“he could calculate almost anything”: CPF II, 31.
Colleagues sometimes noted his tendency: Segrè, “Nuclear Physics in Rome,” 59.
The game was ideal for someone: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 147–148.
“the first time when I started climbing”: CPF II, 1000.
“a huge amount” of graphite: Ibid.
A second experimental project: Fermi, “The Development of the First Chain-Reacting Pile,” 22.
The actual pile they built: CFP II, 129ff. Each brick was 4 inches by 4 inches by 12 inches—approximately 15 pounds of graphite.
Undaunted, Fermi and his colleagues: CPF II, 112.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE MOVE TO CHICAGO
In January 1942, Compton brought: Hewlett and Anderson, History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume I, 54–55.
Fermi was unable to attend: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 168.
Compton reports that Fermi immediately: Compton, Atomic Quest, 82.
“He is supposed to have left Italy”: “Freedom of Information Act—Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—1,” Leo Szilard Papers, MSS 32:2, Special Collections and Archives, UC San Diego Library, http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb6964105q.
“as long as Fascist Party retains control”: FBI File 062-HQ-59521, released under Freedom of Information Act request 1358450–000, dated April 18, 2017. The file is of interest in several respects. An October 19, 1940, report states that the Fermis’ Leonia neighbors were canvassed for their views. The agent erroneously reports that the Fermis were naturalized citizens. It also identified a “Mrs. H. C. Eurey,” no doubt Harold Urey’s wife, who was eager to let the agent know that the Fermis were dedicated to the process of Americanization, with English dictionaries “all over the house.”
Enrico and Laura began to feel: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 172.
Later on in Chicago: At Los Alamos the opening of letters continued, leading to a traumatic moment for Nella, when a letter she had written to a friend in Chicago was inadvertently seen by Fermi’s driver, John Baudino—it had been opened by censors, and she was quite upset. Laura Fermi, “The Fermis’ Path to Los Alamos,” in Badash, Hirschfelder, and Broida, Reminiscences, 96.
If the Nazis conquered: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 171.
There was just enough time: CPF II, 137–151.
He suffered severe burns: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 187.
The illness, called berylliosis: Ibid., 188.
“The problem interested me”: Teller, Legacy of Hiroshima, 37.
The idea that the sun is powered: Close, Neutrino, 53–55.
He brought two young Columbia graduate: Wattenberg, “The Fermi School,” 88.
Wattenberg recalls playing chess: Ibid.
University of Chicago was an extraordinary: Shils, Remembering the University of Chicago.
Anderson and Libby soon discovered: Libby, Uranium People, 2.
Harold Agnew, then a student: Agnew, “Scientific World Pays Homage to Fermi,” 8.
“Fermi would like to show superendurance”: CPF II, 328.
“If we brought the bomb to them”: Weart and Szilard, Leo Szilard, 147.
abandoned Chicago football stadium: Stagg Field was effectively abandoned in 1939 when the university’s president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, disbanded the school’s famous and popular football program.
Fermi told his wife: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 191.
If natural uranium is exposed: See, for example, https://fas.org/blogs/fas/2013/09/where-does-the-plutonium-come-from/ (accessed May 5, 2017). Also, http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Plutonium (accessed May 5, 2017). The process is the result of beta decay stimulated by the overcrowding of neutrons when they are absorbed by uranium nuclei.
Laura arrived with the children: Laura Fermi interview, TWOEF, 27. Stein founded the Chicago investment advisory firm of Stein Roe & Farnham and after the war moved to Winnetka, on Chicago’s North Shore. The Fermis and the Steins came to be socially friendly after the war. See also Monica Copeland, “Sydney Stein Jr.,” Chicago Tribune, October 4, 1991, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991–10–04/news/9103300669_1_mr-stein-stein-roe-farnham-susan-stein.
With an Italian family occupying: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 174.
The Fermis soon began to entertain: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 174. Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, 428.
a flattened, roughly spherical, ellipsoid shape: It also was the optimal configuration given the amount of material available for the project. CPF II.
The more he thought about it: See Allison, “Initiation of the Chain Reaction.”
Beginning in September 1942: CPF II, 216–230.
“run quick-like behind a hill”: Ibid., 217. Also significant in these lectures is an analytical precursor to the Monte Carlo method, illustrated in a “probability tree” of the life of a hundred neutrons in a reactor. See ibid., 225.
