One of the creators of the atomic bomb recalls its building and its
effect both on its targets and on the world at large. Serber
(1909-97) grew up in a hotbed of Jewish intellectualism in
Philadelphia. The author's reminiscences of his early days include
his first car (a Model T Ford), college summer jobs, and his good
luck in applying to graduate school at Wisconsin, where he managed
to get an assistantship (a rarity in 1930). After meeting Robert
Oppenheimer at a physics seminar, he took a position as his
assistant; the association with "Oppie" eventually led him to work
on the first atomic bomb. (He was the first person Oppenheimer
invited to join the Manhattan Project.) Serber offers an insider's
perspective, including his belief that Einstein's famous letterto
Roosevelt urging research on nuclear fission actually delayed the
bomb project nearly a year. He reveals that the concept of the
thermonuclear bomb was already on the drawing board by July of
1942, when Edward Teller suggested it in a meeting and everyone
promptly turned to the new problem - despite the fact that the
atomic bomb had not yet been built. But after the Trinity test, the
atom bomb was a reality; Serber was on the team that assembled the
bombs dropped on Japan. The book reprints his letters of the time,
revealing his belief that he had done what was necessary to end the
war; then his accounts of visits to the target cities, to view the
destruction firsthand and to measure the blasts' effects. After the
war, he fell under the same cloud of suspicion as his mentor
Oppenheimer, but managed to clear himself and went on to hold major
appointments, including direction of the Brookhaven National
Laboratory. Co-author Crease (The Second Creation, 1986)
contributes a preface. An extremely readable memoir by a man who
was on the frontiers of physics for half a century. (Kirkus
Reviews)
This work is the memoir of one of the key scientists involved in
the atomic bomb and the chief research assistant and intimate
friend of J. Robert Oppenheimer. A prominent member of the
Manhattan Project, Robert Serber was one of a team of scientists
who assembled the bombs on Tinian Island for transport to Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. He was also one of the first Americans to walk among
the Japanese ruins after the catastrophe. Written with science
historian Robert P. Crease, this self-portrait is the story of
Serber's life before, during and after World War II. It brings into
focus the leading figures and events during this period in American
science. Serber tells of his wartime experiences at Tinian Island
and in Japan, in letters to his wife Charlotte, herself a key
player at Los Alamos and the only female group leader there. These
letters depict what Serber saw, such as the rows of iron office
safes protruding from the rubble of Hiroshima, and the grazing
horse whose hair had been scorched on one side by the fireball but
was untouched on the other. Serber is also eloquent about the
troubles he faced as a result of his refusal to take part in public
debate about the morality of his wartime work; how his opposition
to rapidly developing the hydrogen bomb earned him the enmity of
Edward Teller and others; and how he was investigated and his
security clearance challenged, several years before Oppenheimer's.
Serber also recounts stories involving Oppenheimer, Murray
Gell-Mann, Ernest O. Lawrence and Edward Teller.
General
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