72. Seth Neddermeyer. His idea of using explosives to squeeze a nuclear core to criticality saved the plutonium bomb when impurities threatened its design.
73. Kitty Oppenheimer at Los Alamos with Peter.
74. The Los Alamos staff worked a six-day week; Sundays there was time for recreation. Shown here on a Sunday hike, L. to r., standing, Emilio Segré, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, H. H. Staub, Victor Weisskopf; seated, Erika Staub, Elfriede Segré.
75. The Normandy invasion in May 1944 led ultimately to Allied victory in Europe 12 months later. Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the front lines.
76. Ferocious Japanese resistance claimed increasing U.S. casualties in the Pacific—30,000 of the 60,000 Americans committed on Iwo Jima, where 20,000 Japanese died.
77. At Los Alamos, Ukrainian chemist George Kistiakowsky (here riding Crisis) manufactured and tested the explosive lenses for the Fat Man bomb.
78. Early model Fat Man implosion bomb, upper segments removed to show interior. Overall diameter is about 5 feet.
79. X-ray motion picture frames of implosion experiment. Note compression of core in final frames.
80. Shot tower at Trinity Site in the desert north of Alamogordo, N.M., where Los Alamos prepared in the spring of 1945 to test the plutonium bomb.
81. Base Camp.
82. After inserting the initiator into the core and mounting the assembly in a cylindrical plug of tamper, the crew delivered it to the tower for insertion into the bomb.
83. Firing and instrumentation bunkers.
84. Theoretician Philip Morrison (left), here with Ernest Lawrence, escorted the plutonium core to Trinity.
85. Sgt. Herbert Lehr delivered the core in its shockmounted case to the McDonald Ranch assembly room at Trinity about 6 P.M., July 12, 1945. Assembly proceeded the following morning.
86. After inserting the initiator into the core and mounting the assembly in a cylindrical plug of tamper, the crew delivered it to the tower for insertion into the bomb.
87. The completely assembled Trinity bomb in its tower, with Norris Bradbury attending, July 15, 1945.
88-93. The first man-made nuclear explosion: Trinity, 0529:45 hours et seq., July 16, 1945. The sequence runs down this page and up the next. Note change of scale as the fireball expands. “This power of nature which we had first understood it to be,” said I. I. Rabi, “—well, there it was.”
94. Twenty-four hours later Trinity, seen from the air, revealed a radioactive crater of green, glassy, fused desert sand. (Smaller crater to the south marks the 100-ton explosive test.)
95. Los Alamos director Robert Oppenheimer (left) subsequently visited the site with Manhattan Project commanding general Leslie R. Groves and found only the reinforcing rods of the tower footings left unvaporized.
96. In a final postwar celebration the British mission at Los Alamos pantomimed the war years. A stepladder stood in for the Trinity shot tower. Note Otto Frisch (third from left) in skirt playing housemaid.
97. Beginning in 1944, U.S. Air Force B-29’s systematically firebombed Japanese cities. L. to r., Generals Lauris Norstad, Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power.
98. At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 President Harry Truman welcomed the bomb as a substitute for Soviet entry into the Pacific war. L. to r., Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
99. Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, directed bomb development.
100. Jimmy Byrnes, Secretary of State, advised Truman to use the bomb to force the unconditional surrender of the Japanese.
101. The Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, was a cannon with a U235 bullet and three U235 target rings fitted to its muzzle. Tinian, August 1945.
102. Hiroshima prestrike briefing on Tinian. L. to r., first row, Joseph Buscher, unknown; second row, Norman Ramsey, Paul Tibbets; third row, Thomas Ferrell, Adm. Parnell, Deke Parsons, Luis Alvarez; fourth row, left of Parsons, Charles Sweeney, right of Parsons, Thomas Ferebee, right of Alvarez, Theodore Van Kirk; Harold Agnew.
