During his years at Columbia University, Rabi was considered an awful lecturer and a great teacher. His lectures, however, were famous at Columbia for being improvised and disorganized. The role apparently came to him quite naturally. He felt that intellectuals should have a life beyond their research specialty, and that scientists had a particular ethical responsibility. Science is an international enterprise and it can act as a unifying force for all humanity, and thereby counteract the divisive and destructive tendencies of almost all other human enterprises.
Science can be a good preparation for a useful life outside science.
Rabi's ideal whole man was Benjamin Franklin, who was initially a craftsman, and who became one of the greatest scientists of his time, and also a successful diplomat and statesman. I.I. Rabi as educator and science warrior. Gerald Holton, Dept. of Physics, Harvard Univ. The essential idea in classical molecular beam research was to allow a gas to escape from a very small hole into a high vacuum. Although the molecules may be neutral overall, they do possess small magnetic moments, and these magnetic moments can be quantitatively investigated by studying the behavior of the beam in applied magnetic fields.