenomena by rolling dice.

Did you know that Ludwig Boltzmann, has committed suicide in Pula (then a city in Italy, later in former Yugoslavia now in Croatia), apparently he was unhappy how the world treated his ideas on entropy. Entropy is one of the terms that is used quite generally even in the context of informatics and in social context. Do these extrapolations have any value?

I understand that what upset Boltzmann had to do more with the slow acceptance of the atomic theory of matter than with his ideas about entropy. I believe that the notion of entropy is in many ways, although not rigorously so, a concept that goes beyond the mere realm of physics. Indeed, I just yesterday received an email from a friend, who is not a physicist, noting that another friend seems to create entropy in any group of people with whom he is involved. We have all experienced such things and I think, even loosely applied, entropy is a valuable descriptive concept.

We understand that you have a number of Yugoslav friends and that you have visited our country once. What is your view of Yugoslav scientists and of their chances in the cutthroat business of science they are just waking up from 10 years of severe isolation? Is it true that scientists suffer more than other categories of population under isolations? Do you have any plans to visit Yugoslavia in near future?

I indeed have a number of Yugoslav friends and think that Yugoslavs have a long history of being quality scientists. The past decade has been tragic but that I now see more Yugoslavs at scientific conferences indicates, I think, that the situation is rapidly improving. That is good for the Yugoslavs and good for the rest of us as well. I hope to visit Yugoslavia again in the near future to see and, perhaps, collaborate with my very good friend Dr. Zoran Lj. Petrovic.

We witness that quasi- science, new age, postmodernism, creationism, whatever, become more and more prominent in modern intellectual circles. Do you as a scientist or as an intellectual have your view on this and on what is generally a very anti-intellectual climate in the modern world?

I have not quite figured out what postmodernism is. I think I recognize certain kinds of postmodern architecture but that’s pretty much all I know about it. I once read an article purporting to explain it but it didn’t make any sense to me. It seems to me that the new age stuff is merely a cover for intellectual laziness and a means for former hippies to make money by selling crystals, magnetic belts, and other pseudoscientific rigmarole to the naive. I think the universe is an extremely fascinating place full of interesting things and their scientific study is among the most exciting things that one can spend one’s life pursuing. There is really no need for quasi or pseudo-scientific hokum to make it more interesting.

Creationism is a somewhat different issue in some ways and the same issue in other ways. It seems clear that the point of creationism is to find a special place in the universe for the human life form. It appears to be a deeply rooted need for Christian Fundamentalists, who, not surprisingly, seem to be an American phenomenon. It’s clear as well that creationists find science to be a threat and that rather than merely eschew it, which would seem the most logical strategy; they try to manipulate it to their ends, thereby violating all the precepts of science. I think this is salesmanship and nothing more. People like things “scientific” and “creation science” is a way for Biblical literalist creationists to sell their wares. So, it’s no different from the selling of pseudoscientific rigmarole by the New Age segment of society.

I guess that I’ve never felt a need to have a special place in the universe and to have a personal god to tend to my needs and wants. I have little patience with that kind of thing. Life is what we ourselves make of it.

It seems to us that creationism is gaining media coverage or maybe even acceptance in USA, do you have any views on that?

I think that the intellectual ability of the American public is, on the whole, in decline. I would attribute it, in part, to the passivity and reduced attention span induced by a lifetime of watching TV. Along with that comes the expectation that one really doesn’t have to work very hard to explain or understand explanations of the workings of things, such as life, the universe, and everything. Creationism is an easy explanation that requires no intellectual background or special training. At the same time there is this need for people to have their special place in the universe. Part of this latter is, I suppose, is the historical American need to be special and not just another country in the world. Your readers may have observed that this is often reflected in American foreign policy. Sometimes I despair that Americans really do believe that they live in Never, Never Land and that they have a difficult time growing up.

Part of that climate is perhaps that political correctness has become a form of new religion in USA, yet the results seem to be rather unimpressive. For example in our country women have to survive double meanings, macho jokes and occasional embarrassing moments, but seem to have a better chance in following their careers and have families than women do in USA. Is the same with other forms of political correctness?

This is something that I actually know little of even though I’m immersed in American society. Perhaps what is known as PC is an exaggerated response to a historically serious problem that was often degrading to women. Sometimes, I suppose, it takes an initially exaggerated response to bring an issue to light and to make progress in dealing with it. That may be the radical in me speaking.