103. Crew of the Enola Gay before Hiroshima mission: l. to r., standing, John Porter (ground maintenance officer), Theodore Van Kirk (navigator), Thomas Ferebee (bombardier), Paul Tibbets (pilot), Robert Lewis (copilot), Jacob Beser (radar countermeasures officer); kneeling, Joseph Stiborik (radar operator), Robert Caron (tail gunner), Richard Nelson (radio operator), Robert Shumard (assistant engineer), Wyatt Duzenbury (flight engineer). Not shown: Deke Parsons (weaponeer), Morris Jeppson (electronics test officer).
104. The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, photographed from the strike mission B-29.
105. The Enola Gay landing at Tinian after the Hiroshima strike.
106. A panorama of Hiroshima damage. Some roads have been cleared. Buildings left standing were earthquake-reinforced. Little Boy exploded with a yield equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT (12.5 KT). Modern atomic artillery shells deliver equal yield; one Minuteman III missile is armed with the equivalent of 84 Hiroshimas.
107. Miyuki Bridge, Hiroshima, 1.4 miles from the hypocenter, 11 A.M., August 6, 1945.
108. The Hiroshima fireball instantly raised surface temperatures within a mile of the hypocenter well above 1,000° F.
109. A man pulling a cart shadowed in unburned asphalt, Hiroshima.
110. Thermal burns on a soldier exposed within half a mile of the Hiroshima hypocenter. His sash protected his waist.
111. Unidentified corpse, Hiroshima. Deaths to the end of 1945 totaled 140,000.
112. Staircase on a gas storage tank shadowed in uncharred paint, Hiroshima.
113. Fat Man was ready on Tinian on August 8, 1945, and flew the following day. Note graffiti on tail assembly.
114. The plutonium bomb exploded over Nagasaki near the largest Christian church in Japan at 1102 hours, August 9, 1945, with a yield estimated at 22 kilotons.
115. Fat Man snapped trees at Nagasaki; the less powerful Hiroshima bomb only knocked them down.
116. Collecting the dead for cremation.
117. A student exposed half a mile from the Nagasaki hypocenter.
118. Flash burns, Nagasaki.
119. Near the Nagasaki hypocenter, noon, August 10, 1945.
120. Dr. Michihiko Hachiya, director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital. His diary chronicled the disaster.
121. Emperor Hirohito decided after Nagasaki, over his ministers’ objections, to end the war and cited “a new and most cruel bomb” in his August 15 surrender proclamation.
122. Los Alamos received the Army-Navy E for excellence for its work.
123. Mike I, the first true thermonuclear bomb, tested at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952. Yield: 10.4 megatons (i.e., millions of tons of TNT equivalent). Pipes carried off radiation to diagnostic equipment; their arrangement confirms the linear Teller-Ulam configuration. Note man seated in foreground for scale.
124. Mike vaporized the island of Elugelab and left a crater half a mile deep and two miles wide.
125. The Mark 17 H-bomb, the first deliverable thermonuclear weapon. Yield: megaton-range. Weight: 21 tons.
126. The Mike shot. Its fireball expanded to a diameter of 3 miles.
127. Early fireball of a postwar atomic bomb test. “I could see a great bare eyeball,” Michihiko Hachiya dreamed after Hiroshima, “bigger than life, hovering over my head, staring pointblank at me.”
128. Margrethe and Niels Bohr at their summer cottage in Tisvilde. “We are in a completely new situation that cannot be resolved by war.”