Owing to the new authority: So great was Groves’s authority that he was able to commandeer the entire national stockpile of silver for use in electrical wiring when the stockpile of copper was depleted. The silver was returned, almost to the ounce, at the end of the war.
Fermi had a sense of humor: Wilson and Serber, Standing By and Making Do, 71. Jane Wilson, a Los Alamos wife, assures the reader the story is apocryphal, but it has more than a whiff of authenticity.
Compton thought about it: Conant and Groves only found out about the plan on November 14, 1942. Conant turned white at the news; Groves immediately grabbed the phone to confirm that the pile could not be built at Argonne. But work had already begun under Stagg Field. Hewlett and Anderson, History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume I, 108. This meeting on November 14, 1942, was also the moment when Conant’s S-1 committee learned of the tendency of plutonium to fission spontaneously, a fact that Berkeley and Chicago scientists learned earlier in the year.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: “WE’RE COOKIN’!”
“Back-of-the-Yards” kids: Wattenberg, “December 2, 1942,” 22ff., esp. 26.
At 9:45 a.m., Fermi instructed: What follows is based on Allardice and Trapnell, “The First Pile”; Wattenberg, “December 2, 1942.”
“Every time the intensity leveled off”: Wattenberg, “December 2, 1942,” 31.
The instrumentation had recorded: Allardice and Trapnell disagree with Wattenberg on what rod actually fell into the pile. Wattenberg recalls it was the zip rod, whereas Allardice and Trapnell report that it was another of the safety rods controlled electronically. They agree, however, that Fermi chose this moment to take a lunch break.
At about 3:25 p.m. Fermi ordered: Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 129, records the time as 2:20 p.m., but the preponderance of accounts report 3:25 p.m., including both the official account of Allardice and Trapnell, and Rhodes.
“We’re cookin’!”: Holl, Argonne National Laboratory, 19.
Twenty-eight minutes into criticality: Allardice and Trapnell, “The First Pile”; Segrè, Enrico Fermi; and Laura Fermi, Atoms, 129, 197. Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, 440, reports only 4.5 minutes, but that may be at peak power, just shy of one watt.
The room was quiet: Libby, Uranium People, 122.
Szilard recounts that he shook: Weart and Szilard, Leo Szilard, 146.
Compton took Greenewalt with him: Compton, Atomic Quest, 144.
Compton rang up Conant: Ibid.
Laura Fermi had been planning: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 176ff.
“Are you making fun of me?”: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 179–180. Libby, Uranium People, 129.
Laura grilled Enrico about: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 180.
“The first self-sustained atomic”: Compton, Atomic Quest, 149.
“Do we then exaggerate”: Wigner, Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner, 241.
“almost to the exact brick”: Allardice and Trapnell, “The First Pile,” 44.
He may have had some underlying: Laura Fermi suggests that this was indeed on his mind. Laura Fermi, Atoms, 197.
He played with his slide rule: These operations with the slide rule may h
ave also, in some way, steadied his nerves at a particularly emotional moment for him—never one to willingly show his emotions, he sought the comfort of familiar routines. Thanks to William Zajc for this suggestion.
Bothe and Heisenberg decided to use: Powers, Heisenberg’s War, 197.
long and exhaustive 1936 paper: CPF I, 892ff.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: XENON-135
In February 1943, after the labor: MED, Book IV, 3.9.
the pile, originally dubbed CP-1: MED, Book IV, 3.12ff.
Fermi reconfigured it so it: Libby, Uranium People, 148.
When Leona suggested they might: Ibid., 163.
Fortunately for everyone involved: Several years later, Fermi graduate student Richard Garwin reported to his wife, Lois, that he might have to help deliver Libby’s second child, because she did not let her advanced pregnancy deter her from lifting heavy canisters of gas in the lab. Like her first child, her second was delivered in the hospital. Garwin, interview with author, May 22, 2015.
Nella was twelve years old: Raw footage of CBS interview with Nella Fermi for the fiftieth anniversary of the pile, 1992; Olivia Fermi, private communication with author.
Also, Giulio was upset: Sarah Fermi, conversation with author, June 1, 2016, Cambridge, England.
