Doomsday Men

by P. D. Smith

  5. Eugene Wigner and Andrew Szanton, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner (New York: Plenum, 1992), 121.

  6. Oppenheimer recalling John von Neumann’s words in 1954; quoted in Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 389.

  7. Press reports; quoted in Peter Goodchild, Edward Teller: The Real Dr Strangelove (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), 131.

  8. Fritz Leiber, ‘Coming Attraction’ (1950); in James Gunn, ed., The Road to Science Fiction, vol. 3: From Heinlein to Here (New York: Mentor, 1979), 173.

  Chapter 1

  1. William Lanouette with Bela Silard, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, The Man Behind the Bomb (University of Chicago Press, 1994; 1st edn 1992), 243.

  2. François Jacob, The Statue Within (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 293; quoted in Lanouette, 382.

  3. Szilard, taped interview, May 1960; in CW2, 54.

  4. Enrico Fermi, ‘Physics at Columbia University’, Physics Today, 8 (Nov. 1955), 12–16.

  5. ‘The First Pile’, BAS, 18 (Dec. 1962), 23.

  6. ibid., 23.

  7. Herbert Anderson, ‘Assisting Fermi’, in Jane Wilson, ed., All in Our Time: The Reminiscences of Twelve Nuclear Pioneers (Chicago: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1975), 95.

  8. ‘The First Pile’, 24.

  9. Laura Fermi, Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (University of Chicago Press, 1961; 1st edn 1954), 196.

  10. ‘The First Pile’, 24.

  11. Eugene Wigner, ‘Twentieth Birthday of the Atomic Age’, NYT (2 Dec. 1962), VI, 126.

  12. ‘The First Pile’, 24.

  13. Leo Szilard, ‘What Is Wrong with Us?’ (21 Sep. 1942); in CW2, 154.

  14. Szilard, from an interview with Mike Wallace, WNTA-TV, 27 Feb. 1961; in CW2, 146.

  Chapter 2

  1. William L. Laurence, ‘First Atomic Fire Ignited Decade Ago’, NYT (1 Dec. 1952), 12. See also further coverage of the anniversary in NYT: ‘Atomic Decennial’, 2 Dec., p. 30; ‘Uranium Supplies Held Rich as Oil’, 3 Dec., p. 36.

  2. Laurence, ‘First Atomic Fire Ignited Decade Ago’, 12.

  3. Eugene Wigner, ‘Twentieth Birthday of the Atomic Age’, NYT (2 Dec. 1962), VI, 126.

  4. ‘White House and Hydrogen Bomb’, New Statesman, 39 (28 Jan. 1950), 85.

  5. James B. Conant’s annex to the report of the General Advisory Committee to the United States Atomic Energy Commission on the hydrogen bomb, 30 Oct. 1949, and further annex by Enrico Fermi and I. Rabi: GAC reports 29– 30 Oct. 1949, reprinted in Glenn T. Seaborg, Journal of Glenn T. Seaborg, 1946–1958, vol. 3 (Berkeley: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, 1990), pp. 317A ff. These statements were secret until 1974: see Freeman Dyson, ‘Weapons and Hope: II – Tools’, New Yorker (13 Feb. 1984), 67.

  6. Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Knopf, 1980), 320.

  7. Editorial in Louisville Courier-Journal, quoted in ‘The Urge to Do Something’, Time (13 Feb. 1950), 15–16.

  8. e.g. ‘Longer Legs for a Guardian of the Peace’, Time (9 Jan. 1950), 1.

  9. ‘The Loaded Question’, Time (30 Jan. 1950), 16.

  10. Edward Shils, ‘Leo Szilard: A Memoir’, Encounter, 23 (Dec. 1964), 41.

  11. Washington Post, quoted in ‘The Choice’, Time (16 Jan. 1950), 19–20.

  12. Laurie Johnston, ‘Einstein Sees Bid to “Annihilation” in Hydrogen Bomb’, NYT (13 Feb. 1950), 1.

  13. Einstein to Schrödinger, 27 Jan. 1947; quoted in P. D. Smith, Einstein (London: Haus Publishing, 2003), 125.

  14. ‘Einstein Sees Bid to “Annihilation” in Hydrogen Bomb’, NYT (13 Feb. 1950), 1.