One of the interesting points about you is your image, you often wear cowboy boots, leather jacket and a hat (is it a Stetson hat??) even when you present invited lectures, that is certainly in contradiction with the nerdy image that scientists usually have. Is that image appropriate and is the perception of scientists as computer and math geeks justified?

I own only cowboy boots, running shoes, and skiing and hiking boots – I don’t own a pair of conventional street shoes. I used to have a Stetson brand hat but it was stolen in Belfast (not Belgrade!). I have a number of cowboy hats, however. Scientists need to loosen up – the nerdy or geeky image is too often true. I think that people in general would less inclined to turn off from science if scientists themselves seemed more like real people. As for myself, I do the things that I like to do and don’t worry much about what others think.

We understand that in the evenings you are most likely to be found in a bar playing pool, how important is it to you, your friends there certainly do not originate from the scientific circles? Is it possible to play pool in a bar that does not have a live band or at least a jukebox playing country music?

I like bars, especially if they have pool tables. Live bands playing rock or country rock are preferable but music of some sort is required. I recently was shooting pool in a bar that had a group playing lots of songs by the Grateful Dead and by The Band. They were terrific. A bar that I was shooting pool at in Australia had a jukebox that played rock videos on a large screen. That was very cool.

You often attend rock concerts, what are your preferences in music?

I like lots of kinds of music. I used to be fond of Grateful Dead concerts, have seen the Stones several times over the past 30 years, have always enjoyed Pink Floyd concerts, and am going to an Eagles concert next week. I saw the Elton John and Billy Joel tour this spring. Neil Young may be my favorite of the older musicians but I’ve never seen him in concert. My taste isn’t exclusively oldies, however. I’ve been listening to lots of SR-71, Wallflowers, Green Day, and Blink 182 recently. Of course, it won’t be long before they are “older” musicians as well. I like modern rock, most of which I pick up from my teenaged children. I often get insight into very interesting and unusual rock from my friend Zoran Petrovic. I have the good fortune to be able to listen to music frequently either in my office or on a Walkman during my daily 1-2 hour bike rides.

You belong to what can be broadly described as a hippie generation, were you a hippy in your youth, is it true that the hippie generation has sold out or as Joe Jackson puts it in one of his songs "All the hippies now work for IBM"?

I wasn’t a real hippie – although I had long hair and a beard and lived with a rock band, I bathed, did okay in school, worked at a job, and didn’t use drugs excessively. I was politically a radical and still am. I have retained lots of our idealism and idealistic values moderated, perhaps, by a somewhat more realistic – actually cynical might be the right word – perspective that comes with age. This is probably why I don’t work for IBM. In addition, at IBM I’d have to wear a suit and, not only do I not own a suit, I’ve never worn a suit. Of course, even at IBM, I would bet that most of the physicists are not really corporate creatures.

You live in Monument, a small city, a very small city at a wonderful location, you have a view of the front range of Rockies and Pike's peak and that is all at around 2000 m above the sea level. The nature in that region is one of the most beautiful in USA Was the freedom in choosing the place where you want to live the most important in your decision to leave big institutes and set up your own business?

Although Monument has grown from 1000 to 2000 people in recent years, it is, indeed, still a small town. Anyone considering setting up a small scientific business should consider doing so in a small western town.

Starting my own business was a natural thing for me to do. I’ve always been very independent and I had done lots of independent consulting over the years starting when I was a postdoc in the mid-1970s. So it made sense for me to start a business doing the kind of work that I’m skilled at and enjoy doing.

Your coworkers, you have two employees in your company, the apparently live more than a thousand miles away, how does it feel to come to work in such a company?

Actually it’s a virtual company no more. I have, at the moment, five employees although one of them is working with us for only the summer. Running and working with a small company is fun. I can’t think of a better place to work. In addition, I think we have the opportunity to more and better science that most people, either in industry or in the academic world, have.

You are known to be keen cyclist at that altitude you must be in pretty good shape

I work hard at it. I bike year round – about 6500 km/year. During the summer I’ll often ride about 200 km/week – 10-12 km in the morning, 40 km or so in the afternoon, and 60 to 100 km on Saturday or Sunday. When I’m riding on the trail and not on the highway I listen to a Walkman and a selection of rock tapes that have I recorded especially for riding. I find that vigorous exercise is good stress relief. I also use the time to do creative thinking.

You have climbed Mont Blanc, is it the highest spot that you've climbed?

