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Aloof from the horrors of Hiroshima and the bomb

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1998 Phys. World 11 (12) 46

(http://iopscience.iop.org/2058-7058/11/12/31)

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 Much of this fascinating material con-
stitutes an admirably clear exposition of
the variety of theoretical approaches to al-
chemy, not restricted to Boyle's preferred
"mercurialist" school. Confronted by it, a
modern reader might be tempted to dismiss
it as irrelevant to the history of "real" sci-
ence. But to distinguish between parts of a
historical figure's work on grounds that
would not have been recognized or ac-
knowledged by that figure himself - or,
worse, to reject unappealing aspects as mere
vestiges of the ignorance of a former age -
would be to misunderstand the message of
historical scholarship. To the extent that
modern chemistry and physics may be
traced as continuous enterprises back to nat-
ural philosophers such as Boyle, or Newton,
the kinds of things that Principe has found
in Boyle are an integral part of their story,
part of what made them the sciences that
they are today.
A good deal of the heat in today's "sci-
ence wars" results from making a mistake
exactly analogous to such thoughtless dis-
missal. When Harry Collins, for example,
shows empirically how scientists actually
produced some particular conclusion, as-
saulting him for treason against science is
like branding Principe's argument that
Boyle was an alchemist as "anti-science".
Science is whatever it is; we can onlyfindout
by looking
pptw Dear is acting head of the Department of Science
and Technology Studies, Cornell University, US

plane diat recorded die detonation of die

Silvan Schweber Nagasaki bomb because he had forgotten
his parachute. He was also one of a small
Aloof from the horrors of handful of scientists to go to Japan, after its
surrender, to inspect and assess die damage
wrought by the bombs.

Hiroshima and the bomb After die war he accepted a position at

Berkeley and replaced Oppenheimer as die
senior dieorist diere when die latter was
made director of die Princeton Institute of
ia KMidiutccflCtts of 8 LJfo on D H problems were a dime a dozen. Almost Advanced Study in 1947. In 1951 Serber
FiuuUcrt of Science every subject in molecular and atomic joined Columbia University's physics de-
physics had to be re-examined." It is indica- partment and played an important role in
1998 Columbia University Press 241pp tive of Serber's talents diat he wrote his first turning Brookhaven, and later Fermilab,
£23.95/$34.50hb paper - on die dieory of the Faraday effect into outstanding high-energy facilities. He
in molecules - during his first year of gradu- was president of the American Physical
The generation of theoretical physicists ate studies, and published five more papers Society in 1972-3 when its social role and
who were born in the first decade of the before obtaining his PhD in 1934 under die (presumed) apolitical stand were being chal-
century are passing from die scene. They supervision of die future Nobel prize win- lenged. He was also a highly competent and
came of age widi the advent of quantum ner John van Vleck. respected dieorist who made several import-
mechanics and rode the crest of its suc- He was dien awarded a National Re- ant contributions to high-energy physics
cesses. Theoretical physics became a profes- search Council post-doctoral fellowship, from 1945 to 1965.
sional path open not only to those of the and planned to go to Princeton to work widi In 1994 Serber was invited to deliver die
stature of Dirac, Hcisenbcrg and Pauli, but the theorist Eugene Wigner. But at a sum- Pegram lectures at Brookhaven, which
also to those at die next level of ability. mer school at the University of Michigan aim to "provide an opportunity for distin-
Robert Serber was among these. in 1934 he fell under the spell of Robert guished scholars to examine the interac-
He was born in Philadelphia in 1909. His Oppenheimer and went to Berkeley instead. tions between science and odier aspects of
fadier was a lawyer. His mother contracted a A rewarding friendship developed between our culture and society". He devoted these
crippling neurological disease when Robert Serber and Oppenheimer. Not only did lectures to reminisce about die war years
was five, and he grew up widiout really Serber become Oppenheimer's right-hand- and die immediate post-war period. Robert
knowing her; she died when he was 11. man, who assisted him in making Berkeley Crease, Brookhaven's historian, helped him
When Robert was in high school, his father die outstanding training centre for Ameri- transform diese lectures into this book,
remarried to Frances Loef, whose family can dieorists, Serber and his wife also be- which is a fully fledged memoir of his life.
was part of a circle of liberal, cosmopolitan, came part of Oppenheimer's social circle in Serber saw the final draft shortly before his
emancipated Jews. The Loef home was a pre-war Berkeley and Pasadena, and were death in 1997.
kind of salon for young writers and artists, in regular summer visitors at Oppenheimer's Crease is to be commended for making
which the young Robert was introduced to ranch in New Mexico. die autobiography an interesting and valu-
socialist thought, modern art and modern When Oppenheimer was put in charge of able commentary on the momentous events
literature. He eventually married his step- die dieory group investigating die feasibility diat Serber lived through and participated
mother's niece, Charlotte Loef. of atomic bombs, Serber joined die project. in. It is clear from Crease's introduction diat
On graduating from high school, Serber Until die Los Alamos National Laboratory he is somewhat uncomfortable widi the tone
went to Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. was founded in New Mexico in 1943, he was of Serber's description of many of die
He first intended to become a mechanical probably die leading audiority on die design, events - and diat he was disturbed by
engineer, but became captivated by physics efficiency and effects of atomic weapons. Serber's prosaic and unemotional narration
through his exposure to the engineering Indeed, the Los Alamos Primer, which containsof his activities on Tinian and of his visit
physics programme at Lehigh. His teachers die lectures Serber delivered to die scientists to the devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
recognized him as being unusual and recom- who came to diat weapons laboratory in die Crease quotes one reader's reaction to
mended that he go on with graduate studies spring of 1943, became die manual diat in- Serber's account of his visit to Hiroshima
in physics. In the autumn of 1930 he enrolled troduced all subsequent staff members to die and Nagasaki when itfirstappeared in The
at the University of Wisconsin, having been work being carried out diere. Sciences, a journal published by die New York
offered a teaching assistantship there. In the summer of 1945 Serber was part of Academy of Sciences, in 1995. The shaken
Aldiough die Depression was affecting die team of scientists who went to Tinian reader had written a letter to the editor of
every facet of life, these were heady times Island in die Pacific to arm die two atomic die journal stating that die article had
in physics. As Serber noted: "Quantum bombs diat were dropped on Japan - brought to mind Hannah Arendt's famous
mechanics was brand new and research aldiough he missedflyingin die observation phrase " die banality of evil".