  15. ibid., NYT, 13 Feb. 1950, 3.

  16. William Faulkner, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950; in William Faulkner, Essays, Speeches and Public Letters, ed. James B. Meriwether (New York: Modern Library, 2004), 119.

  17. ‘A Touch of Sun’, Time (13 Feb. 1950), 48–9.

  18. William L. Laurence, ‘12 Physicists Ask US Not to Be First to Use Super Bomb’, NYT (5 Feb. 1950), 1.

  19. ‘What Goes on Here?’, Time (6 Feb. 1950), 11.

  20. Aurore; mentioned in Harold Callender, ‘Paris Fears Race for Superweapon’, NYT (15 Feb. 1950).

  21. ‘The Logic of the H-bomb’, New Statesman, 39 (4 Feb. 1950), 117.

  22. John and Roy Boulting, dir., Seven Days to Noon (London Films, 1950).

  23. New York Daily News, cited in ‘What Goes on Here?’, Time (6 Feb. 1950), 11.

  24. Hans Bethe, Harrison Brown, Frederick Seitz and Leo Szilard, ‘The Facts about the Hydrogen Bomb’, text of 26 Feb. broadcast on NBC network, in BAS, 6 (Apr. 1950), 106–9, 126–7. All quotations from the programme are taken from this source.

  25. Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930–1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 178.

  26. Edward Shils, ‘Leo Szilard: A Memoir’, Encounter, 23 (Dec. 1964), 35.

  27. ‘Suicide of World with Bomb Feared’, NYT (20 Mar. 1950), 4.

  28. William L. Laurence, ‘Ending of All Life by Hydrogen Bomb Held a Possibility’, NYT (27 Feb. 1950), 1, 7.

  29. ‘Hydrogen Hysteria’, Time (6 Mar. 1950), 88.

  30. ‘Cult of Doom’, Time (13 Mar. 1950), 71; see also reports in NYT (7 Mar. 1950), 15; Bethe et al., ‘The Facts about the Hydrogen Bomb’, 109, 126–7.

  31. Harold Callender, ‘Paris Fears Race for Super-Weapon’, NYT (15 Feb. 1950).

  32. ‘Cost of Suicide’, Newsweek (30 Oct. 1950), 37.

  33. James R. Arnold, ‘The Hydrogen-Cobalt Bomb’, BAS, 6 (Oct. 1950), 290–92.

  34. ‘Cost of Suicide’, 37.

  35. Shils, ‘Leo Szilard: A Memoir’, 41.

  36. ibid.

  37. ibid., 36, 41.

  38. Sylvia Plath, ‘Doomsday’, Harper’s Magazine, 208 (May 1954), 29.

  39. Leo Szilard, ‘Answers to Questions’, dictated, 9 May 1963; in CW2, 229.

  Chapter 3

  1. Quotations from the following newspaper reports: ‘Jailed in a Theft of Plutonium, Scientist Says He Took “Souvenir’”, NYT (23 Aug. 1950), 1, 15; ‘Plutonium Theft Easy’, NYT (24 Aug. 1950), 20; ‘Bailed in Atomic Theft’, NYT (28 Aug. 1950), 17; ‘US jails Scientist on Atom “Souvenirs’”, NYT (23 Nov. 1950), 41; ‘Bull by the Tail’, Time (4 Sep. 1950), 14; ‘Plutonium Collector’, Newsweek (4 Sep. 1950), 20.

  2. Glenn Seaborg, in The Swedish Americans of the Year (Karlstad: Press Forlag, 1982); from http: //seaborg.nmu.edu/gts/auto.html (accessed 27 Oct. 2004).

