A namesake and descendent of David Rittenhouse, one of early America’s preeminent physical scientists, David R. Inglis enjoyed a career in nuclear physics that ranged from theoretical work on the structure of the nucleus in the 1930s to the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s to the protracted struggle against nuclear weaponry and nuclear power. Born in Detroit, Michigan, on October 10, 1905, Inglis graduated from Amherst College (1928) before receiving his doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1931 for a dissertation on energy relations in complex spectra.

Like many ambitious young scientists of his generation, Inglis traveled abroad to strengthen his credentials. Well versed in current issues in the field from having attended the series of symposia on theoretical physics held in Ann Arbor, Inglis spent a year in Heidelberg, immersing himself in the rapidly developing field of quantum mechanics. When he returned to the States in 1933, however, he found himself in a state of academic vagabondage, passing through a succession of faculty positions at Ohio State (where he met and married Dorothy Kerr), Pittsburgh, and Princeton before landing at Johns Hopkins in 1938. There, he devoted himself to developing a program in experimental nuclear physics while conducting significant research on the nature of spin-orbit coupling in 7Li. When later confirmed, this work is believed, as Hanna et al. (1997) report, to represent the first assignment of an excited nuclear level based on a microscopic quantum mechanical theory.

Inglis’ tenure at Hopkins was interrupted by wartime service with the Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Grounds (1943) and the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Laboratory, N.M. (1943-1946). He returned to civilian life in 1946 and to his work on atomic structure and angular distribution studies, but the war was clearly a watershed in the development of his commitment to what he called public affairs. Having gained an insider’s perspective on nuclear annihilation, he gradually turned against nuclear power. Joining the Argonne National Laboratory as a senior scientist in 1949, Inglis spent two decades in the development of peaceful uses for nuclear power, but more notably, he emerged as a prominent figure in the nuclear disarmament movement. As a founding member of the Federation of American Scientists and participant in the Pugwash conferences during the 1950s and 1960s, Inglis was an prominent voice for rationality in discussions of nuclear weaponry. As early as 1951, he called for the creation of a federal agency for arms control and disarmament (not established for another nine years later), and both in congress and before the public, he lobbied steadily for nuclear disarmament and for a partial nuclear test ban (approved in 1963), and against nuclear proliferation and the development of antiballistic missiles. A series of articles he published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Saturday Review, and the New Republic were influential in raising public awareness of the dire implications of radioactive fallout, the hydrogen bomb, and the complexities of international arms control.

After retiring from Argonne and joining the faculty at UMass Amherst in 1969, Inglis’ activism expanded to include a concern with American energy policy. Calling attention to the critical problems of global dependence on fossil fuels and the dubious safety of nuclear reactors and long-term waste storage, Inglis became an advocate for alternative energy, particularly wind power, writing several books and chapters on nuclear and alternative energy. He felt a strong responsibility, as he wrote, for establishing a dialogue between scientists and the public as the best means of preserving democracy.

A highly prolific writer, Inglis contributed dozens of articles both in theoretical physics and public affairs over the course of his career, and was recipient of a number of honors and awards, including honorary degrees from Amherst College (1963) and the University of Illinois (1973), and the Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the Public Interest (1974) for his work on the social and strategic implications of nuclear energy. Inglis retired from UMass in 1975 and over the last several years of his life, continued occasionally to contribute to public debates. Inglis and his wife Betty (Dorothy) moved into the Applewood retirement community in September 1991. Betty died in 1993, followed by David died on December 3, 1995.

Betty and David Inglis, June 1992

The papers of David R. Inglis offer a perspective on the life and career of a theoretical physicist who grew from an early involvement in the Manhattan Project to becoming a committed critic of nuclear weaponry and nuclear power. Although the collection is relatively sparse in unpublished scientific work, it includes outstanding correspondence relating to Inglis’s work with the Federation of American Scientists and other organizations, and his efforts to influence public policy on issues relating to nuclear power. The collection also includes the majority of Inglis’ scientific publications and his published contributions on public affairs, as well as selected subject files, course notes, and lab notes. The later materials in the collection reflect Inglis’s late-career work in alternative energy.

Among the collection’s highlights are copies of notes distributed at Los Alamos University in 1945-1946, including Teller and Konopinski on quantum mechanics and Schiff and Baroody on statistical mechanics; Inglis’ notes from his work at Argonne National Laboratories; and a six part oral history conducted with Inglis in 1989, looking back at his career.

The UMass Amherst Libraries own the following of Inglis’ books:

• Inglis, David R., Dynamic Principles of Mechanics (Philadelphia:, 1949). Call no.: UB150315 (Depository)
• Inglis, David R., Nuclear Energy: Its Physics and Social Challenges (Reading, Mass.:, 1973). Call no.: QC792.I55 (ISEL)
• Inglis, David R., To End the Arms Race: Seeking a Safer Future (Ann Arbor:, 1986). Call no.: JX1974.7.I54 1986 (Du Bois)
• Inglis, David R., Wind Power and Other Energy Options (Ann Arbor:, 1978). Call no.: TK1541.I54 (ISEL)

A pacifist, war-tax resister, and advocate for social justice, Randy Kehler was born in Bronxville, New York, on July 16, 1944 and raised in Scarsdale. From Philips Exeter Academy, Kehler went on to Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1967 with a degree in government. It was at Harvard that Kehler first became politically active, working with the Harlem chapter of CORE to organize support for the 1963 March on Washington and directing programs for inner city children at a Boston settlement house. He credits Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech” during the March on Washington with changing his life, moving him toward an increasingly radical stance.