46 PlYSICl WOILD DECEttBtH 1898

 onnuc
For some of its practitioners, phys- | 1951 only because he had to take
ics is a secular religion. Peace and War 1 sides in the bitter conflict that had
exhibits another facet of the enter- g developed between Ernest Lawrence
prise. It indicates that doing physics - I and Oppenheimer over the devel-
even at the frontiers - can be banal. 1 opment of fusion weapons. His alle-
Not in the sense that doing physics is a giance was to Oppenheimer, rather
doing evil - but that evil can ensue if | than to the more dictatorial director
good people fail to confront the impli- | of the Radiation Laboratory.
cations of what they do routinely and 2 Tragedies abounded around Serber
what they do not do. Serber was a in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His
gifted scientist for whom physics was wife committed suicide; Putty Op-
essentially puzzle-solving. Taming the penheimer, whose companion he be-
problem of vacuum polarization in came after the death of his wife and of
quantum electrodynamics in the mid Robert, died of an intestinal infection
1930s, designing betatrons and syn- Detached and unemotional - Robert Serber at Berkeley during the first leg of a trans-Pacific
chrotrons, building atomic weaponry trip they had planned together; and
and unravelling the properties of pions - was perfectly normal. Serber recalls in the Toni Oppenheimer - Kitty and Robert's
these were all nothing more than problems book how he remarked in the seminar "that daughter - committed suicide. Yet Serber is
to be mastered and solved. As far as Serber the horse was happily grazing, and [that] curiously matter-of-fact when reporting
was concerned, responsibility ended with Oppie scolded [him] for giving the im- these events.
the solution of the problem. pression that the bomb was a benevolent I wish there could have been more - and
In this book Serber exhibits both insight weapon". In contrast, Philip Morrison, who more revealing - statements in this book
into and a disturbing detachment from the went with Serber to Tinian, Hiroshima and about Robert and Kitty Oppenheimer,
world around him. All of Oppenheimer's Nagasaki, was deeply affected by what he Isidor Rabi, Ernest Lawrence, as well as
students in the 1930s became politically saw and subsequently devoted considerable about Luis Alvarez, T D Lee and the many
engaged: they were concerned about fas- efforts - at great risk to himself during the other colleagues whom Serber knew so well.
cism, loyalist Spain, the plight of migrant McCarthy era - to find all means possible to I would also have liked more probing state-
workers and so on. But Serber remained avert a nuclear war. ments about Serber's reaction to those
aloof. When he came back from Japan, And in 1950, when most of Serber's col- many events that shaped our century - and
Serber gave seminars at Los Alamos on leagues at Berkeley were dismissed because in which he played such a central role.
what he had seen. In one of them he showed they refused to take an oath swearing that
a photograph he had taken on the outskirts they were loyal to the United States, Serber *-'' isa professor of physics and
of Nagasaki of a horse that had all its hair "didn't take it so seriously that [he] wouldn't Richard Koret professor of the history of ideas
burnt off on one side, but whose other side sign". He left Berkeley in the autumn of at Brandeis University, US