  3. Quoted in Lennard Bickel, The Deadly Element: The Story of Uranium (London: Macmillan, 1980), 208.

  4. Seaborg to Ernest Lawrence, May 1941; quoted in Bickel, 193.

  5. Bickel, 264–6; see also http: //members.tripod.com/~Arnold–Dion/Daghlian/bio.html.

  6. Quoted in Bickel, 220.

  7. Catherine Caufield, Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age (London: Penguin, 1990), 53.

  8. Paul Rincon, ‘Plutonium Traced in British Soil’, BBC News, 6 Sep. 2004, http: //news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3630284.stm see, generally, ‘Plutonium’, Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper 18, June 2002, Uranium Information Centre, http: //www.uic.com.au/nip18.htm.

  9. Bickel, 246.

  10. Szilard, CW1, 178–89.

  11. Szilard, ‘Answers to Questions’, dictated, 9 May 1963; in CW2, 229.

  12. Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life (London: Heinemann, 1995), 183.

  13. Bickel, 34–8.

  14. ‘The Photography of the Invisible’, Quarterly Review, 183, no. 366 (Apr. 1896), 499.

  15. Thomas Commerford Martin et al., ‘Photographing the Unseen’, Century Illustrated, 52, ns 30 (1896), 124.

  16. London Daily Chronicle (6 Jan. 1896); quoted in Alan Ralph Bleich, The Story of X-Rays from Röntgen to Isotopes (New York: Dover, 1960), 4.

  17. ‘The Photography of the Invisible’, 496.

  18. ibid.

  19. Richard F
. Mould, A History of X-Rays and Radium with a Chapter on Radiation Units: 1895–1937 (Sutton: IPC Business Press, 1980), 40.

  20. Martin et al., 124–5. For examples of contemporary X-ray images, see this article and ‘The Photography of the Invisible’ (both 1896).

  21. ‘Professor Röntgen Interviewed’, American Monthly Review of Reviews, 13 (Jan.–June 1896), 437.

  22. Bleich, 6.

  23. Caufield, 5.

  24. Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970 (University of Chicago Press, 2004; 1st edn 1989), 27.

  25. Mould, 40.

  26. ibid., 34.

  27. ‘The Photography of the Invisible’, 501.

  28. Herbert C. Fyfe, ‘The Röntgen Rays in Warfare’, Strand Magazine (1899), 778.

  29. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (London: Penguin, 1960; 1st edn 1924), 214–16.

  30. ibid., 215–19.

  31. Mould, 4.

  32. Caufield, 8.

  33. ibid., 13.

  34. Mould, 40; on Dally, see Caufield, 13.

  35. C. H. T. Crosthwaite, ‘Röntgen’s Curse’, Longman’s Magazine, 28 (Sep. 1896), 469–70.

  36. Crosthwaite, 470.

  37. H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man (Glasgow: Fontana, 1978; 1st edn 1897), 143.

  38. Crosthwaite, 475.

  39. ibid., 476–8.

  40. ibid., 479.

  41. ibid., 484.

  Chapter 4

  1. Ernest Merritt, ‘The New Element Radium’, Century Illustrated, 67 (1904), 454–5.

  2. FrederickDolman, ‘Science in the New Century: What Will Be Its Greatest Achievements?’, Strand Magazine, 21 (1901), 55.

  3. Mr Herbert Paul in the Contemporary; quoted in ‘Science and Literature’, The Dial, 42 (1 May 1907), 274–5.

  4. W. J. Wintle, ‘Life in Our New Century’, Harmsworth Magazine, 5, no. 30 (1900/1901), 538.

  5. ibid., 537, 534–6.

  6. ibid., 537.

  7. Dolman, 62.

  8. Henry Adams; quoted in Richard Rhodes, ed., Visions of Technology: A Century of Vital Debate about Machines, Systems and the Human World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 37.

  9. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race (London: George Routledge, 1888; 1st edn 1871), 138, 65, 197.

  10. ibid., 65–6, 136.

