3. Hans Bethe interview, November 21, 1985.
4. AKS/MIT, p. 312.
5. Robert R. Wilson interviews, November 21, 1985, and May 1, 1987.
6. The New York Times, March 9, 1946.
7. The amendment passed on March 12, 1946, with McMahon as the sole dissenter. AKS/MIT, p. 312.
8. Philip Morrison interview, November 11, 1986.
9. Drew Pearson, New York Daily Mirror, March 18, 1946; item in PM, March 18, 1946. Frederick Seitz interview, May 20, 1987. Ralph Lapp interview, April 6, 1987.
10. One World or None (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1946), pp. 61–65.
11. New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, March 17, 1946, pp. 1–2.
12. The New York Times Book Review, March 17, 1946, pp. 1 and 16.
13. Ibid. The next day, the Herald Tribune’s “Books and Things” by Lewis Gannett reported on One World or None: “Treaties, the scientists and Mr. Lippmann agree, are risky foundations for any hope; but they might give a temporary respite from fear and allow a little more time for mutual understanding to grow. ‘We shall have to take risks,’ says Leo Szilard, of the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory.”
14. The New York Times, March 19, 1946, pp. 1 +.
15. McMahon to Szilard, April 16, 1946 (LSP 13/8).
16. Chicago Sun, May 3, 1946, pp. 11 and 16.
17. New York Herald Tribune, May 24, 1946. Organized in May, with Einstein as its chairman, the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists had Szilard, Bethe, Urey, Hogness, and Weisskopf as board members by its formal incorporation in August.
18. Harold Oram interview, November 5, 1987. See also “Einstein Memorabilia” by Harold Oram, June 10, 1985.
19. AKS/MIT, pp. 337–38.
20. Szilard had already annoyed the film’s producer, Samuel Marx, by insisting that he and Einstein could only be impersonated if M-G-M made a $100,000 donation to the FAS. Then Szilard trimmed the price to $5,000, before finally, on “principle,” refusing to take any money from the studio. AKS/UC, pp. 316–17.
Marx was prepared for dealing with Szilard, having just soothed two of the biggest egos in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer and Groves. By making the Oppenheimer character, played by matinee idol Hume Cronyn, “an extremely pleasant one with a love of mankind, humility, and a fair knack of cooking” and by making it clear in the film that Oppenheimer and not Groves ran the first test at Alamogordo, Marx was able to persuade Oppenheimer to sign his release in May. Groves, who was played by handsome tough guy Brian Donlevy, cared little about character development, although he did appreciate the actor’s rugged good looks. For him the main concern was national security, and Marx had to let him and his aides pore over the script to prevent any secrets from flashing onto the silver screen.
Reingold, “MGM Meets the Atomic Bomb.”
21. AKS/UC, p. 316.
22. Marx also showed Szilard some of the scenes already shot, apparently to Szilard’s satisfaction, because Marx then wrote Einstein that Szilard “was, to some extent, impressed that we are doing a sincere job and one that will reflect only credit on science.” Marx to Einstein, July 1, 1946 (AEP 57 155–1 & 2).
By mid-July, M-G-M’s flamboyant president, Louis B. Mayer, assured Einstein that the film would portray the scientists favorably. “It must be realized,” a memo Mayer sent as proof stated, “that dramatic truth is just as compelling a requirement on us as veritable truth is on a scientist.” Nevertheless, tensions persisted all summer between the filmmakers and the scientists. One “consultant” invited by M-G-M at Oppenheimer’s request was Los Alamos administrator David Hawkins, who, when shown some scripts, discovered absurd technical errors. In one scene the scientists’ “radiation monitor” was a hutch of rabbits—the screenwriters had thought that if canaries could detect gas in mines, then rabbits could detect radiation in laboratories. Hawkins insisted that Geiger counters be substituted, one of his few recommendations that the studio followed in the scenes still to be shot. However, Hawkins never convinced the moviemakers that the sound of the distant A-bomb’s explosion should be heard several seconds after the light from the blast and not at the same moment. David Hawkins interview, May 13, 1987.
23. “Regional Conference . . .” program and notes (LSP 70/4). Walter Orr Roberts interview, October 7, 1986.
24. Life, August 11, 1946.
25. Fielding, p. 292.
26. Lippmann to Aydelotte, October 28, 1946 (AEP 57 167–1 & 2).
27. The New York Times, November 18, 1946. ECAS “Princeton Speech,” November 17, 1946 (LSP 42/10).
28. Szilard to Hutchins, January 2, 1947 (RMH 5/12). FBI report, December 23, 1946 (LSP 95/9). Also in report of April 14, 1947 (LSP 95/7).
