Peter Duchin
Betty Loomis Evans, East Hampton and New York
Janet Fisher, New York
Dr. John S. Foster, Connecticut
Charles Fraser, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Rowan Gaither III
Mimi Thorne Gilpatrick, New York
William Golden, New York
Patricia Gussin, Washington, D.C.
Frederick C. Hack Jr., Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Natalie Harvey, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Caryl P. Haskins, Fairfield, Connecticut
Joan Loomis Hastings
Alfred Loomis Hobart, Waitsfield, Vermont
Garret Hobart IV, Waitsfield, Vermont
John Jessup, New York
Elaine Kistiakowsky, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Alfred Lee (“Chip”) Loomis III, New York
Bart Loomis
William F. Loomis Jr.
Mary Paul “Paulie” Loomis, Massachusetts
Tim Loomis, who interviewed his ailing father, Henry Loomis
Sabra Loomis, New York
Talbot Love, Tuxedo Park Historical Society
John Modder, Tuxedo Park
John Jay Mortimer, New York
Philip Nash, New York
Mary Lawrence Prudhomme
Jacqueline Loomis Quillen, East Hampton and New York
Christian Sonne, Tuxedo Park
Edwin Thorne, Greenwich, Connecticut
Landon Thorne III, Beaufort, South Carolina
Richard H. Tourin
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been written without the encouragement of my parents, especially my father, who first planted the seeds of this story years ago and, when I asked, willingly turned over his family’s papers and letters and spent hours rummaging through boxes and stacks of books. I am also indebted to Betty Loomis Evans and her children, Jacqueline Loomis Quillen and Bart Loomis, who welcomed a stranger with open arms and gave so generously of their time. They shared their detailed memories of their family’s past with great honesty and insight, provided old photographs, and steered me to longtime friends and colleagues. I want to thank, in particular, Alfred and Garret Hobart, for their reminiscences and for giving me access to their mother’s records and photographs. With few exceptions, all the members of the extended Loomis/Thorne clan were forthcoming, and without their help this book would not have been possible.
Most of Alfred Loomis’ papers were lost or discarded when he sold the Tower House in Tuxedo Park in 1950. The few remaining laboratory records, along with the historic guest book, are deposited in the Institute Archives and Special Collections room at MIT. Fortunately, Henry Stimson was an avid letter writer and filled volumes of diaries with his thoughts and observations, and a rich store of material is available in the archives of Yale University Library. Digging up material on Loomis’ myriad activities involved a considerable amount of detective work, and I owe an immense debt to my researcher, Ruth Tenenbaum. She is persistent, patient, and resourceful and came through no matter how obscure the request. I could not ask for a better colleague and friend.
I wish to thank Elaine Kistiakowsky for her kind assistance, for providing a bunk in Cambridge, and for entrusting me with George’s unpublished memoir. Spending time with her again was like coming home in more ways than one. The late Caryl Haskins guided me through Alfred Loomis’ early scientific career and served as an invaluable sounding board. William Golden graciously took the time to review the manuscript, and I benefited from his perceptive comments and wise counsel. For their time and informative tours of Tuxedo Park, thanks also to George Boynton and Chris Sonne. Donna Moreau did yeoman’s work going through the massive Stimson archive.
For moral and editorial support, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my friends Barbara Kantrowitz and Daniel Hertzberg for their help on the work in progress, for cheering me on, and for their much appreciated advice at every stage.
I count myself fortunate to have the most caring and exacting editor in Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster. We talked about my writing a book for many years, and without her encouragement and infectious enthusiasm I never would have settled down to the task. At S&S, I also benefited from the careful pencil of Roger Labrie, the rigorous copy editing of Sona Vogel, and the attention of Alice’s assistants, Anja Schmidt and Jonathan Jao. My deepest personal thanks are owed to my agent, Kris Dahl, at ICM, who has been a great friend and adviser for more than a decade.
And most of all I want to thank my husband, Steve Kroft, for his love and understanding over the long haul. I could not have done it without him. I also want to thank my son, John, for always finding his way clear of all the papers on the floor to give me a kiss when he got home. It made the solitary days bearable.
(1) Alfred Lee Loomis, the Wall Street power broker, in the 1930s.
(2) Written under a nom de plume, William Richards’ thinly veiled novel about Loomis’ luxurious Tuxedo Park laboratory was published shortly after his suicide in 1940.
(3) His sister, Patty Richards, and her husband, Harvard president James B. Conant, worried the book might cause a scandal.
(4) William Richards as a promising young Princeton chemist in the late 1920s.
(5) Alfred came from a distinguished line of doctors. His grandfather Alfred Lebbeus Loomis was an eminent tuberculosis specialist.