  11. A. Hornblow, ‘Did Bulwer-Lytton Foretell the Discovery of Radium?’, Critic, 44 (Mar. 1904), 214–16.

  12. Dolman, 63.

  13. Ray Stannard Baker, ‘Liquid Air’, Strand, 17 (1899), 459.

  14. Baker, 459–60.

  15. Dolman, 61.

  16. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (London: Picador, 1984), 23.

  17. FrederickSoddy, ‘Some Recent Advances in Radioactivity’, Contemporary Review, 83 (May 1903), 719.

  18. Lennard Bickel, The Deadly Element: The Story of Uranium (London: Macmillan, 1980), 25.

  19. ibid., 27.

  20. Merritt, 457.

  21. ibid., 454–5.

  22. ibid., 457.

  23. ibid.

  24. ibid., 458.

  25. ibid.

  26. Quoted in Susan Quinn, Marie Curie: A Life (London: Heinemann, 1995), 155.

  27. ibid.

  28. ibid., 172.

  29. Merritt, 458.

  30. ibid., 453.

  31. ‘The Revelations of Radium’, Edinburgh Review, 198 (Oct. 1903), 387.

  32. Thomson, quoted in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (London: Penguin, 1988), 40.

  33. Thomson, speaking in 1934; in the film Atomic Physics (J. Arthur Rank, 1948); http: //www.aip.org/history/electron/jjsound.htm.

  34. Brian Cathcart, The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Small Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the Race to Split the Atom (London: Viking, 2004), 20.

  35. N. de Bruyne, My Life (Cambridge: Midsummer, 1996), 58; quoted in Cathcart, 95.

  36. Soddy, quoted in Muriel Howorth, Atomic Transmutation: The Greatest Discovery Ever Made. From Memoirs of Professor Frederick Soddy (London: New World, 1953), 56–7.

  37. Soddy, ‘Chemical Evidence of the Indivisibility of the Atom’, paper presented on 28 Mar. 1901; quoted in David Wilson, Rutherford: Simple Genius (London: Hodder, 1983), 150.

  38. Michael Meyer, Strindberg: A Biography (London: Secker & Warburg, 1985), 281.

  39. Howorth, 48.

  40. Wilson, 153.

  41. Bickel, 32–3.

  42. ‘The Interpretation of Radium. By FrederickSoddy. Illustrated. (John Murray)’, review in Athenaeum, no. 4, 254 (8 May 1909), 562.

  43. Howorth, 54.

  44. ibid., 63–4.

  45. ibid., 56–7.

  46. ibid., 54.

  47. ‘The Mystery of Radium’, Times (25 Mar. 1903), 10; referring to Pierre Curie and A. Laborde, ‘Sur la chaleur degage spontanément par les sels de radium’, Comptes rendus, (16 Mar. 1903).

  48. Quinn, 204.

  49. ‘The Mystery of Radium’, 10.

  50. ibid.

  51. ‘The Revelations of Radium’, 397.

  52. E. Rutherford and F. Soddy, ‘Radioactive Change’, Philosophical Magazine, 5 (1903), 576–91; quoted in ibid., 396.

  53. Soddy, ‘Some Recent Advances in Radioactivity’, 718, 720.

  54. Soddy to Rutherford, 19 Feb. 1903; quoted in Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 25; Crookes’ comments were reported in New York Press (8 Feb. 1903).

  55. Weart, 25.

  56. Gustave Le Bon, New York World (30 Aug. 1903); quoted in Weart, 18.

  57. W. C. D. Whetham, ‘Matter and Electricity’, Quarterly Review, 199, no. 397 (Jan. 1904), 126.

  58. Soddy on 14 Jan. 1904, lecture published as Paper VIII, Professional Papers of the Royal Engineers, 29 (1904); quoted in Howorth, 95.

  59. Pierre Curie, ‘Radioactive Substances, Especially Radium’, Nobel Lecture, 6 June 1905.

  60. Cleveland Moffett, ‘The Mysterious Card’, The Black Cat (Feb. 1896); see Mike Ashley, The Time Machines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the Beginning to 1950 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 23.