Fermi told him not to bother: Segrè recounts a conversation between Allison and Fermi on the subject of this textbook. Allison, who liked to tease Fermi as much as Fermi liked to tease Allison, commented that Fermi’s PhD thesis on X-ray diffraction could not have been particularly good, because it was not referenced in Compton/Allison. Fermi, quick to rise to the bait, replied that this only indicated the inadequacy of the famous textbook. Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 245n42.
“As a student of Compton’s”: Alvarez, Alvarez, 117.
In time, the two of them: Arthur Rosenfeld, interview with author, May 7, 2014.
That awe was not confined: Allison, “A Tribute to Enrico Fermi,” 9.
A large cube of graphite: Rhodes reports 1,248, but MED, Book IV, part 2, 4.2, reports 1,260.
Into these channels rods of uranium metal: MED, Book IV, part 2, 4.2–4.3.
The story of how Oppenheimer: Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, 121, 451ff. In retrospect, the traditional narrative is only part of the story. Activists like Marian Naranjo have worked hard to bring to light the relationship of indigenous peoples to the mesa and the surrounding areas, a relationship that was sadly not taken into account in the acquisition of the land and its subsequent use. See Dennis J. Carroll, “Santa Clara Activist Works to Find Balance among Disparate Cultures,” Santa Fe New Mexican, January 10, 2015, http://www.santafenewmexican.com/life/features/santa-clara-activist-works-to-find-balance-among-disparate-cultures/article_202f5cf1–7ec9–5fb4-b5c7–7aec1fbf574c.html.
“I announce to you with greatest joy”: Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, 162.
When the entire group was assembled: Serber, Los Alamos Primer.
“I believe your people actually want”: Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer, 182.
A letter from Oppenheimer to Fermi: Malcolm W. Browne, “U.S. Weighed Use of Radioactive Poison in ’43, Oppenheimer Letter Shows,” New York Times, April 19, 1985, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/19/us/us-weighed-use-of-radioactive-poison-in-43-oppenheimer-letter-shows.html.
Oppenheimer was the product: Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus; Monk, Robert Oppenheimer.
“Emilio, I am getting rusty”: Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 134.
“Not a philosopher”: Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer, 266. Davis’s book on Lawrence and Oppenheimer was controversial from the moment it was published, with some people, notably Jane Wilson, Alice Smith, and Frank Oppenheimer, doubting the veracity of large sections of the book—even direct quotations. That said, the quotation attributed to Oppenheimer regarding Fermi has the ring of authenticity and in this author’s judgment accurately reflects what Oppenheimer thought of his Manhattan Project colleague. See Wilson, “Lawrence and Oppenheimer,” 31–32; Smith, “Dramatis Personae,” 445–447; and Oppenheimer, “In Defense of the Titular Heroes,” 77–80. I am grateful to William Zajc for the references.
Leona Libby recalls a dinner party: Libby, Uranium People, 109.
The project was vast: MED, Book IV, vols. 4–6.
The first reactor to go live: The absence of A, C, and E reactors is an odd artifact of the planning and construction of the Hanford facility.
Wigner momentarily forgot: Wigner, Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner, 237.
According to Wheeler, the plan: Wheeler, Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam, 55. “John Marshall’s Interview,” Voices of the Manhattan Project, 1986, http://manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/john-marshalls-interview.
Xenon-135 has a half-life: See “Shielding of Neutron Radiation,” Nuclear Power, http://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power/reactor-physics/atomic-nuclear-physics/fundamental-particles/neutron/shielding-neutron-radiation/. Xenon poisoning would rear its ugly head in another context some thirty-two years later at a Soviet reactor at Chernobyl. The reactor began to die down, and instead of checking for xenon poisoning, the operators pulled the control rods entirely out of the core, creating a major meltdown and the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: ON A MESA
Laura and the children were: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 200–236. Her account of the time she spent at Los Alamos during the war is one of the highlights of her book, Atoms in the Family, and must reading for anyone interested in how the families of the scientists lived during that intense period. She describes, for example, one of her first weekends at Los Alamos, before Enrico arrived, being driven on an expedition to Frijoles Canyon along with the Peierlses to see the old Native American ruins there; the driver was a young man named Klaus Fuchs, who was later to confess to having been a Soviet spy throughout the Manhattan Project.
housing along “Bathtub Row”: Laura Fermi shows no awareness that her husband might have pulled rank like this, and in her writings was careful to insist that the assignment of living quarters was an arbitrary process controlled by the impersonal rules of the Army. It is, however, difficult to believe that Enrico could not have pressed for better accommodations if he had chosen to do so. Laura Fermi, Atoms, 230. See also Laura Fermi, “The Fermis’ Path to Los Alamos,” 93.