29. FBI report, December 23, 1946, p. 18 (LSP 95/9).
30. MIT Vol. III, p. 20 n 1. This talk, which Szilard revised and gave many times thereafter, appeared as “Calling for a Crusade” in the April/May 1947 Bulletin.
31. AKS/UC, p. 318. Harrison Brown interview, October 6, 1986. In Washington, where the film officially premiered in February, M-G-M billed its creation as “the story of the most HUSH-HUSH secret of all time.” But to reviewers it was merely ho-hum. Time found “the picture seldom rises above cheery imbecility” by treating “cinemagoers as if they were spoiled or not-quite-bright children.” The public, which did not make the film a boxoffice hit, soon forgot whatever point M-G-M had tried to make, although the film did win an Oscar for its special effects. See Reingold, “MGM Meets the Atomic Bomb.”
32. April 10, 1946, Bloomington speech (LSP 42/13).
33. April 21, 1947, Portland speech (LSP 42/14). April 23, 1947, Spokane speech (LSP 42/15).
34. Saturday Review, May 3, 1947, pp. 31–34. This article prompted a radio talk on “Atomic Energy Control” on New York City’s WNBC, at 6:15 P.M., May 15, 1947.
35. Einstein statement (AEP 40 563–3). Hans Bethe oral-history interview, May 8–9, 1972, p. 44 (AIP).
36. Einstein statement (AEP 40 563–2).
37. Szilard and Weisskopf met with Einstein later, and the three—acting at a formal meeting of the ECAS trustees—agreed to increase the board from eight to ten members, voting Mayer and Frederick Seitz as members. They also agreed to hire Brown full-time to work for ECAS (AEP 40 563–61 to 5).
38. Meeting held June 18–21, 1947. AKS/UC, pp. 505–508; The New York Times, June 30, 1947.
39. Hans Bethe interview, March 3, 1986. The ECAS discord was publicized by the New Republic, which wrote a week later that, unlike Szilard, Urey believed the United Nations was inadequate and that only a world government could assure peace. Szilard condemned a proposed nuclear union with Russia, fearing it would lead to an arms race and war, and called for the atom’s international control as part of overall reconstruction plans involving economic, social, and political elements—Secretary of State George C. Marshall had announced a US-financed economic-recovery scheme for Europe (the Marshall Plan) a month earlier. Other ECAS members quoted by the magazine thought they should simply stay out of politics. New Republic, July 7, 1947.
40. “Tentative draft to be submitted for approval,” Szilard to Edward Levi, September 29, 1947. My thanks to Edward Levi for a copy of this memo. Later drafts in (LSP 27/5 and 6) and in “Letter to Stalin” (LSP 73/9).
41. MacDuffie Collection, notes of October 9, 1947, pp. 1 and 2–3, and October 10, 1947, p. 1–4. My thanks to historian Carol Gruber for sharing her research in the MacDuffie Collection at the Columbia University Library.
42. Einstein and Philip Morse to Marshall, October 11, 1947 (AEP, copy in LSP 7/27). The two wrote as chairman and acting executive director, respectively, of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists.
43. George T. Washington to Hoover, November 10, 1947, and subsequent correspondence (LSP 95/1). Washington was then assistant solicitor general. Nothing derogatory was disclosed, but Clark later had copies of Szilard’s FBI files sent to the State Department and the Atomic Energy Commission. Clar
k to Hoover, December 12, 1947 (LSP).
44. “Letter to Stalin,” Washington Post and Times Herald, November 26, 1947.
45. The manuscript for “My Trial as a War Criminal” was typed before October 24, 1947 (see letter of that date to Rabinowitch in LSP) and was retyped on November 7. The story was first published in the University of Chicago Law Review, Autumn 1949, and was reprinted in The Voice of the Dolphins (pp. 75–86) in 1961.
46. Szilard to Hutchins, April 26, 1948, MIT Vol. III, pp. 35–37. Szilard to Hutchins, June 8 and 16, 1948 (LSP 10/9).
47. ‘The Atom: What’ll We Do?” Newsweek, October 31, 1949.
48. ‘The Facts about the Hydrogen Bomb, University of Chicago Round Table,” No. 623, February 26, 1950 (LSP 70/24).
49. Hans Bethe interviews, November 21, 1985, and March 3, 1986.
50. “Science: Hydrogen Hysteria,” Time, March 6, 1950, p. 88.
51. “Cost of Suicide,” Newsweek, October 30, 1950.
