Her favorite activity became strolling through Central Park, looking at the blooming flowers, and she often couldn’t help recalling childhood days in Hungary and the early-spring days she had spent with her grandmother watching nature come to life. To the older woman’s delight, Elizabeth was the grandchild who shared her fascination with nature, who did not mind observing a plant as it developed day by day and jotting down its progress in a journal, who didn’t mind admiring the different shades of green as they intensified, and who didn’t mind charting the growth of the pine tree her grandmother had planted as a sapling decades earlier.
As a child, Elizabeth had learned to speak French from a family that came every summer to stay near her relatives and whose three boys taught her the language. It came in handy later, as her career as a scientist blossomed. Scientists often arrived at their home to study with her father, an eminent physician. Elizabeth also had a sister, Marie, and these scientists, from all over Europe and from places as far away as Japan, had delighted the girls with tales of their countries and taught them bits of their own languages. Thus, the girls had become comfortable with people of every nationality, color, and creed.
As Elizabeth waited to find work in the United States, she mentally performed the experiments for which she had become well known while working in European laboratories—the same experiments she had performed alongside Lise in Berlin.
Some four months after arriving in New York, she attended the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, where employers looked for potential candidates. There she met a European scientist, Karl Herzfeld, who was a well-known theoretical physicist at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. They talked about their new lives in America, and Elizabeth Rona told him of her inability to land a job related to science. She also explained that she would need a place to work once her visa expired in order to extend her stay. Would she be interested in teaching at Trinity College in Washington, DC? he asked. He knew they were looking for a faculty instructor to teach chemistry and other science classes. Elizabeth Rona said yes.
Teaching would not be difficult for her. She had sharpened her teaching skills early in her career, at the University of Budapest, when Dr. Francis Tangl, a famous biochemist and physiologist, hired her to write and teach courses that complemented the training of his graduate students. She had found it a strange spot to be in: She was the only woman in the program, and she was younger than the students for whom she was putting together the courses.
These were medical students, and they reminded her of the wish she had held of becoming a doctor herself, a dream erased by her father’s adamant opposition. Oddly enough, that teaching experience turned out better than she had anticipated. Of course, she knew that the situation would be markedly different in Washington, DC, at Trinity, but she suspected that she would thrive there as well. She always did.
While preparing to move to Washington, she often recalled her earliest days in America, not so many months before. She had known that some of her former colleagues had ended up in New York and had gone to work at Columbia University. And so it was there that she headed as soon as she landed. In the physics department at Columbia she met not only Fermi and Szilard but also several other scientists she had known intimately in Europe, and a handful she had never met before. And she thought of the earliest women researchers with whom she had crossed paths, the ones who had been her colleagues and had become her friends. They had learned from one another and traveled together to various European laboratories to study and learn.
But it seemed that things were done differently in the laboratories of the United States. At Columbia, no one spoke to her, and she didn’t know what to make of that fact. She could have easily talked shop with any of these people, as by the time she landed in the United States, she had already worked with Lise and Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin; with Meyer at the Institute for Radium Research in Vienna; and with the Curies in Paris. But no one spoke to her, about science or anything else. Even a young scientist she had known quite well, and to whom a mutual friend had asked her to extend his hellos, simply turned away and walked off.
She didn’t know it then, but there were FBI agents at Columbia. They were questioning everybody about her visit there: she, a European scientist with a visitor visa, traipsing in a laboratory where a secret project was taking place. They feared that she was a German spy sent to the United States to infiltrate the laboratories, uncover their secret operations, and report back to her superiors.
When people first saw her, they seemed struck by the picture she presented. By the time she arrived in the United States, she was a mature woman in her early fifties wearing comfortable loafers and long skirts. Her stockings, which she wore routinely even in the spring and summer, were as heavy as wool, and her hair was speckled heavily with silver. She gave the impression of a kindly grandmother on her way to buy a toy for her grandchild, which she didn’t have. She was neither a wife nor a mother, much less a grandmother.
One night, while working late at Trinity College in Washington, DC, she received a telegram from Brian O’Bryen marked RESTRICTED. That word alone had been enough to spark her imagination. The telegram read in part: “In connection with a certain war work, immediate need has arisen for large quantities of polonium, and probably also for lead-210. A stockpile of radon seeds will be available. At first, it will be necessary to produce these elements in amounts corresponding to about 50 milligrams of radium, and it is desired to obtain this quantity in the shortest period of time. It is probable that considerably larger amounts will be needed thereafter. Solutions of polonium-210 and lead-210 should be without contamination with inactive material. It is also desirable that these solutions should be strong and either not at all or slightly acidic. I believe that your unusual experience in radiochemistry will ensure quick and reliable results. You would be making a substantial contribution to the war effort.”
