Pandora's Keepers: Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb

Pandora's Keepers: Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb

Brian VanDeMark

Language: English

Pages: 397

ISBN: B01JXPMZQ4

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Nine men - Oppenheimer, Teller, Fermi, Bohr, Lawrence, Bethe, Rabi, Szilard, Compton - brilliant men who believed in science and who saw before anyone else the amazing workings of an invisible world. Some of them were fleeing Nazism in Europe, others quietly slipping out of university teaching jobs, all gathering in secret wartime laboratories to create the world's first atomic bomb. At a secret laboratory in the mountains of northern New Mexico, they would crack the secret of the nuclear chain reaction and construct the most fearsome weapon mankind had ever known. Together they built a device that could incinerate a city and melt human beings so thoroughly that the only thing left would be their scorched outlines on the pavements. During the war, few of the atomic scientists questioned the wisdom of their desperate endeavour, but afterwards they were forced to deal with the sobering legacy of their creation. Some were haunted by the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and would become antinuclear weapons activists; others would go on to build bigger and even deadlier bombs.

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after the hearing ended, and his ulcerative colitis worsened. Still, there was a bitterness in Lawrence about Oppenheimer that associates could not miss. “I got Oppenheimer that job in the first place,” Lawrence complained with some emotion the summer after the hearing. “Of course, we’ve got a better man around here now.” “Who’s that?” the associate asked. “Teller,” came Lawrence’s reply. 82 Fermi regretted the whole affair. He detested the emotions provoked by the controversy and these

little more time to run. So they packed what they could and brought their heavy accents and heavy wool suits to a New World that welcomed them. For the native-born Americans they met in labs and university offices, the 1930s had marked an education in the troubling realities of a world more interconnected and complex than they had thought. American physicists had believed that the United States was insulated and invulnerable, separated as it was by a vast ocean from the misfortunes, follies, and

most every night, but they still found time—and energy—to explore cave dwellings in nearby canyons, ski, ride horses, mountain climb, and dance. Occasionally they visited Santa Fe on Saturday nights, but the city was terribly crowded and the few bars were swarming with security agents from Army Intelligence, immediately recognizable by their snap-brimmed felt hats and poorly fitting civilian clothes. “Life is not at all hard on this ‘magic mesa,’” reported one young physicist. “The group is

but an attempt should be made to make a profound psychological impression on as many Japanese as possible. The preferred target would be a war plant closely surrounded by workers’ homes. None of those present, however, noted the contradiction in their logic: a bomb powerful enough to destroy an entire city would surely kill thousands—probably tens of thousands—of civilians if dropped anywhere near workers’ homes. Compton, Lawrence, Oppenheimer, and Fermi perhaps understood this contradiction best

entered at the rear—not from the side, as was his custom—and made his way up the center aisle amid whistling, cheering, and foot stomping. Once onstage, Oppenheimer pumped his clasped hands above his head like a triumphant prizefighter. When the roar subsided, he read from a message flashed from the B-29 after the drop. There was no hint of regret in his words—no trace of the ambivalence and guilt the private Oppenheimer had expressed to Groves and Teller. The public Oppenheimer played

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