52. “Memorandum on ‘Citizens’ Committee.’ “ March 27, 1950. MIT Vol. III, pp. 95–102.
53. The Rosenbergs were convicted on March 29, 1951, and executed on June 9, 1953. US troops first fought North Korean forces on July 5, 1950, and the Chinese army joined the war on November 26 as US troops under UN authority approached the Yalu River dividing North Korea and China. The war ended in a cease-fire in July 1953 that divided North and South Korea along the 38th parallel.
54. See rough draft of “A Letter in the Open,” August 31, 1950 (LSP 27/5).
55. Joseph Rotblat interview, September 21, 1985. See Rotblat’s Pugwash History, MIT Press. Rotblat remembers the meeting as taking place on September 21, 1951. Rotblat to the author, November 29, 1986.
56. “You Do Not Want War with Russia?,” pp. 1–3. Gertrud Szilard marked this manuscript “March ? 1952,” but with references on p. 8 to political action in 1952, it may have been drafted later that year (LSP 34/19).
57. Ibid., p. 8. This proposal called for a 1 percent tithe, whereas his council in 1962 sought “two per cent for peace.”
58. On August 2, 1953, the Soviet Union detonated a small lithium-deuteride device with a yield of less than one-half megaton (LLS AEC Disarmament Chronology 56–58, October 22, 1956, memo, p. 6). Drafts of “Meeting of the Minds” in the Szilard Papers are dated between June 1953 and January 1954. Dulles proposed “massive retaliation” on January 12, 1954, and Szilard’s last draft of “Meeting” is dated January 26.
59. “Forty Cents a Head,” in Matter of Fact by Stewart Alsop, Washington Post, May 6, 1955.
60. Szilard to Hubert H. Humphrey, August 2, 1955 (LSP 10/8).
61. The Einstein-Russell Manifesto was issued April 11, 1955. See “Proceedings of the First Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs,” ed. Joseph Rotblat, published by the Pugwash Council in 1982, pp. 167–70.
62. Joseph Rotblat interview, September 21, 1985.
63. At the time of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, in July 1955, Szilard had just finished proposing yet another of his working groups to study US-Soviet problems and was then drafting a sweeping essay that would eventually appear in the October 1955 Bulletin as “Disarmament and the Problem of Peace,” his ambitious link of economics and arms control as a way to gain a peace dividend.
About this time, Szilard also suggested that Sen. Hubert Humphrey, the Minnesota Democrat who chaired the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Disarmament, hold conferences for his staff on arms-control policies with leading diplomats and journalists. In December 1956, Szilard wrote Soviet physicist Lev Landau, whom he had met in Berlin in the 1920s, proposing a scientists’ discussion on arms control.
In January 1957, Szilard proposed creating a foreign policy club in Washington to discuss world problems informally. That March, Szilard drafted a memo on the H-bomb, arguing for a “foolproof inspection system” as the key to progress in arms control.
64. Szilard to Russell, May 23, 1957. MIT Vol. III, pp. 156–57.
65. Harrison Brown interview, October 6, 1986. “Proceedings of the First Pugwash Conference . . .” p. 46.
66. Ruth Adams interview, October 21, 1986.
67. Rotblat, pp. 27–32. On July 21, 1955, President Eisenhower had proposed a US-Soviet aerial inspection system to prevent a surprise nuclear attack.
68. Ibid., pp. 39 and 27.
69. “Afterdinner Speech at Pugwash,” dictated August 7, 1957, pp. 3–4 (LSP 69/10).
70. Szilard to Topchiev, July 31, 1957 (LSP 19/4). Szilard to Morton Grodzins, August 9, 1957 (LSP 9/8). Szilard to Skobeltzyn, October 15, 1957 (LSP 18/5). Topchiev to Szilard, December 14, 1957 (LSP 19/4).
71. Hans Bethe interview, March 3, 1986.
72. Joseph Rotblat interview, September 21, 1985.
73. The Second Pugwash Conference met from March 30 to April 12, 1958.
74. In February 1958, Life magazine had published “The Compelling Need for Nuclear Tests,” excerpts from Edward Teller’s book Our Nuclear Future (New York: Criterion Books, 1958), which advocated developing “clean” nuclear weapons. “If we stop testing now and if we should fail to develop to the fullest possible extent these clean weapons, we would unnecessarily kill a great number of noncombatants in any future war,” wrote Teller and his coauthor, Albert Latter. See Katherine Magraw, “Teller and the ‘Clean Bomb’ Episode,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1988, pp. 32–37.