(6) His father, Henry Patterson Loomis, a respected pathologist, caused a scandal when he walked out on his family when Alfred was a teenager.
(7) Alfred was raised by his strong-willed mother, Julia Atterbury Stimson...
(8) ...and “fifty aunts, uncles, and cousins,” including Henry L. Stimson, who was a first cousin. Twenty years Alfred’s senior, he became his mentor.
(9) After his father’s early death, Alfred was determined to take care of his mother and younger sister, Julia.
(10) Loomis married Ellen Farnsworth, “the prettiest girl in Boston,” on June 22, 1912, and they joined the fashionable young social set in Tuxedo Park.
(11) In 1921, Loomis purchased an elegant gabled mansion in Tuxedo Park, designed by the well-known Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre; it boasted a cavernous living room and gallery with Jacobean ceilings and elaborately carved mantelpieces where he entertained lavishly.
(12) During World War I, Loomis’ technical genius led to his being made chief of research and development at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where he made major refinements in artillery, including the recoilless “Loomis Shooting Cannon.”
(13) Loomis introduced his sister, Julia, to fellow Yale alumnus Landon Ketchum Thorne, an up-and-coming bond salesman at Bonbright & Co.; they married in 1911 and had two sons, Landon and Edwin.
Loomis and Thorne became partners in 1919, and the story of their phenomenal success in developing the public utilities business became Wall Street legend.
(14)
(15) Julia Loomis Thorne “loved to hold court” at her sprawling Bay Shore estate, Thorneham, and in her jewels and Mainbocher gowns, “looked like one of the royal family.”
(16) Loomis purchased the enormous Tower House mansion in 1926 and converted it into a luxurious private physics laboratory in the tradition of the great nineteenth century British scientists Charles Darwin and Lord Rayleigh.
(17) Loomis’ protégé, Garret Hobart, the grandson of McKinley’s vice president of the same name, was the laboratory director; his spirited young wife, Manette, was popular with the largely male population of guest scientists.
(18)
(19) Manette showing off her coquettish side in an amateur theatrical production.
(20) George Kistiakowsky, who taught at Princeton with William Richards, was one of the many pioneering young scientists who did experiments at Loomis’ Tuxedo lab.
(21) Loomis paid the brilliant and eccentric R. W. Wood, here shown posing in front of the mercury telescope he built in his barn laboratory at East Hampton, to teach him physics.
(22) Loomis and Wood tu
rned Tower House into a “palace of science,” and the laboratory guest book shows the names of luminaries from Einstein and Heisenberg to Bohr who made the pilgrimage to Tuxedo Park between 1926 and 1939.
(23)
(24)
(25)
(26) In 1931, Loomis and Thorne used their personal fortunes to purchase Honey Horn Plantation, along with twenty-two thousand acres of prime forest land, on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, as their idyllic private hunting and fishing preserve.
(27) The Ripley’s pen-and-ink drawing depicts Loomis and Thorne on horseback, hunting with their hounds.
(28) The brothers-in-law also bankrolled the America’s Cup contender, the Whirlwind (center), shown here racing the Weetamoe and Enterprise at the start of the trials on June 12, 1930.
(29) The guard tower at Tuxedo Park was designed to protect the exclusive gated colony from outsiders.
(30) During a vacation at the Hobart family compound in Maine, Manette was already in love with Alfred, although her husband, later cut out of this photo, “hadn’t a clue.”
(31) (Inset) Loomis gave each of his sons, Lee, Farney, and Henry, one million dollars to experiment with as teenagers.
(32) Loomis hired the Swiss architect William Lescaze to design the modernist Glass House in 1938, which became a lovers’ hideaway for Alfred and Manette. Loomis, his back to the camera, is gazing lovingly at Manette, who is lounging on the patio. In the foreground is Lee, who broke bitterly with his father after learning of the affair.
(33) The leading powers in the scientific establishment meet in Berkeley in March 1940 to discuss the giant cyclotron: (left to right) Ernest Lawrence, Arthur Compton, Vannevar Bush, James B. Conant, Karl Compton, and Alfred Loomis.
(34) A signed portrait Ernest Lawrence gave to Loomis, who was one of his closest friends and advisers.
(35) The 60-inch cyclotron at the Berkeley Rad Lab: Luis Alvarez is perched on the magnet coil tank next to Edwin McMillan. Standing are (left to right) Donald Cooksey, Ernest Lawrence, Robert Thornton, John Backus, and Winfield Salisbury.
(36) One of the many Rad Lab parties at DiBiasi’s restaurant hosted by Loomis and Lawrence: Ernest Lawrence, Vannevar Bush, Molly Lawrence, and Alfred Loomis are seated on the left.