I injured my back, which eventually resulted in extensive back surgery some years later, while ascending Mont Blanc and, thus, never actually reached the summit. So the highest mountains that I’ve been on the summits of have been some of the peaks in the Sierra Nevada in California, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and the Cascade Range in Washington, which are a few hundred meters lower than Mont Blanc. Some day I’d like to try Mont Blanc again but don’t know if I’ll ever again have the opportunity.

Which are your favourite spots in Rockies?

My favorite mountain town is probably Crested Butte, Colorado. There is excellent biking, hiking, backpacking, downhill skiing, and uphill skiing in the area. Other favorite areas are the Elk Mountains northwest of Aspen and the San Juan mountains in southwestern Colorado. Then, of course, there is the desert, which starts in the area of Grand Junction in western Colorado and extends across west across Utah and Nevada for some 1000 km until one reaches the Sierra Nevada range in California.

The area that I live in is pretty nice as well.

You have worked for one of the biggest national laboratories Lawrence Livermore is it true that you participated in experiments that involved nuclear explosions. How does it feel to have the power to order a nuclear explosion and how long did the expensive equipment last before it was evaporated?

I didn’t order nuclear tests but did participate in them. I was involved in the physics modeling of x-ray lasers that were powered by the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. The tests, which were performed about 500 meters underground, cost about US$50 million each. The whole experiment was over in a number of microseconds.

At some point in the mid-1980s I came to the conclusion that, although we had had some successes in demonstrating that one could power a very short wavelength x-ray laser using an exploding hydrogen bomb, development of anything practical in a finite time with a finite budget was so unrealistic as to fall into the category as self-deception. I do not believe that the leaders of the Laboratory and the x-ray laser program engaged in self-deception but they, nevertheless, continued to sell the program to the White House and Congress. In my opinion that meant that they were involved in purposeful deception, which I thought was wrong. So I became involved in a campaign to get the truth out to the public via the press. I do not really know how successful that was. Very successful in the short term, perhaps, but not in the long term. Star Wars is back again, which only goes to show that politicians, like most people, will believe what they want and need to believe despite the evidence at hand. It’s the triumph of hope over experience, which is what G.B. Shaw said of third marriages. This comes about in large part, I think, due to the abysmal understanding of science and technology that politicians and the general public have. I’m sure that ideology, which is anathema to rational thinking, plays a role as well.

I would like to think that scientists are above this kind of self-deception but indeed know better as the cold fusion fiasco and the existence of creation “science” have demonstrated. As long, however, as there are people willing to take a risk for the sake of truth and integrity in order to challenge the veracity of these kinds of developments, things like Star Wars and creationism can be kept in check. I think that, ultimately, among the most influential segment of the population anyway, truth and realism will prevail.

What is your feeling on the contribution of science to both positive and negative advances in the human civilization in the last half century?

I think, on the whole, that science and, of course, it’s natural offspring, technology, have been positive forces in the evolution of human civilization over the past half century and, indeed, over the past millennium. As has often been pointed out, a scientific development can simultaneously have very positive and well as very negative implications when turned into an application. That’s a dichotomy that we just have to live with. We’ve seen this dichotomy with virtually all technologies that have arisen from scientific thought that, by itself, was so-called “pure” science. Fifty years ago the emergence of nuclear technology – controlled and uncontrolled – from advances in atomic and nuclear physics was an example of such a dichotomy that still defies resolution. Indeed, even controlled nuclear technology has had its downside, as we see in the stories presently in the news about our inability to figure out what to do with nuclear waste.

The more contemporary scientific dichotomy has to do with our evolving ability to manipulate genetic information on the molecular scale. This can have profound consequences not only on the time scale of our human lifetimes but even on evolutionary time scales. How to deal with the implications and consequences of this work is an emerging challenge for humanity of the greatest significance.

We understand that you have a very old and a very rare car.

Yes, I drive a 1972 Saab Sonett that I bought on the first day of summer 1972. There were only a few thousand made and probably only a few hundred left. It has been a wonderful car. Since it’s low tech, it is fun to work on as well.

You claim on your web site that you do not have a TV set and haven't had one for several decades, and some of your friends that we know claim that it is true. How does it feel to live without a TV?