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RICHARD RHODES
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Hedy’s Folly:The Life and Breakthrough Inventions
of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World
The Twilight of the Bombs
Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race
John James Audubon: The Making of an American
Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen
and the Invention of the Holocaust
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sp; Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist
Visions of Technology: An Anthology
Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague
Trying To Get Some Dignity: Stories of Triumph Over Childhood Abuse
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
How To Write: Advice and Reflections
Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense About Energy
Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey
A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood
Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer
Looking for America: A Writer’s Odyssey
The Ozarks
The Inland Ground: An Evocation of the American Middle West
FICTION
Sons of Earth
The Last Safari
Holy Secrets
The Ungodly: A Novel of the Donner Party
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PHOTO CREDITS
1. Culver 2. Egon Weiss 3. E. Scott Barr Collection, AIP Niels Bohr Library 4. Courtesy Otto Hahn and Lawrence Badash, AIP Niels Bohr Library 5. Mary Evans Rhodes 6. Bibliothek und Archiv für Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 7. Niels Bohr Institute 8/9. Bibliothek und Archiv für Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 10. AIP Niels Bohr Library 11. University of California Press 12. Culver 13/14. Niels Bohr Institute 15-17. Emilio Segrè 18. AIP Niels Bohr Library 19. Picture People 20. Niels Bohr Institute 21. Société Française de Physique, Paris/AIP Niels Bohr Library 22. W. F. Meggers Collection, AIP Niels Bohr Library 23/24. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 25. Photo by D. Schoenberg, Bainbridge Collection, AIP Niels Bohr Library 26. Fraçoise Ulam 27. Egon Weiss 28/29. Rose Bethe 30. Wide World 31. Bibliothek und Archiv für Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 32. Segré Collection, AIP Niels Bohr Library 33/34. Bibliothek und Archiv für Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 35. Mary Evans Rhodes 36. Argonne National Laboratory 37. Picture People 38. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington 39. Wide World
40. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 41. Picture People 42. Rudolf Peierls 43. Smithsonian Institution Science Service Collection, AIP Niels Bohr Library 44. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos 45. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos 46. Alfred O. C. Nier 47. Photo by P. Ehrenfest, Weisskopf Collection, AIP Niels Bohr Library 48. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 49. Picture People 50. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos 51. Picture People 52. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 53. Argonne National Laboratory 54/55. Martin Marietta 56. Philip Abelson 57-61. National Archives 62/63. Norsk Hydro 64-67. Los Alamos National Laboratory 68. Luis W. Alvarez 69. Niels Bohr Institute 70. Françoise Ulam 77/72. Los Alamos National Laboratory 73. Oppenheimer Memorial Committee 74. Emilio Segrè 75. Picture People 76. Picture People 77. Mrs. George Kistiakowsky 78-83. Los Alamos National Laboratory 84. AIP Niels Bohr Library 85-96. Los Alamos National Laboratory
97. USAF 98. Picture People 99. Henry L. Stimson Papers, Yale University Library 100. Robert Muldrow Cooper Library, Clemson University 101. National Archives 102. Harold Agnew 103-105. USAF 106. Yoshito Matsushige 107. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum 108/109. Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation 110/111. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum 112. Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation 113. National Archives 114/115. Issei Nishimori 116. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum 117. Yosuke Yamabata 118. Issei Nishimori 119. Yosuke Yamabata 120. Peter Wyden 121. UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos 122-126. Los Alamos National Laboratory 127. Dr. Harold E. Edgerton, MIT, Cambridge, MA 128. Niels Bohr Institute
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS AND SOURCES:
OHI: Oral history interview.
AIP: Center for the History of Physics, American Institute of Physics, New York, N.Y.
AHQP: Archives for the History of Quantum Physics, available at the AIP and several other repositories.
Bush-Conant File: Vannevar Bush-James B. Conant files, Office of Scientific Research and Development, S-l (Record Group 227), National Archives.
MED: Manhattan Engineer District Records (Record Group 77), National Archives.
JRO Papers: J. Robert Oppenheimer Papers, Library of Congress.
Strauss Papers: Lewis L. Strauss Papers, Herbert Hoover Library, West Branch, Iowa.
Szilard Papers: Leo Szilard Papers, University of California at San Diego.
Chapter 1: Moonshine
1. September 12, 1933: I derive this date from Leo Szilard’s statement at Szilard (1972), p. 529, that he read about Ernest Rutherford’s speech to the British Association “one morning . . . in the newspapers” and “that day . . . was walking down Southampton Row.” The British Association story appeared prominently on p. 7 of The Times on Sept. 12.