O’Bryen had become aware that Elizabeth was in the country and was teaching at Trinity College. Since she had since been cleared as a spy, her skills on plutonium could be used.
Elizabeth reread the telegram and immediately drafted a letter stating that she was interested. The following evening, while gathering her paperwork in her office, she heard a knock on the door. There stood a very tall and thin man who introduced himself as Professor Brian O’Bryen. As they sat together drinking tea, he described, as much as he could, the enormous covert operation taking place in various cities in America; he also told her that he wanted her to take part in it, if she was willing. They were building a bomb, he told her, one they planned to use to end the war with the Nazis. Elizabeth looked at a photo affixed on the wall. Her friends back in Hungary smiled back at her. Some of them, she knew, had already died.
chapter nineteen
Trinity
It was a warm morning that July 16, 1945, in the desert of New Mexico, some 120 miles south of Santa Fe. The blast had been scheduled for dawn, but a sudden passing storm had delayed the experiment for hours, and it was only as five o’clock neared that the go-ahead was given.
The test had taken many months to set up. Early that morning, those who had been involved in it—the dozens of scientists, engineers, and military and government officials, as well as individuals who had been invited to view it—had left their homes and hotels while it was still dark and had driven to the test site. They had watched the dark sky, anticipating how it would soon light up as if it were morning.
The test had required a good-size piece of wide and flat land, as they knew this would give them better fallout measurements after the explosion. They had also wanted the test site to be a good distance from the populated area of Los Alamos, away from curious eyes. The distance served another purpose: Following the explosion, the fallout on the inhabitants would not be too dangerous.
President Truman had known about the test from the start and, along with the rest, had agreed with General Groves to pick an area where no Native Amer
icans were residing, so that they would not be displaced from their homes. The area had been a practice bombing and air-to-air gunnery range for B-29 and B-17 planes, so the nearby population was accustomed to hearing odd explosions.
In the middle of the large expanse of land, a one-hundred-foot steel tower had been erected, above which the bomb itself was secured. Scientists had developed several ways in which the bomb could have been constructed—measuring, calculating, scrawling various possibilities on paper and blackboards—and finally settled on an aerial burst as the option likely to give them the most effective results.
Some two hundred people knew of the classified operation, but only a few had been given permission to attend. Those few could not help themselves; they stared up at the bomb in astonishment, as it dawned on them that what had been only a possibility up until this point was now a tangible reality. They could hike up and touch its cool metal, if they had been allowed to, although only J. Robert Oppenheimer did that; they could sense its weight. It was a real thing. With the flick of a switch, with a slow countdown, the bomb would go off and they would blast into the unknown. It was a frightening yet very exciting thought, they would admit later on, even if only to those few who persisted in asking.
Several of the scientists who had not been invited to watch the test had, regardless of regulations, crawled onto the nearby borderland, which was made up of more than a thirty-mile radius, intent on being witnesses to history. Several scientists moved into the photo bunkers, the closest locations they could find to view the explosion. Now they found themselves ready to watch the first nuclear test explosion as it pierced the predawn air.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died three months earlier, on April 12, and Vice President Harry S. Truman had taken his place, becoming the thirty-third president of the United States. While serving as vice president, Truman had not been aware of the Manhattan Project, though he had suspected that some kind of secret military operation was under way. But soon after taking office, he had been briefed on the rush to complete the atomic bomb, and he had agreed to go forward with the test. He knew what was happening in New Mexico, and he eagerly awaited word of the outcome.
Up until 1942, the possibility of building a bomb had been just that: a possibility. Despite numerous discoveries and scientific advances, no one knew for certain if it could be done. But after December 2, 1942, when Fermi and the other scientists in his University of Chicago research group, beneath the stands of Stagg Field stadium, had successfully tested sustaining a chain reaction long enough to make a bomb, the possibility had become reality.
The evening prior to the Trinity test in New Mexico, many of the people involved in it, including General Groves, were asked to stay near the bunkers at base camp, located some ten miles away. Such a precaution was especially necessary for General Groves: He and Oppenheimer, the two men in charge of the entire operation, were not to be in the same place at the same time, so that in the event that something catastrophic happened, at least one of them would still be there to give orders.
As this was the first test of a nuclear bomb, no one knew exactly what would happen. Nuclear fission had never been attempted at this scale, and some of the scientists, deep down, were afraid that the test would ignite the atmosphere and cause global destruction; while this was a very distant possibility, the extinction of the human race seemed to them to be a real option. But many others didn’t believe that anything would happen at all, thinking that all their efforts would go out in a flicker of nothingness.
For days every calculation had been done and redone, checked and rechecked; every wire, knob, and pile had been secured and tied down; weather reports had been looked at and adjustments made depending on cloud patterns and wind shifts. Yet the reality was that they were trying something new, and something could always go wrong.
