3 ms·
Reflections on “Making the Atomic Bomb”
- ggm 3y agoRhodes had a couple of advantages over his priors (Jungk for instance) 1) there were enough of the first crew alive to get good oral history from the people in the room. Oliphant, II Rabi, Teller. Not everyone, but enough to bridge from deep past in physics, to the dawn of modern physics, to the people who built the bomb. Ok, he shared this with Jungk. 2) he was late enough that nobody's career was on the line if they said what they really thought. When Jungk wrote, people were still a bit hot under the collar, and the consequences of speaking up could kill your career. 3) more of the soviet union archives became available. This mostly relates to the follow on book about the H Bomb. It was impossible to write some of the story from only western sources, before 1991. I think the book make a pair. Some people hate one or the other. One of the most intesting parts of the A Bomb book for me, is the stuff about Michael Polyani. His comments on the nature of scientism, and its analogies to the craft guilds and apprenticeship is fascinating. If you read it and enjoyed it, the Robert Buderi Book on the invention of Radar is also worth reading, it carries the story of the MIT radiation laboratories, which for some of the scientists in Manhatten was tactically as, if not more important in the time: inventing radar, and proximity fuzes. Or, Florey, the man who made penicillin by Lennard Bickel. About the invention which literally saved lives and changed the face of medicine in warfare. Lastly "from apes to warlords" by Solly Zuckerman which is about operations research and the scientific analysis of bombing.