2. “short fat man . . . wives”: Szilard (1972), p. xv.
3. “Mr. Wells . . . justification”: The Times, p. 6.
4. He knew Wells personally: Shils (1964), p. 38.
5. Szilard read Wells’ tract: Weart and Szilard (1978), p. 22n.
6. he traveled to London in 1929: ibid.
7. Szilard bid: Shils (1964), p. 38.
8. “I knew languages . . . .mascot”: Weart and Szilard (1978), p. 4.
9. “When I was young . . . politics”: Szilard (1972), p. xix.
10. “I said to them . . . this statement”: Weart and Szilard (1978), pp. 4-5.
11. his clarity of judgment: ibid., p. 5.
12. the Eötvös Prize: von Kármán and Edson (1967), p. 22.
13. “no career in physics”: Weart and Szilard (1978), p. 5.
14. “felt that his skill . . . colleagues”: Wigner (1964), p. 338.
15. saved his life: Weart and Szilard (1978), p. 8.
16. “family connections”: ibid., p. 7.
17. “Not long afterward . . . disappeared”: ibid., p. 8.
18. around Christmastime: ibid.
19. “In the end . . . ’21”: ibid., p. 9.
20. “As soon . . . Einstein”: Wigner (1964), p. 338.
21. Wigner remembers: ibid.
22. Szilard won his attention: Segrè (1970), p. 106.
23. von Laue . . . accepted Szilard: Weart and Szilard (1978), Fig. 1, p. 10.
24. “There was snow . . . strange”: de Jonge (1978), p. 125.
25. “the air . . . counted out”: ibid., p. 130.
26. Press Ball: ibid., p. 132.
27. Mies van der Rohe: Friedrich (1972), p. 163.
28. Yehudi Menuhin: ibid., p. 219.
29. George Grosz: Grosz (1923); Friedrich (1972), p. 152.
30. “an elderly . . . shoelaces”: quoted in ibid., p. 90.
31. Fyodor Vinberg: ibid., pp. 95-96.
32. “a dark . . . enigma”: quoted in ibid., p. 190.
33. “No, one . . . gods”: de Jonge (1978), p. 99.
34. “In order . . . of inflation”: Elsasser (1978), pp. 31-32.
35. “During a . . . and opinion”: Wigner (1964), p. 337.
36. “Berlin . . . of physics”: Weart and Szilard (1978), p. 8.
37. “In order . . . original work”: ibid., p. 9.
38. “I couldn’t . . . to my mind”: ibid.
39. Einstein, for example: Cf. Einstein’s own evaluation: “Because of the understanding of the essence of Brownian motion, suddenly all doubts vanished about the correctness of Boltzmann’s [statistical] interpretation of the thermodynamic laws.” Cited in Pais (1982), p. 100. Cf. also Szilard (1972), p. 31ff.
40. “and I saw . . . to do”: Weart and Szilard (1978), p. 9.
41. “Well . . . very much”: ibid., p. 9ff.
42. “and next . . . degree”: ibid., p. 11.
43. Six months later: ibid.
44. accepted as Habilitationsschrift: Szilard (1972), p. 6.
45. Szilard patents: ibid., pp. 697-706.
46. “A sad . . . valve”: Feld (1984), p. 676.
47. pumping refrigerant: Weart and Szilard (1978), p. 12.
48. January 5, 1929: Szilard (1972), p. 528.
49. April 1, 1929: Childs (1968), p. 138ff.
50. “the mid-twenties in Germany”: Weart and Szilard (1978), p. 22.
51. “had a . . . scale”: Snow (1981), p. 44.
52. Der Bund: Weart and Szilard (1978), p. 23ff.
53. “a closely . . . spirit”: ibid., p. 23.
54. “If we . . . own”: ibid., p. 24.
55. “take over . . . parliament”: ibid., p. 25.
56. “The Order . . . state”: ibid., p. 28n.
57. “The Voice of the Dolphins”: Szilard (1961).
Making of the Atomic Bomb Page 104