75. “Documents of the Second Pugwash Conference of Nuclear Scientists,” transcript, pp. 430ff.
76. Ibid., pp. 450–51.
77. Ibid., p. 453.
78. Ibid., pp. 475–76.
79. Ibid., p. 493.
80. Ibid., p. 483.
81. “Memorandum” from Leghorn, Szilard, and Wiesner to Topchiev, April 6, 1958 (LSP 68/13).
82. For background, see “Report on the Work of the Academy’s Operating Committee on World Security Problems Raised by Nuclear Weapons for the Year 1958–1959 by Leo Szilard, Chairman,” May 11, 1959 (LSP 66/12).
83. “Pax Russo-Americana,” first draft dated April 24, 1958; July 16, 1958, draft in (LSP 29/14).
84. Szilard’s lecture and discussion were held on May 7, 1958 (LSP 42/28). Arthur D. Little Lecture transcript, p. 12 (MIA MC 167, 18/172).
85. Ibid., pp. 17-b and 21-b.
86. Ibid., pp. 40-b and 41-b.
87. See Szilard’s May 11, 1959, “Report” on the committee’s work (LSP 66/12). Philip Morrison interview, November 11, 1986.
88. John P. Holdren, “The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs: Background for Funders,” n.d., pp. 4 and 5.
89. “Proceedings of Fourth Pugwash Conference of Nuclear Scientists, June 25–July 4, 1959, Baden, Austria,” transcript, pp. 100–123. “Toasts and Notes from the Baden Conference,” paragraph 2 (both LSP 69/13).
90. Szilard to Khrushchev, September 6, 1959. MIT Vol. III, p. 263. Russell to Szilard, December 21, 1959 (LSP 16/27).
CHAPTER 25
1. Schrödinger’s essay has been mentioned by several physical scientists as a stimulant for their shift to biology. For different accounts of the work’s influence, see Yoxen, pp. 17–52; Abir-Am, pp. 73–117; Perutz, pp. 242ff.
2. During the Manhattan Project, Novick had studied how carbon became displaced in the graphite structure within the plutonium-production reactors at Hanford, Washington, and discovered that annealing the graphite at high temperatures reversed this. Novick and Szilard became acquainted as they discussed this problem frequently. Novick to the author, March 1991.
3. Interview with Harold Agnew, August 8, 1988. Interview with Herbert Anderson, October 6, 1986. On some evenings, Szilard’s conversations ran so late that Agnew, who slept on the couch, had to stay awake until they ended.
4. Aaron Novick interview, July 2, 1986. Novick to the author, August 25, 1986. See also Novick’s “Phenotypic Mixing,” in Cairns et al., eds., pp. 133–34.
5. The authors were J. Huxley, G. P. Wells, and H. G. Wells. Szilard had met H. G. Wells in London in 192
9 and had tried to visit Huxley and J. B. S. Haldane at the same time. See, for example, Szilard to Michael Polanyi, April 1, 1929 (MPP 2/5).
6. Nature pp. 131, 421, 457 (1933). Stent and Calendar, pp. 24–25. See also Victor Weisskopf’s review of Redirecting Science by Finn Aaserud in Science, Vol. 251, pp. 684–85 (February 8, 1991).
7. MIT Vol. II, p. 16.
8. Timofeeff-Ressovsky observed that the rate of mutation in fruit flies doubled with a 10°C temperature rise (a change typical of chemical reactions). Delbrück inferred from this result that mutations must involve a chemical reaction, making genes chemical structures that, in principle, are understandable and not unfathomable mysteries.
9. Salvador Luria and Max Delbrück, “Mutations of Bacteria from Virus Sensitivity to Virus Resistance,” Genetics 28, p. 491 (1943).
10. A second advance occurred in 1944 when three researchers at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City—Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty—concluded that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a large, stringlike molecule found in all living cells, was the carrier of genetic information. From then on, biologists wanted to learn more about DNA— especially, how it could express and transmit genetic information. Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty, “Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types. Induction of Transformation by a Deoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III,” Journal of Experimental Medicine 79, 137 (1944).
11. Judson, p. 605. See also “Max Delbrück,” a review of Thinking about Science. “Max Delbrück and the Origins of Molecular Biology,” in Science, December 23, 1988, pp. 1711–12.
12. Frances Racker interview, November 22, 1985.
13. MIT Vol. I, p. xv.
14. Novick to the author, March 1991.
15. Philip Morrison interview, November 11, 1986. Aaron Novick interview, July 2, 1986.
16. Novick, “Phenotypic Mixing,” p. 135.
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