I watched lots of TV while growing up the 1950s and early 1960s but pretty much stopped watching TV in about 1965 and completely stopped watching in the mid-1970s. I do not miss it. My life has been one of active, not passive, pursuits. I’d much rather do something myself than watch some one else do something. I do like movies, although I don’t go the movies very often. I have a number of videos – mostly westerns and science fiction. I rarely, though, watch a video through from beginning to end. I will watch 15 or 20 minutes of a video while eating dinner and then it may be days, week, or months before I again put it in the VCR and watch another few minutes.

You must then read more books than an average TV watching person, which are your favourites, is there anything particularly good an new in the modern fiction and non-fiction literature?

Yes, I read from 30 to 50 books per year. I would read even more if I didn’t spend lots of my time working and so many hours weekly on my bicycle. I love reading. I go though periods when I read mostly non-fiction and then periods when I read mostly fiction. In the non-fiction literature I’m fond of biographies and history, especially the history of the world wars, medieval history, the history of the American west, and the history of science. At the fiction end of the literary spectrum I’m most fond of science fiction, the recent development of cyber-punk fiction, and mysteries – especially as historical fiction (Eco’s works, Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost, and Elizabeth Redfern’s just released The Music of the Spheres come immediately to mind). I keep a running list of my reading on my personal web site at www.leptonic.com.

On your web site you mention Eco as one of your favourite authors, have you ever read M.Pavic and his Dictionary of Khazars, he is an author who is often associated with Eco and at the same time he was described as the first 21st century author for his intensive use of reading procedure that would resemble hypertextual links in computerized documentation?

Yes, Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum are among my favorite books. I have not been aware of Pavic and his “Dictionary of Khazars” but am very interested in finding a copy. Regarding hypertext and electronic reading in the 21^st century, as wonderful and invention as hypertext is and as wonderful and computers are (I am writing this on a high end laptop PC while sitting in a session at a physics conference), I still and always will prefer books printed on paper. Their versatility cannot be matched by any electronic medium and display device.

Scientists seem to be keen on SF, and I understand that you fall into that category. Cyber punk seems to be the most acceptable form of SF, yet scientists also seem to like Star Trek even more. Some physicist even wrote a book The Physics of Star Trek trying to prove that most of the "science" in Star Trek is based on some present day or some possible future science. Do you share that view?

I love science fiction (but not fantasy) and have been reading it all my life. The first science fiction book that I read was H.G. Wells The Time Machine when I was in grade school. I did not care much for the original “Star Trek” series and only saw a few of the episodes in the 1960s but I do like the most recent set of movies starting Patrick Stewart (perhaps because he’s bald). I have, though, come to like cyber punk very much. I like the works of the authors William Gibson and Neal Stephenson and I like the movies The Matrix and X-Men. I have as well a fascination with post-apocalyptic science fiction and enjoy movies such as Independence Day and The Postman. My favorite book of that genre may be Walter Miller’s A Canticle of Leibowitz.

I’ve always been most fond of science fiction that involves interstellar travel covering vast spans of distance and time. Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War comes immediately to mind as a favorite. I don’t know if the future of humanity includes interstellar travel but one can always hope and watch Galaxy Quest and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the interim. Unfortunately that future would occur long after my life has passed.

Do you know that Nikola Tesla a Serbian who later became USA citizen lived quite close to Monument in Colorado Springs where he conducted some of his craziest experiments; one is often quoted in the SF literature as the first radio message to the aliens?

Tesla’s name is well known in Colorado Springs. This summer my son was going to summer school at a school named “Tesla School”. It is unfortunate that so few Americans and even so few people who live in Colorado Springs have any understanding of Tesla’s work or even of science in general.

It seems that scientists are far from nerds but a bunch of clever people who are able to do what they like and get paid reasonably well for what the like to do, to travel a lot and to have most of their friends around the world, would you recommend that career to a young person starting today?

It has been a wonderful career for me. As I write this I’m sitting in a talk on C-60 at a conference in Lincoln, Nebraska. At our dinner table last night there were a couple of Americans but also people from Northern Ireland, Germany, France, and Sweden. The intellectual challenge of science, the travel, the international friendships make our profession a most worthwhile lifetime endeavor. I can’t imagine doing anything else.

And finally your name is William Lowell Morgan yet all your friends call you Skip to the point that some people may believe that it is your real name. Is there any story associated with that name?

My grandmother, who died a few years ago at the age of 104 years, began calling me “Skippy” when I was very small. Indeed, she always called me Skippy. Everyone else called me Skip when I started school. The nickname Skip has stuck for more than 50 years even though I have, at times, tried going exclusively by Lowell, which is a name that I like.