In Tulsa, Pontecorvo went to work for two European migrants, Jakov "Jake" Neufeld and Serge Alexandrovich Scherbatskoy, who had founded a company called Well Surveys with funds provided by Standard Oil. Their idea was to apply nuclear physics to searching for minerals. A gamma ray device had been successful at analysing rock outcroppings. Inspired by the work done in Italy and France, they reasoned that neutrons, being without electrical charge, might be able to detect different elements beneath the surface by inducing radioactivity on the rocks. In Pontecorvo, they had the expert they needed.