  61. Moffett, ‘M. Curie, the Discoverer of Radium’, Strand Magazine, 27 (Jan. 1904), 66.

  62. ibid., 65–66.

  63. ibid., 66.

  64. ibid.

  65. ibid., 69.

  66. ibid., 65–66.

  67. ibid., 67.

  68. ibid., 67–8.

  69. ibid., 70.

  70. Homer’s Hymn to Apollo, lines 440–42. Crookes refers to this in his lecture to the Congress of Applied Chemistry, Berlin, 5 June 1903, published as William Crookes, ‘Modern Views on Matter: The Realization of a Dream’, Science, 17, no. 443 (26 June 1903), 1002.

  71. C. W. Saleeby, ‘Radium the Revealer’, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 109 (June 1904), 85.

  72. Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (London: Picador, 2002), 287.

  73. Moffett, ‘M. Curie, the Discoverer of Radium’, 70.

  74. ibid., 71.

  75. Caufield, 28.

  76. Moffett, 72.

  77. ibid., 73 (emphasis in original).

  78. Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: Karger, 1958), 56.

  79. Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present (London: HarperCollins, 1997), 204.

  80. Moffett, 72–3.

  81. ibid., 73.

  82. ‘The Revelations of Radium’, 398.

  83. Crookes, ‘Modern Views on Matter’, 1003.

  84. ‘The Revelations of Radium’, 399.

  85. Wells, The Time Machine (1895); in The Science Fiction, vol. 1 (London: Phoenix, 1998), 64.

  86. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 1927), 12–13.

  87. ‘The Revelations of Radium’, 399.


  88. Wells, Tono-Bungay (London: Everyman, 1999; 1st edn 1909), 111, 128.

  89. ibid., 279.

  90. ibid., 200.

  91. ibid., 297.

  92. ibid., 297–8.

  93. ibid., 298, 201.

  94. ‘The Revelations of Radium’, 399.

  95. Saleeby, 87.

  96. Kandinsky, speaking in 1911; quoted in Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998), 83.

  97. Joseph Conrad, 9 Sep. 1898; quoted in Edward Garnett, ed., Letters from Joseph Conrad, 1895–1924 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), 143.

  98. Joseph Conrad and Ford M. Hueffer, The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story (London: Heinemann, 1901), 16–17.

  Chapter 5

  1. ‘Unser erster weiblicher Doktor’, Breslauer Zeitung (22 Dec. 1900, evening edn); quoted in Gerit von Leitner, Der Fall Clara Immerwahr: Leben für eine humane Wissenschaft (Munich: Beck, 1994), 67; all translations from this are my own.

  2. L. F. Haber, The Poisonous Cloud: Chemical Warfare in the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 26; see also Margit Szöllösi-Janze, Fritz Haber, 1868–1934: Eine Biographie (Munich: Beck, 1998), 272–3.

  3. Paul Krassa to Johannes Jaenicka, 2 Nov. 1957; quoted in Szöllösi-Janze, 396; all translations from this are my own.

  4. James Franck, quoted in Leitner, 224; my trans.

  5. Leitner, 9.

  6. ibid., 10.

  7. Hermann Lütge to Jaenicka, 1958; quoted in Szöllösi-Janze, 396. Hermann Haber tookhis own life in New Yorkin 1946. Clara’s own sister, Lotte, would also commit suicide on the eve of being transported to Auschwitz. See Leitner, 10.

  8. Charlotte Haber, Mein Leben mit Fritz Haber (Düsseldorf: Econ, 1970); quoted in Szöllösi-Janze, 398.

  9. Fritz Haber to Carl Engler, 12 June 1915; quoted in Leitner, 12; my trans.

  10. Fritz Haber to Carl Engler, 12 June 1915; quoted in Szöllösi-Janze, 399; my trans.

  11. André Malraux, The Walnut Trees of Altenburg, trans. A. W. Fielding (University of Chicago Press, 1992; 1st edn 1948 as Les Noyers de l’Altenburg), 133.