“I think Fermi began to be very worried”: Ibid.
Niels Bohr and his son Aage: Pais, Niels Bohr’s Times, 495ff., tells the harrowing adventures of the Bohrs as they escaped Denmark in the late summer of 1943, their stopovers in Sweden and London, their arrival in New York, and their time at Los Alamos.
Fermi, confronted with this elegant: Fermi apparently preferred an initiator code named “grape nuts,” which remains classified.
a lot of money would have been spent: This was an observation he would make explicitly, to Groves’s irritation, just prior to the Trinity test in mid-July 1945. Libby, Uranium People, 225.
The Germans had come nowhere near: Bernstein, Hitler’s Uranium Club.
Their decision initially to pursue: Powers, Heisenberg’s War; Baggot, First War of Physics.
So did the president himself: It is difficult to imagine a vice president today being kept in the dark about a multi-billion-dollar defense project; however, FDR was famously secretive throughout his presidency and may not have felt the need to bring Truman into the picture, because he had never been particularly close to the former senator from Missouri and had only met with him on a few occasions prior to Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945.
Compton later recalled the meeting: Compton, Atomic Quest, 219ff. See also “Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, Thursday, 31 May 1945,” http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/12.pdf.
Fermi limited his participation: “Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting,” 4.
What Stimson thought of Fermi: Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, makes no mention of the meeting at all, and Fermi neither discussed nor wrote about the meeting.
Stimson may have been concerned: As Leon Sigal suggests, the decisions about using the bomb were really the purview of the Targeting Committee, and the Interim Committee’s main task was organizing nuclear research postwar. If Stimson could also use it to undermine the resistance of scientists to using the bomb against Japan, that would be an added benefit. Sigal, “Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees.”
He drafted a letter, eventually signed: James Franck, Donald J. Hughes, J. J. Nickson, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, J. C. Stearns, and Leo Szilard, Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems Manhattan Project “Metallurgical Laboratory” University of Chicago, June 11, 1945 (The Franck Report), US National Archives, Record Group 77, Records of the Chief of Engineers, Manhattan Engineer District, Harrison-Bundy File, folder 76, http://www.dannen.com/decision/franck.html.
Just 350 words in length: Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Science Panel’s Report to the Interim Committee, June 16, 1945, Top Secret: Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Nuclear Weapons,” http://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/interim-committee-report-0.
How Oppenheimer crafted this “consensus”: Compton, Atomic Quest, 239–241.
Oppenheimer’s secretary, Anne Wilson Marks: Wyden, Day One, 170–171. All subsequent accounts rely entirely on Compton; however, it is difficult to discount the story told by Marks, because she had no particular axe to grind and her memory is consistent with subsequent Fermi behavior.
morning of Sunday, June 17, 1945: The report to Stimson and the Interim Committee is dated June 16, 1945; either Oppenheimer postdated it or prepared it in advance of Fermi’s agreement, or Wyden’s book is off by a day.
foreign-born national who only recently: They became naturalized US citizens on July 11, 1944. Laura Fermi, Atoms, 175.
Groves stamped it “secret”: “A Petition to the President of the United States,” US National Archives, Record Group 77, Records of the Chief of Engineers, Manhattan Engineer District, Harrison-Bundy File, folder 76, http://www.dannen.com/decision/45–07–17.html. Leon Sigal, Fighting to a Finish, 204.
CHAPTER TWENTY: AN UNHOLY TRINITY
Fermi arrived by car a few days: Allison, “Scientific World Pays Homage to Fermi,” 8.
Fermi got himself into trouble: Victor Weisskopf reports that one of his colleagues took Fermi’s joke so seriously that he had a nervous breakdown shortly before the explosion. Weisskopf, Joy of Insight, 149.
He chose a viewing site: There is some confusion about exactly how far he was from the test. He reported that he was ten miles from the blast. “Trinity Test, July 16, 1945, Eyewitness Accounts—Enrico Fermi,” US National Archives, Record Group 227, OSRD-S1 Committee, Box 82 folder 6, “Trinity,” http://www.dannen.com/decision/fermi.html. On the other hand, L. D. P. King later reported that they were ten thousand yards from the blast. L. D. P. King interview transcript for TWOEF. Weisskopf agrees with Fermi. Joy of Insight, 151.
