１５００年歷史的河北景州塔塔體維修完工

Question

The Lamb effect was experimentally verified by Willis Lamb and Retherford. According to Wikipedia, Retherford was a graduate student in Lamb's lab, but no other information seems to be available about him.

Retherford's Semantic Scholar page shows only one other publication distinct from his work on the Lamb shift experiment (and I'm not sure if this publication refers to the right person since it is in a completely different field and shows affiliation to a different university). Also, he seems to have written a book review that does not seem to be available online.

Overall, it is a very strange situation: Retherford was nominated for the Nobel prize along with Lamb, but only Lamb won it; Retherford is also only mentioned once in Lamb's speech (emphasis mine):

It had been showed in 1924 by Webb$^9$ at Columbia University that meta-stable mercury atoms could liberate electrons from metals, but no one had either produced or detected the strange metastable form of hydrogen, and it was not certain that a beam of it could be detected through its ejection of electrons. On the basis of these rather doubtful prospects, I persuaded Retherford$^{10}$ to attempt the experiment represented schematically...

My questions are as follows:

1. What happened to his academic career? How did it pan out? Did he continue or did he leave academia?
2. Was he ever significantly credited for his work on the Lamb shift?

Answer 1

An oral history interview of his son Bob Retherford exists which gives a brief glimpse into Robert C. Retherford's career trajectory:

My father went back to graduate school to get a Ph.D. in physics after the war. He was at Columbia University, and we lived in New Jersey. After getting his degree and working a while at the Columbia University Radiation Lab, he took a job at the University of Wisconsin. So when I was nine, we moved there. And I lived there until age 19. I did my freshman year at the University of Wisconsin. I was a chemistry major. Then my father decided to leave Wisconsin, and he took a job in California, in the electronics industry, down near Stanford.

Hence one can derive that he stayed at University of Wisconsin for 10 years, then left academia for industry. This is compatible with time periods mentioned by njuffa in comments.

P.S. Based on the findings of njuffa, Retherford did return to academia in 1964 after 4 years in industry at Varian. The University of Illinois, Chicago Circle (now University of Illinois Chicago) was being constituted to be opened in 1965, and Retherford was hired at the rank of full Professor in 1964. Between 1965-67 he served as associated dean of the graduate school. It is unclear if he remained in college administration or returned to a standard faculty duties after. He became emeritus in 1977.

On the question of recognition, one can routinely find his name in work exposing the discovery of the Lamp shift. However, I am not aware of any reward-style recognitions. Retherford was nominated for the nobel prize in 4 different years by 8 nominators, including 3 by Werner Heisenberg, compared to 22 nominations over 5 years for Lamb. Kusch who ended up sharing the 1955 Nobel prize with Lamb received 3 nominations over 2 years. I am unaware of any statements by Retherford that indicates that he felt snubbed or otherwise overlooked by the decision.

The Nobel committee archive might be able provide more detail, given that the 50 year secrecy period is expired for the nomination, but I am unaware that this has yet been explored.