Ted Taylor

Los Alamos: a peep behind the fences

cumbersome and inefficient in their use of
Secret Mesa: Inside Los Alamos National Laboratory cisions to explore specific new concepts were
JoAnnShroyer highly enriched uranium and plutonium; made locally. Funding was assured by trust
1998 John Wiley 230pp£19.99/$24.95hb they were a far cry from the many other between the laboratory's director, Norris
designs that emerged during the project for Bradbury, and a few key officials in Wash-
Car licences in New Mexico proclaim it to lighter and smaller bombs that used scarce ington, who approved practically everything
be "the land of enchantment". Having lived materials more efficiently. These concepts he proposed.
and worked at the Los Alamos National were not developed further during the war This unique creative environment led
Laboratory in the north of the state from because they were too complex, although quickly to tests in Nevada and the Pacific
1949 to 1956,1 can testify to the aptness of some of the less adventurous ones were fully atolls that lasted until 1962, and subse-
this proclamation in all of its senses. Syno- developed and tested in the late 1940s. quently to a great variety of stockpiled
nyms for "enchant" include fascinate, cap- Attempts to push bomb-design param- nuclear explosives. These included hy-
tivate, enrapture, charm and bewitch. eters to the limits set by basic physics really drogen (fusion) bombs with yields nearly a
These words apply to what was going on only began in earnest in about 1950, and thousand times greater than that of the
inside the laboratory, its natural surround- the productivity of the people working at Hiroshima bomb;fissionbombs that could
ings, the nearby pueblos and the city of Los Alamos during those years on new types be fired out of big guns on land or sea;
Santa Fe, as well as to the other places with of nuclear weapons was simply astonishing. demolition bombs weighing less than
which the laboratory had intimate connec- Indeed, the 1950s have sometimes been 100 pounds; and thermonuclear warheads
tions — the Nevada test site, the Pacific prov- called America's "golden age" of nuclear- for ballistic missiles. Yet more accomplish-
ing grounds in the Marshall Islands and weapon development. ments followed when the Lawrence Liver-
their respective surroundings. Bureaucracy at Los Alamos during diose more National Laboratory in California
The Los Alamos lab was born as part of times was kept at a minimum. World- was opened as a competitor to Los Alamos
the wartime Manhattan Project, the objec- famous scientists and many of their students in 1952.
tive of which was to develop and build, as were easily accessible, especially in the the- This book by the journalist Jo Ann
fast as possible, several nuclear explosives oretical division, which explored new con- Shroyer is a portrait of the Los Alamos lab,
that could be carried by the biggest US cepts under the leadership of Carson Mark. and I read it attentively over a few hours. I
bombers. The two nuclear bombs that None of us doing the work had to write was entranced by the many interviews that
destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were proposals for outside financial support. De- she carried out with the people at Los
PHYSICS WORLD DECEMBER 1998 47