In 1964, Kehler went to Africa to teach in Tanzania. There he met Congolese refugees who had been forced out of their villages when unmarked U.S. planes had dropped napalm bombs. At one point he was mobbed because his backpack said “U.S. Army.” This experience had a profound effect on Kehler. Upon returning to Harvard, he heard that the United States was dropping napalm bombs on the Vietnamese and he began organizing against the Vietnam War. In 1965, Kehler started “Letters for Peace,” a letter writing campaign to Washington. A short time later, Kehler signed a petition entitled, “We Won’t Go” and acknowledged to himself that he was willing to be imprisoned for anti-war beliefs. Although he moved on to Stanford in 1967 to pursue graduate work in education, he left after only three weeks to work full time in the movement against the Vietnam War.

Taking a job with the War Resisters League in San Francisco in 1967, Kehler joined a small number of protestors by refusing to pay his telephone taxes as a protest against military expenditures, and he returned his draft card to the Selective Service. As a result of his non-compliance with the draft, he was arrested in 1969. He represented himself at trial and argued that the law itself was unjust. He refused to argue his case as a conscientious objector because he felt that was simply a form of cooperation with the government’s actions in Vietnam. Kehler was found guilty and served twenty-two months of a two year sentence for his act of resistance.

By 1973, Kehler was participating in local community organizing and economic development work in Western Massachusetts. He co-founded the Traprock Peace Center in 1979, served as National Coordinator for the National Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign from 1981 to 1984. From 1986-1988, he worked on staff of the Peace Development Fund’s Exchange Program, offering strategic advice for grassroots justice and peace groups across the country. In 1989, Kehler was also one of the founders of the Working Group on Electoral Democracy to encourage political reform and create a pro-democracy movement in the United States. Kehler married Betsy Corner in 1976, and they had their first child, a daughter, in the following year.

In 1977, the first year that they had a taxable income, Kehler and Corner decided to withhold their federal income tax as a protest against United States military expenditures and involvement in global human rights violations. The couple continued to pay state and local taxes and donated their federal tax money to various charities. Although the IRS response was slow, in 1989 they moved to foreclose on Kelher and Corner’s Colrain home to recover back taxes. After finding no bidders when the house was put up for auction, the IRS bought the house themselves and began eviction proceedings. They arrested Kehler and Corner for trespassing on federal property in 1990, and when they returned to the house following their release in 1991, they were arrested yet again. After agreeing not to return to the house, Corner was released, but Kehler’s refusal to cooperate earned him an additional six months in jail in Northampton for contempt of court. After another IRS auction resulted in a buyer for his Colrain home in February 1992, a group of friends and supporters of Kehler occupied the house for several weeks until they were forced out by the new owners, Danny and Terry Franklin, on April 15, 1992.

Despite being removed the house, the Kelhers continued to fight. A vigil was set up on the property that was sustained for over eighteen months by various affinity groups and supporters. Although the Franklins owned the house, the property surrounding it was owned by the Valley Community Land Trust (VCLT) and the water system was shared by the surrounding neighbors. As soon as the Franklins moved in, the VCLT took legal actions to have them removed based on several stipulations in the Kehlers’ lease, including one that made the lease on the land non-transferable. During the eighteen months of sustained vigil outside the Colrain home, the protestors brought the Franklins water in hopes of reaching of amicable settlement. Ultimately, in 1994, after an undisclosed negotiated settlement, the Franklins vacated the house. However, the Kehlers declined to move back into the Colrain house, insisting that their actions were intended to protest the government’s use of their tax dollars, not to regain their property. The Kehlers currently live in a house owned by Betsy’s mother on another lot in the Valley Community Land Trust. They continue to withhold their federal income taxes and have said they will never own anything again.

The Randy Kehler Papers document the five year struggle (1989-1994) of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and his wife Betsy Corner to fight the Internal Revenue Service’s seizure and sale of their home while raising awareness of government military expenditures and practices. The collection includes meeting minutes, notes, correspondence, scrapbooks and newspaper clippings; letters to the editor, essays, articles, plans and strategy for the vigil set outside the Kehler home, support committee information and actions, correspondence with government officials, IRS, and the Justice Department; hundreds of letters of support from all the country, court documents from the legal proceedings and political literature addressing the Kehlers’ situation.

This collection is organized into five series:

• Series 1: Colrain Action, 1989-1994
• Series 2: Correspondence, 1978-1997
• Series 3: Legal, 1984-1993
• Series 4: Media, 1979-1995
• Series 5: Scrapbooks, 1987-1993

For additional materials related to peace movements in the Special Collections and University Archives, see:
Traprock Peace Center Records, MS 80
Valley Peace Center Records, MS 301