Fermi announced to those within earshot: Weisskopf recalls that Fermi announced a more accurate 20-KT yield, but Fermi’s own recollection was that he estimated it at 10 KT. “Trinity Test, July 16, 1945, Eyewitness Accounts—Enrico Fermi,” http://www.dannen.com/decision/fermi.html; Weisskopf, Joy of Insight, 152.
Within an hour of the detonation: Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, 677.
“It was like being at the bottom”: “Trinity Test—1945,” Atomic Heritage Foundation, http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/trinity-test-1945.
The light from the detonation: McMillan, Atom and Eve, 86.
In Santa Fe, Dorothy McKibbin: Steeper, Gatekeeper to Los Alamos, 106.
Allison later described the trip home: Allison, “Scientific World Pays Homage to Fermi,” 8.
radiation exposure of the indigenous groups: “Key Findings of CDC’s LAHDRA Project: Public Exposures from the Trinity Test,” CDC’s LAHDRA, http://lahdra.org/pubs/reports/Posters/LAHDRA%20Trinity%20Test%20Poster-%20reduced%20size,pdf.pdf.
contaminating rainwater cisterns: The explosion distributed some ten pounds of unfissioned plutonium in a wide area surrounding the blast.
Her efforts and those of others: Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment Project, http://lahdra.org/pubs/pubs.htm. Victor Weisskopf is one of the few participants who indicates that there was a concern about the dangers to local inhabitants, mentioning the town of Carrizozo sixty miles away. It is not clear whether he was aware of the population living much closer to the blast. Weisskopf, Joy of Insight, 150.
Some eighty thousand people died: The calculation of casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains imprecise and controversial; the numbers here are not definitive.
avoiding a prolonged and bloody battle: Historians continue to debate the necessity of dropping the bombs to end the war, and some of those who agree that the bomb on Hiroshima might have been necessary argue that the second one against Nagasaki was dropped simply to evaluate its effects on a second city with very different geography from the first. They also debate the degree to which Soviet entry into the war against Japan influenced US decision making on the bomb itself. See, for example, Sigal, Fighting to a Finish.
“Our stuff was dropped on Japan!”: Laura Fermi, Atoms, 237.
Laura herself was more circumspect: Ibid., 244–245.
“People of good judgment abstain”: Ibid., 245. This author has been unable to find the original letter in archival files.
Fermi wanted to finish his comprehensive: CPF II, 440–541.
then-current state of the Super project: FOIA 09–00015-H, declassified at the request of Professor Alex Wellerstein. See also D. R. Inglis, “Super Lecture No. 1: Ideal Ignition Temperature,” http://work.atomlandonmars.com/kf/1945%20-%20Fermi%20Super%20Lectures%20(LANL%20FOIA).pdf.
“In concluding this series of lectures”: Ibid. The document is not Fermi’s but rather notes taken by someone who attended the lectures; however, the final paragraph seems quite consistent with Fermi’s own sense of humor.
Amaldi was drafted and served: Ugo Amaldi, conversation with author, June 7, 2016.
When Amaldi returned from the front lines: Francesco Guerra and Nadia Robotti, conversation with author, September 21, 2015, Rome.
Marcello Conversi and Ettore Pancini, conducted: Conversi, Pancini, and Piccioni, “On the Decay Process o
f Positive and Negative Mesons” (1945 and 1947).
Indeed, in one of his 1938 letters to Pegram: Fermi to Pegram, Brussels, October 22, 1938. Fermi Folder, Papers of George Pegram, Rare Book Collection, Columbia University Libraries.
He was the “go-to” physicist: When word spread at Los Alamos that Fermi would be arriving in the late summer of 1944, three physicists approached Laura to insist that they see Enrico as soon as he arrived. From the moment he stepped onto the mesa, he was always in demand. Laura Fermi, “The Fermis’ Path to Los Alamos,” 93.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: RETURN TO CHICAGO
She started a book group: LFREG, 8:4.
“using the old Italian method”: Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 176.
Fermi confided to Segrè: Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 175–176.
Amazingly, Laura even persuaded Enrico: EFREG 2:7, 1951 pocket diary for May 23.
“Never make something more accurate”: Nella Fermi in Orear, Enrico Fermi: The Master Scientist, 131.
