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Karpeles, Leopold M. (Leo), M.D. – Navy Civilian Physicist
Dr. Leopold M. Karpels, Navy civilian physicist, as an electrician's mate when he served in the Navy during World War II.
U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

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A Physicist-Turned-Seaman in the Wake of Pearl Harbor

What does a physicist do in the Navy?
By Taira Payne
December 2020
Naval History
Volume 34, Number 6
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A 1941 graduate of the University of North Carolina, Karpeles that same year became a contract physicist for the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance. In that capacity he specialized in the degaussing and deperming of ships to provide protection against magnetic mines. He was also involved in measures against acoustic mines. He worked initially at the Boston Navy Yard in early 1942, then went to Pearl Harbor in April of that year. Karpeles continued in that work until 1945, becoming a civil service physicist in 1943.  He was drafted into the Navy as an enlisted man in May 1943 and subsequently served as an electrician's mate in the battleship USS Alabama (BB-60) until discharged in July 1946. Subsequently he was a physician, as well as teaching physiology and biophysics at the university level.

View of the new Navy Building and the Munitions Building, Potomac Park, Washington, DC, taken from the Washington Monument.
View of the new Navy Building and the Munitions Building, Potomac Park, Washington, DC, taken from the Washington Monument. (NHHC)

In this audio excerpt from his oral history, Dr. Karpeles describes the unique circumstances of his enlistment in the Navy in 1942, when he was 21 years old and fresh from a university physics degree. The fleet would find a good use for him, but first he had to go through such reactions as “What’s a physicist? Never heard of that.”

 

To read more about the Naval Institute Oral History Program, click here.

Taira Payne

Taira Payne was the Project Manager, Digital Assets & Web for the U.S. Naval Institute until January 2022. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science, specializing in Archives and Digital Curation, from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor’s in History from Washington College.

More Stories From This Author View Biography

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