Nella recalls these days: Raw footage of CBS interview with Nella Fermi for the fiftieth anniversary of the pile, 1992; Olivia Fermi, private communication with author.
Laura eventually found work: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 227–228, 232–233.
prefissioning Segrè’s microsamples: MED, Book VIII, Vol. 2, sec. 6.23, VI-8. One solution, obviously, might have been putting the plutonium through the same isotope separation process that was being pioneered for uranium at Oak Ridge. However, plutonium was far rarer, and the mass differential between Pu-239 and Pu-240 was one-third the mass differential between the uranium isotopes. And at this point in the project, no one was certain that the untested Oak Ridge projects would produce meaningful quantities of enriched uranium on time.
The Los Alamos reorganization: MED, Book VIII, vol. 2, sec. 9.
Research into implosion: The young physicist Seth Neddermeyer, who championed the implosion concept under Parsons, was sidelined, a result of personality conflicts with Kistiakowsky.
determined how quickly “prompt” neutrons: MED, Book VIII, vol. 2, sec. 6.57. Prompt neutrons are prompt indeed; they occur almost simultaneously with the fission, which occurs so fast that it has never been precisely measured but certainly in less than a billionth of a billionth of a second. See MED, Book VIII, vol. 2, sec. 6.70ff. See Aurel Bulgac, Piotr Magierski, Kenneth J. Roche, and Ionel Stetcu, “Induced Fission of Pu within a Real-Time Microscopic Framework,” March 25, 2016, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.00738.pdf, for recent work on this subject. Thanks to William A. Zajc for bringing this to the author’s attention.
Segrè describes Joan: Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 141.
The story of the British project:
See Farmello, Churchill’s Bomb, for a recent history of this fascinating aspect of World War II.
German refugees Rudolf Peierls: Close, Half Life, 82ff.
Peierls admired Fermi greatly: Segrè, “Nuclear Physics in Rome,” 59.
“We had a meeting with him”: Feynman, “Surely You’re Joking,” 132. A more detailed description of this encounter is at American Institute of Physics, “Oral History Interviews: Richard Feynman—Session IV,” interviewed by Charles Weiner, June 28, 1966, https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/5020–4.
“Only if that child is Fermi”: Ibid.
He emigrated in 1933: After the war he dabbled in economics, creating—with his colleague Oscar Morgenstern—the entire field of game theory.
He joined the war effort early: CPF II, 437.
“We’re plowing”: Wright, “Fermi in Action,” 182.
Fermi enjoyed using them himself: Fermi to Pegram, October 18, 1944, in Pegram Papers, Box 1, Fermi folder.
Fermi also used the newest wave: “Computing and the Manhattan Project,” Atomic Heritage Foundation, http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/computing-and-manhattan-project.
Segrè recounts a moment: Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 140.
He also began to give lectures: See EFREG, 45:6, for notes on the neutron physics course he gave during 1945.
Geoffrey Chew, a twenty-year-old: Chew, interview with author, May 6, 2014.
“I see, so it’s a battle of wits!”: Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 140.
Chew tells the story: Chew, interview with author, May 6, 2014. This type of parlor game must have been quite popular among the Fermi circle; after the war, Fermi student Jay Orear recalls playing a similar game. Orear, “My First Meetings with Fermi,” in Cronin, ed., Fermi Remembered, 202.
“He said in his mild and reasonable voice”: Brode, Tales of Los Alamos, 79.
“tickling the dragon” experiments: MED, Book VIII, vol. 2, sec 15.7ff. Even reading the somewhat dry description of the experiment is enough to make the heart race faster.
The configuration of the high-explosive: Alex Wellerstein, “What Did Bohr Do at Los Alamos?” Restricted Data, the Nuclear Secrecy Project, May 11, 2015, http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/05/11/bohr-at-los-alamos/. See also Hoddeson, Henriksen, Meade, and Westfall, Critical Assembly, 317.
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