It was “Silly Putty”: Ibid., 132–133.
Giulio had a more troubled relationship: Sarah Fermi, interview with author, June 1, 2016. Robert Fuller, interview with author, June 25, 2016.
Fuller notes that Giulio: Robert Fuller, interview with author, June 25, 2016.
He posed impishly: Richard Garwin, “Fermi’s Mistake?” The photo session was even used for the image of the US postage stamp issued in his honor in 2001. The erroneous formula is just visible at the top left corner of the stamp.
replaced Arthur Compton as dean: Compton accepted an invitation to become chancellor at Washington University in St. Louis.
December 1945 letter to Bartky: Cronin, Fermi Remembered, 111–113.
Their work had not yet reached: Monaldi, “Mesons in 1946,” covers the situation just prior to the discovery of the pion.
“How thick does the dirt”: Interview with James Cronin, October 20, 2014.
down the hall to where Maria Mayer: Dash, A Life of One’s Own, 316–317.
Mayer later vividly recalled: Ibid., 317.
Mayer wanted to include him: He knew that people assumed, incorrectly, that her husband, Joseph, was the main contributor to their coauthored classic textbook, Statistical Mechanics, published when the Mayers were at Columbia.
It was a generosity that characterized: At the 1963 Nobel ceremony, Jensen said to Mayer, “I have convinced Heisenberg and Bohr. You have convinced Fermi. What do we care about the others? You see, when you have convinced Fermi you have really accomplished something.” Quoted in Zuckerman, Scientific Elites, 184.
Gell-Mann recalls with some frustration: Gell-Mann, “No Shortage of Memories,” 151.
Fermi was a consultant to the project: Invention of Cyclotron (Chicago: Particle University of Chicago, April 16, 2008), http://hep.uchicago.edu/cdf/frisch/p363/InventionOfCyclotron_shiraishi.pdf. See also INSREG, Box 1, for complete documentation of the project. Richard Garwin tells of the regular morning meetings cyclotron engineers held with Fermi while dealing with the electronic challenges of creating the synchrotron. Garwin, “Working with Fermi,” 144.
Though none of his postwar work: Sociologist of science Harriet Zuckerman points out, however, that Fermi is one of a handful of Nobel laureates whose research after the Nobel Prize was “roughly comparable” to the work he did before winning the prize. In coming to this judgment, she no doubt includes the wartime work done for the Manhattan Project and the postwar work as well. Zuckerman, Scientific Elites, 1219–1220.
“This is why it is very important”: Wattenberg, “Fermi as My Chauffeur,” 174. It is tempting to see intimations of mortality in this statement, but the more likely explanation is that Fermi simply wanted to put his passenger at ease.
“I’ll hold the mirror up”: Ibid., 178.
These experiments, which continued: CPF II, 568–614.
The Norwegian astrophysicist Hans Alfven: Allison, “Enrico Fermi, 1901–1954,” 133. In Sam Allison’s biography of Fermi for the National Academy of Sciences, he claims Fermi took the idea of electromagnetic acceleration from the Alfven lecture. Chandrasekhar later disputed this and wrote to Allison that Fermi had the idea first. Only later did Alfven present his ideas at Chicago. Chandrasekhar letter to Allison, SCREG, 15:6.
Born in India, “Chandra”: A speech in India by Arnold Sommerfeld inspired the work.
Chandrasekhar arrived at the University of Chicago: Chandrasekhar was personally a bit more formal than Fermi and professionally more concerned about the elegance of his solutions than Fermi was. And yet the two of them became good friends. See Wali, Chandra, 19–20.
The two of them hit it off well: SCREG, 15:6.
the discussions between Fermi and Chandrasekhar: CPF II, 923ff.
The two men published several papers: CPF II, 927ff., 931ff., 970ff.
but Chandrasekhar likened him: CPF II, 923.
Steinberger, a German Jew: Steinberger, Learning about Particles, 1–29, for the story of how Steinberger came to the United States and ended up working with Fermi.
top of Mount Evans in Colorado: The higher the detectors are in the atmosphere, the more cosmic rays are detected, because the atmosphere serves as a filter for cosmic ray bombardment.
“probably neutrinos,” accompany: Steinberger, Learning about Particles, 22.
