Inside the Tech Area

Chicago- One of the most important branches of the Manhattan Project was the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. Known simply as the “Met Lab,” the laboratory’s primary role was to design a viable method for plutonium production that could fuel a nuclear reaction. The research conducted on plutonium composition, isolation, and, later on, radiation effects, was vital to the success of the Manhattan Project. More Berkeley-The Rad Lab, short for “Radiation Laboratory,” was the site of Manhattan Project research at the University of California, Berkeley. Ernest Lawrence formed the lab in 1931, three years after his arrival at the university.More Perdue- The Purdue University Physics Department operated a cyclotron during the early part of the war, conducting important nuclear research. Many of the scientists working on the project were transferred to Los Alamos to continue work on the Manhattan Project. More CalTech- Before the war, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) was a leading university in the fields of particle and nuclear physics. It was especially known for its experimental physicists. Many scientists who had important roles on the Manhattan Project were affiliated with Caltech, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Tolman, and Robert Bacher. In addition, a group working at Caltech under Charles Lauritsen directly assisted in the bomb-building effort, providing help manufacturing detonators that would be used in the atomic bombs.

​​Oppenheimer on his team Groueff: But how did you form the nucleus of your team there, the very first men that you recruited? Did you travel personally? Oppenheimer: Yes. Groueff: From university to university? Oppenheimer: I went in the first instance to those who were working on the problem, or on some fringe of the program. We had had a meeting at Berkeley during the summer of ’42 with six or seven quite good theoretical physicists. And most of them agreed with me that they needed a place to get to work. And one of them did not want to come but the other fellow did. There was a center at Stanford, there was a center in Minnesota, there was a center in Princeton, there was a center in Cornell, and a few others but I am not trying to be complete. And I went and visited and saw who would like to come and invited them. Groueff: Without knowing where the site was? Oppenheimer: No, at that time, the site was probably vague at first and less vague later. It was always the problem of how much one could say. Of course, I remember visiting Princeton to collect a group of people. And then I started talking to people through at the Radiation Laboratory and the people working on proximity fuses and other projects with some guidance as to who might be spared. And [I spoke to] some people from the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, some people from the radiation laboratory in Berkeley. So it was not trivial to persuade people that this was real but it was not entirely crazy to know where to go to start, you see. Groueff: You started then from people who had some connection with the Project like Chicago? Oppenheimer: Right, although I went very soon to the MIT Radiation Laboratory, the Radar Center, to get some really good scientists like Breit and [Luis] Alvarez and [Kenneth] Bainbridge. Groueff: That is another fantastic thing. It seems to me that in wartime with so many important top-priority projects, one should think that all those scientists, or at least good ones, the top ones will be so much in demand that when you start a new project, to be able to assemble— Oppenheimer: Well, remember, this was ’43 and the crisis of radar and proximity fuses was over. Groueff: I see. And also, Chicago group— Oppenheimer: There was quite a lot that was interesting in this so that people wanted to do it if they could. Some, not all. Groueff: But you built it so it was not built at once but little by little. Oppenheimer: No, I think our population doubled every four months. Groueff: Doubled? Oppenheimer: So since we were there a couple of years, it was a rather rapid growth. Groueff: Could you give me a few names of the very first people who came with you to Los Alamos? Oppenheimer: Yes. John Manley, Robert Wilson, John Williams, [Joseph] Kennedy, [Hans] Bethe very early, [Robert] Serber, [Emil John] Konopinski. I could go on. Groueff: So you started with them and each one of them had more suggestion for recruitment? Oppenheimer: Well, the recruitment was in the first instance for more or less my worry. Robert Wilson was there very early and brought [Richard] Dick Feynman, for instance. He was brilliant. Groueff: Yeah, he is very colorful and gave me a lot of very colorful stories about Pasadena. Oppenheimer: Well, he was at that time in Princeton. Groueff: He must have been a kid. ​ Oppenheimer: He was. Groueff: When I saw him now, he looks like a young man—very handsome, movie actor type. Oppenheimer: Yes. Well, he was not so young and handsome then but he was—well, all this is well recorded and there is no point in wasting time.

