Santa Fe Living Treasures – Elder Stories

"I didn't even know there was such a profession when I was in high school," he said, when asked why he became a physicist. "I went into electrical engineering. After a couple of years I found engineering was far too much cookbook stuff and learning how things were made but not why. My interest was in why."

Born to Benjamin and Effie Manley in 1907, John grew up an only child in Harvard, Illinois. "My family never had very much money," he recalled. "My father painfully worked his way through law school." John completed grade school and high school in Harvard, and earned a state fellowship at the University of Illinois.

John graduated in 1929 and accepted a tutoring job in Vienna for the winter. He returned to a fellowship at Westinghouse and received a doctorate in physics from the University of Michigan in 1934.

John met Kathleen Baird in New York when both were teaching at Columbia University. They married in 1935 and became parents to two daughters, Kathleen and Kim.

Please see Volume 1 for complete text.
Photo ©1997 by Joanne Rijmes