Neither Steinberger nor Fermi realized: Ibid., 23.
“new ideas are not always”: Ibid.
three University of Chicago graduate students: Ibid., 23. Papers making this same observation were published by John Wheeler and Jayme Tiomno, as well as Giampetro Puppi. Steinberger also points out that Bruno Pontecorvo made suggestive observations in this vein as early as 1947, but Fermi seemed either unaware of them or ignored them.
Steinberger recalls that Fermi was: Jack Steinberger, interview with author, May 5, 2014.
Fermi received an invitation: His pocket diary for 1947 has June 2 marked for the Ram’s Head Inn. EFREG, 2:6.
his friends would often notice: Libby, Uranium People, 21. Long after his torn retina healed, Fermi continued to test his eyesight. His friend Stanislaw Ulam recalled an outdoor dinner in the south of France during the summer of 1954 at which he watched as Fermi moved his head back and forth, studying how a particular star disappeared and then reappeared behind a telephone wire. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, 234–235.
His presentation was so long: Gleick, Genius, 255ff. See also Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 174. For a more exhaustive scientific account, see Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It.
Feynman’s approach was anything: Fermi would in due course appreciate the value of Feynman diagrams. For example, he used them in his January 1954 talk at Columbia, “What Can We Learn from High Energy Accelerators?” EFREG, 40:10.
Fermi and Franck jointly nominated: EFREG, 19:1. Fermi and Franck also cited Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson, who brilliantly demonstrated why all three approaches, so different on the surface, solved the same problem.
Peierls’s observation that Fermi: Segrè, “Nuclear Physics in Rome,” 59–60.
“never make something more accurate”: See Nella Fermi in Orear, Enrico Fermi: The Master Scientist, 131.
“I must confess my confidence”: Hewlett and Anderson, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, 432.
nuclear program under civilian control: The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 still governs the development of atomic energy and weapons development in this country.
help of graduate student Richard Garwin: Garwin, “Working with Fermi,” 145.
affectionately dubbed “Fermiac”: “Fermi Invention Rediscovered at LASL”; Nicholas Metropolis, “The Beginning of the Monte Carlo Method.”
inconsistent with its expected ergodicity: CPF II, 978. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, 226. An ergodic system is one in which at any given time the likelihood of it being in any of all possible states is equal. If a system is more likely to be in a particular state than in any other possible state, it is not ergodic. The paper is co
nsidered an early contribution to chaos theory.
“Taylor instability”: Fermi’s papers refer to Taylor alone, but the phenomenon is better known as Rayleigh Taylor instability, because it was first studied by Lord Rayleigh as well as G. I. Taylor. See Libby, Uranium People, 210ff., for a good discussion of this subject and its relevance to weapons testing.
short volume called Elementary Particles: Enrico Fermi, Elementary Particles.
not to be an exact predictor: Ibid., 79.
He also prepared a paper: CPF II, 825.
type of particle a “resonance”: Brown, Dresden, and Hoddeson, Pions to Quarks, 10ff. Pickering, Constructing Quarks, 48ff.
“Through my illness [berylliosis]”: CPF II, 923.
Anderson did have a jealous streak: Amaldi worked with Fermi from 1927 through 1938, some eleven years. Anderson met Fermi early on in 1939 and worked with Fermi until 1954, almost fifteen years.
Freeman Dyson, the young theorist: Dyson, “A Meeting with Fermi,” 297.
“There are two ways of doing”: Ibid.
“Looking back after fifty years”: Ibid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: IN THE PUBLIC EYE
the first General Advisory Commission (GAC): Hewlett and Anderson, History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, 648.
His FBI file makes for interesting: FBI Case File 116-HQ-1255 at National Archives, College Park, MD.
“To have spent the day”: Lilienthal, Journals of David E. Lilienthal, 2:128.
He was outspoken in his support: Segrè, Enrico Fermi, 164.
Teller and Ulam cracked the puzzle: There are several excellent histories of the development of the hydrogen bomb. See Rhodes, Dark Sun; Ford, Building the H Bomb. See also US Atomic Energy Agency, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, passim.
Under significant political pressure: AEC chairman Lewis Strauss, who took over from David Lilienthal, expressed the straightforward position that the United States must develop a hydrogen bomb before the Russians did. He was not alone.
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