General Groves, the man in charge of the entire operation, had made plans for all imaginable eventualities, including evacuating nearby towns and implementing martial law if anything horrifying should occur. But he didn’t want to think of that possibility. He was conscious of his image, of how he came across in the press and to his superiors. He worried about what others would say of him after the war, particularly if the bomb turned out to be a dud. “Think of me standing before a US Senate committee after the war when it asks me: ‘General Groves, why did you spend this million or that million of dollars?’” he told Oppenheimer. But while he was concerned about his superiors, he didn’t care all that much about the scientists. He didn’t like them, nor was he bothered by what they thought of him; he always pushed them to do better and to finish on time. And he was aware that they liked him as much as he liked them.
Many of the attendees began to feel chilly, and it was on the rain that they blamed their shivers, not on the nerves they were experiencing. They tried to behave normally, as if this were just another day, another experiment that they were performing in the comfort of their laboratories. But they all knew better, and it showed on their faces, in their twitchy movements, in the muttering of their lips, in the numerous packets of cigarettes they consumed, even though they had been warned not to smoke, given all the wiring snaking around them.
Oppenheimer was pale and tense and could barely catch his breath. Those near him feared intruding on his thoughts, so they stayed some feet away and left him to his own devices. More than anybody else, he was aware of the dangers behind the bomb’s science: what could happen if it didn’t work, but also what would happen if it did. The pressure seemed to crush him; it was unlike anything he had ever felt before, or would ever feel again. That sense of unease grew as the countdown started. He knew that lives depended on the outcome of the test.
At supper the night before the test, the attendees had been advised about what to do during the explosion to prevent eye damage; to prevent irradiation; to prevent ear damage; to prevent being knocked down to the ground. In essence, they were advised to wear goggles; not to look directly toward the blast, if they could restrain themselves; to wear earplugs, although the sound would penetrate regardless; and to hold on to something, for even though they would be standing some distance from the blast, the ground beneath them was likely to tremble, and they might find themselves losing their balance. The blast would be the loudest, brightest thing they would ever see, they were told. They needed to take precautions. And now, with zero hour approaching, they tried to remember what they had been told.
As the time for the firing arrived, it was hard to imagine that all those weeks and months of preparation were finally coming to this. Looking up, all could see the bomb resting in its tower, appearing not particularly threatening. The surrounding area was becoming crowded, with everyone waiting to take their places when the signal was given.
Rain came down heavily, and they even noticed some rumbles of thunder; those in attendance wondered whether the test would go forward, and if it did, how the weather would influence the outcome. The 4:00 AM detonation had been canceled, and as they inched toward morning, the rain still came down with abandon. The lightning, in particular, was a big concern, as miles of wiring were attached to the bomb and sticking out from the now soaked ground. Any electrical surge could prove disastrous.
But at 5:29 AM, as city lights flickered dimly in the distance, scientists flipped a switch for the detonation and held their collective breath. They heard a brilliantly loud burst, and in that moment, all their studies, all their expertise, all their research and theory became reality. The bomb worked flawlessly and produced an explosion brighter than anyone had thought possible. A huge cloud billowed upward, reaching an elevation of nearly forty thousand feet, the light visible almost two hundred miles away. Val Fitch, a scientist who witnessed the blast, said later: “It took the blast wave about thirty seconds. There was the initial loud report, the sharp gust of wind, and then the long period of reverberation as the sound waves echoed off the nearby mountains and came back to us.”
Several scientists hopped into their trucks a
nd for some time followed the radioactive clouds that trailed above them, some wondering where they would travel to, where the fallout would eventually land, and how far it would go. Some days later, they learned that it had rained in Illinois and that the rain had brought down small amounts of radioactive fallout; the clouds had traveled some fifteen hundred miles. Immediately after the blast, Fermi and Oppenheimer had calculated that the energy yield of the test was equivalent to about 20,000 tons of TNT.
The witnesses no longer felt chilly. They sensed the heat coming toward them as the fireball grew and changed in color from yellow to orange to red, watching it climb upward toward the sky like a slithering snake. After a few minutes, it became dark again, but in the sky and over the surrounding area, there remained a purple glow few of them ever managed to forget.
Those scientists who lived in the vicinity soon jumped into their jeeps and cars and returned home, where they quickly shed their clothing, headed into their showers, and scrubbed themselves with hot water and soap, over and over again, as if the simple act of cleansing their bodies might help them get rid of the radioactive material, should they have been contaminated. Again and again they did so, later throwing the clothes they had been wearing into dumpsters.
What had transpired in New Mexico was never supposed to happen. Although atomic science had been a subject pursued with excitement in Europe, the idea of an atomic bomb had seemed like an impossibility.
Atomic Women Page 14