(37) Loomis and a group of MIT researchers used a diaper delivery truck, dubbed the “didey wagon,” to house one of the first radar speed guns ever built. Loomis had it painted the Tuxedo colors, green and gold, so it would not attract notice.
(38) The historic weekend in October 1940 when members of the secret Tizard mission met with American scientists at Loomis’ Tuxedo Park estate. Standing in front of Glass House are (left to right) Carroll Wilson, Frank Lewis, Edward Bowles, Taffy Bowen, Lawrence, and Loomis. The British physicist John Cockcroft (not shown) took the picture.
(39) “A pearl beyond price”: Taffy Bowen (left) shows off the cavity magnetron, the British invention that promised to revolutionize radar, to Lee DuBridge (center) and I. I. Rabi.
(40) Rad Lab physicists worked around the clock in the Roof Laboratory at MIT to build the first airborne microwave radar system in 1941.
(41) (Left to right) Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Ernest Lawrence circa 1940. Within two years, they would all be involved in a top-secret project to build the first atomic bomb.
(42) George Kistiakowsky, a member of Loomis’ Tuxedo Park circle, would be recruited by Oppenheimer to develop the detonator that would trigger the nuclear explosion.
(43) General George C. Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson both advocated dropping the atomic bomb to bring the war to a quick end with the least possible cost in American lives.
(44) Alfred and Manette were married in Carson City, Nevada, on April 4, 1945, the same day his divorce from his first wife became final. The gossip columns hinted that Loomis had been carrying on with Hobart’s young wife for years, and the shocking affair so scandalized New York society that many of his oldest friends turned their backs on him.
(45) Manette became great friends with Ernest Lawrence, and a heroic bronze she did of him in 1946 now sits in his Berkeley museum.
(46) The last of the gentleman scientists: After the war, Alfred Loomis returned to the private life he preferred, though he continued to fund original research and to invite the many Nobel laureates and leading scientists who were his closest friends to join him on all-expense-paid vacations.
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Photo Credits
Courtesy of Alfred Loomis Hobart: 1, 12, 17, 18, 19, 30, 31, 44, 45
Conant Family: 2, 3, 4
Courtesy of The New York Academy of Medicine Library: 5, 6
Courtesy of Mimi Thorne Gilpatrick 7 (?), 9, 10, 14, 15, 26
© Corbis: 8
Tuxedo Historical Society: 11
© Mystic Seaport, Rosenfeld Collection, Mystic, Connecticut: 13, 28
Courtesy of Elaine Kistiakowsky: 20, 42
American Institute of Physics, the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives: 21
MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections: 22, 23, 24, 25
Courtesy of Bart Loomis: 27, 32, 34, 46
MIT Museum: 33, 37, 38, 39, 40
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: 35, 36, 41
FDR Library: 43
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Index
Abelson, Philip, 240, 241, 293
Aberdeen Proving Ground (Maryland), 31–34, 39, 42–43, 128, 190
Academy of Medicine, 22
Adams, Charles Frances, 93
AI-10 radar system. See magnetron: ten-centimeter
AI radar system, 210, 211, 216, 229, 230, 253
Aldrich, Winthrop, 84, 152
Algonquin Club (Boston), 203, 204
Allied Power & Light, 74
Allison, Samuel K., 286
Alvarez, Luis: and automatic tracking fire-control radar, 258
and B-18 bomber research, 220–22
and bombing of Japan, 276
Bush’s relationship with, 293
and closing of MIT Rad Lab, 283
and cyclotron research, 142, 143–44, 150
death of, 293
and Eagle system, 264
and early days at MIT Rad Lab, 214, 218
and early radar research, 203, 218
and expansion of MIT Rad Lab, 258
first hears about Tower House, 106–7
and fission/atomic research, 250
and GCA blind-landing system, 258–61, 262–64
and Geiger counter, 173–74, 175
and Lawrence-Loomis relationship, 137, 151
Lawrence recruits, 201, 204
and Lawrence’s doubts about magnetron, 219–20
and Lawrence’s personality, 204
and Lawrence’s recruiting efforts, 207
and Loomis as “last of the great amateurs,” 289
and Loomis as “minister without portfolio,” 250
/> and Loomis’ chronograph, 33
and Loomis’ clock research, 70
and Loomis’ contributions, 250
and Loomis’ death, 291
and Loomis’ double life, 17–18, 52
and Loomis’ love of science, 36
and Loomis’ post–World War II activities, 291
Loomis’ relationship with, 260, 293
and Loran system, 231
and Manhattan Project, 274, 275
and Mark I project, 262–64
and MEW system, 264–65, 271
as MIT Rad Lab legend, 258
Nobel Prize for hydrogen bubble chamber, 293
Tuxedo Park Page 40