This small book by Jeff Hughes explores how science in the twentieth century changed everything as it spread from universities to the government and to the military. It has good information about the Manhattan Project in “condensed form,” but it spends time and words on the wisdom of “Big Science.” The Manhattan Project was symbolic of the greatest change of all; “…science’s growth in scale, scope, and cost as it transformed from …small groups or individuals into…”Big Science”—a large-scale enterprise that is carried out by multidisciplinary and multinational groups of researches, cost enormous sums, demanded massive institutions of its own, and often represents a significant fraction of national budgets.” The Project brought together American, British, Canadian, and refugee European scientists to design and build the world’s first atomic bombs. It employed 130,000 people, cost $2 billion, and changed the world forever.
The book gives a brief history of the scientists who began to unlock the mysteries of the atom. Henri Becquerel accidently discovered that uranium had “spontaneous emission” recorded on a photographic plate. Marie Curie suggested the name “radioactivity.” Earnest Rutherford collaborated with Frederick Soddy and many others to work out the theory of radioactive decay by emission of alpha, beta, and gamma. Hans Geiger developed methods for measuring the emissions. Enrico Fermi and co-workers discovered that elements bombarded with neutrons could be turned into isotopes of other elements. Otto Hahn and Fritz Stassman reported they had apparently produced barium by bombarding uranium with neutrons. Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch deducted that “a splitting” had been achieved. Frisch conferred with a biologist who explained that biological cells dividing was called “fission,” and the term stuck. Researchers around the world began replicating the results.
Perhaps the most important mistake Hitler made was making Jewish scientists, or scientists suspected of having traces of Jewish blood, unwelcome in areas under his control. Italy was also a dangerous place for Jews, and Enrico Fermi and his wife joined the flood of brain power to friendlier countries including Britain and the United States. Germany was deprived of scientific knowledge and innovation and the Manhattan Project gladly assembled the expertise.
The British were first in actively proceeding with the possibility of nuclear power. A committee code-named MAUD was formed to consider the possibilities. They estimated that an atomic bomb code-named “Tube Alloys” could be produced in three years. In the U.S. Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard persuaded Albert Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt urging the U.S. to investigate military use of fission, and Roosevelt agreed to form An Advisory Committee was established and the British and U.S. were soon collaborating. Roosevelt was successfully lobbied by Vannevar Bush and James Conant of the Advisory Committee on October 9, 1941to authorize full-scale research on the feasibility of an atomic bomb.
Fermi’s nuclear pile in Chicago produced a chain reaction on December 2, 1942. Arthur Compton telephoned James Conant and told him, “The Italian navigator has landed.” Conant asked, “Were the natives friendly?” Compton replied, “Everyone landed safe and happy.” Hundreds of millions of dollars were made available to begin building full-scale plutonium, enriched uranium, and heavy water production plants at places such as Clinton, Tennessee (later called Oak Ridge) and Hanford, Washington. As an example of the magnitude of the projects, there would be 22,000 operators controlling cyclotrons, also known as “calutrons” at Oak Ridge to separate enriched uranium. None of the operators were told what they were doing. (Secrets were protected except from the network of Soviet spies in the project they code-named “Enormoz.)
Robert Oppenheimer was selected the director of the project and a contingent of British scientists including Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs joined the effort. Glen Seaborg isolated and named the element plutonium and gram quantities began arriving at Los Alamos from the secret production facilities in the spring of 1944. It was determined that a plutonium weapon would not work with the “gun barrel design” that could be used for a U235 weapon, and research intensified on how to fashion explosives to make a plutonium implosion weapon, which would eventually be nicknamed “Fat Man.” The gun barrel U235 weapon was nicknamed “Little Boy.” A prototype of the plutonium weapon was successfully tested in the New Mexico desert, and both weapons were declared ready for delivery.
The Enola Gay piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbetts dropped Little Boy onto Hiroshima at 8:15 local time on August 6, 1945. The atomic detonation killed 78,000 outright. There were a total of 200,000 estimated deaths by 1950. On August 9, 1945 the plane called “Bock’s Car” dropped “Fat Man” on Nagasaki with a blast estimated at 22,000 tons of TNT. There were an estimated 70,000 deaths immediately and 140,000 estimated by 1950. The Japanese began surrender negotiations the day after Nagasaki was bombed and surrendered five days later on August 15, 1945. There were celebrations throughout the U.S. and at Los Alamos, although some of the scientists began to feel guilt along with the pride of what they had accomplished.
The final chapters of the book are tedious, and probably are reflective of what the scientists of Los Alamos faced with the conclusion of the Manhattan Project. “The Manhattan Engineer District was succeeded in 1947 by the “Atomic Energy Commission, a civilian body with responsibility for all nuclear matters.” The Manhattan Project sites were turned into national laboratories where the scientists had to compete for funding instead of having the “Silverplate” priority. Ernest Lawrence convinced Groves to commit funds for “pure nuclear research at Berkeley.” Giant, high energy accelerators became the newest focus for “Big Science.”
Research on military use of nuclear energy did not end. The Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949 helped by the information provided by Klaus Fuchs (and many other Soviet spies). The Korean War began in 1950, and more interest turned to research that would aid the military. Edward Teller’s continual pressure to develop the “Super” helped lead to the U.S. testing the first thermonuclear bomb in 1952. The Soviets followed in 1953 and the U.K in 1957.
The book closes with a philosophical discussion (which I found somewhat tedious) of the value of “Big Science.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower added to the discussion in his farewell address in which he “…expressed his concern at the emergence of an immense military establishment working hand-in-glove with a massive arms industry—what he called the ‘military-industrial complex’.”
I found the closing chapters anticlimactic, to be kind about my reaction. There is a long discussion of the approval (in 1988) of an immense particle research facility called the “Super-conducting Super Collider (SSC)” at Waxahachie in Texas, which was built at the expense of other research projects. The costs and justification for the project resulted in Congressional battles over funding, and the project was eventually scrapped in 1993 and the miles of tunnels filled in.
“Big Science” shifted its attention to the “Human Genome Project” in which biological scientists began a large-scale project to map the complete human genome sequence. There were a couple of gems of interest in the final chapter. The U.S. military “…had spent more than $7 billion on its Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion programme…” It was joked that the resultant planes “…would have to land occasionally for the crew to re-enlist.”