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How The Cow Happened - Al Overhauser, R. Colella, A. W. Overhauser

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

In the course of a casual conversation during a social gathering, in the spring of 1974, we were discussing some recent developments in the area of diffraction from perfect crystals, namely, interferometry in the Angstrom region. I (R.C.) was asked by Al Overhauser whether or not I knew anything about the subject. "Not much" was my answer, "but I can read some papers". Al then proceeded to describe a possible experiment, namely, the effect of gravity on the quantum mechanical phase of the neutron, in essence, what later was called the COW experiment (Colella, Overhauser, Werner).