David Kaiser: One of the really fascinating aspects of the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos in particular—the central scientific laboratory for the entire project—was this tradeoff, the tension between secrecy and classification. Clearly, information could not be allowed to travel very far or wide. Yet, many of the scientists really kind of chaffed at what felt like a very unscientific approach to sharing information. Many of the scientists were in the habit of frankly talking all the time. That’s how they felt they learned was talking very freely in open-ended brainstorming sessions with their colleagues, with their students, with newcomers. I think a real kind of master stroke, a brilliant maneuver that Oppenheimer put in place originally over the objections of some of the military leaders like General Groves—though they eventually came to work it out—was to have a weekly colloquium at Los Alamos for at least all people of a certain kind of training level. Not every single person on the mesa could join, but it was open to wide groups of people where there could be some degree of sharing across the otherwise very carefully separated out divisions. Ben Diven: I think the colloquia were one of the most important things. Everybody who was a staff member at the lab was allowed to come to colloquium. And I don’t know how many people, I suppose it was some hundreds, and Oppenheimer insisted that everything could be discussed there. There were no compartmentalization and it was very often true that people who—well, the idea was to have various group leaders usually describe what the group was working on and what their main problems were, what they were having trouble with. And very frequently then it would turn out that somebody who had not associated with them at all would come up with an idea of something that would actually be important.

Theoretical Physics- A branch of the field of physics which is dedicated to coming up with mathematical explanations for natural events. They design formulas which may not be able to be physically tested. Researchers in this field ponder questions such as how the universe developed. Isaac Newton is considered the first theoretical physicist, called “natural philosophy” in his time Engineering- The branch of science concerned with the physical design and construction of engines and structures.

The American Student Union (ASU) was a national organization of college students of the 1930s and is best remembered for its protest activities against militarism. Founded in 1935 by a merger of Communist and Socialist student organizations, the ASU was affiliated with the American Youth Congress. The group was investigated by the Dies Committee of the United States House of Representatives in 1939 over its connections to the Communist Party USA. With the group's Communist-dominated leadership consistently supportive of the twists and turns of Soviet foreign policy, the Socialist minority split from the group in 1939. The organization was terminated in 1941.

The American Youth Congress (AYC) was an early youth voice organization composed of youth from all across the country to discuss the problems facing youth as a whole in the 1930s. It met several years in a row - one year it notably met on the lawn of the White House. The delegates are known to have caused a disturbance when they attempted to access the United States Congress. They focused on the draft, which was taking youths at age 18 off to war. At the time in the United States one was not legally an adult in any way until the age of 21. They also focused on the economic exploitation of youth.

Kenneth Bainbridge, Director of the Manhattan Project: "No one who saw it could forget it, a foul and awesome display. Now we are all sons of bitches." ​ Kenneth Greisen, Physicist: "A group of us were lying on the ground just outside of base camp (10 miles from the charge), and received time signals over the radio, warning us when the shot would occur. I was personally nervous, for my group had prepared and installed the detonators, and if the shot turned out a dud, it might possibly be our fault. We were pretty sure we had done our job well, but there is always some chance of a slip." ​ Joan Hinton, Physicist: "It was like being at the bottom of an ocean of light. We were bathed in it from all directions. The light withdrew into the bomb as if the bomb sucked it up. Then it turned purple and blue and went up and up and up. We were still talking in whispers when the cloud reached the level where it was struck by the rising sunlight so it cleared out the natural clouds. We saw a cloud that was dark and red at the bottom and daylight at the top. Then suddenly the sound reached us. It was very sharp and rumbled and all the mountains were rumbling with it." ​ Edwin McMillan, Physicist and Chemist: "The whole spectacle was so tremendous and one might almost say fantastic that the immediate reaction of the watchers was one of awe rather than excitement. After some minutes of silence, a few people made remarks like, “Well, it worked,” and then conversation and discussion became general. I am sure that all who witnessed this test went away with a profound feeling that they had seen one of the great events of history." ​ Frank Oppenheimer, Particle Physicist, : "And so there was this sense of this ominous cloud hanging over us. It was so brilliant purple, with all the radioactive glowing. And it just seemed to hang there forever. Of course it didn’t. It must have been just a very short time until it went up. It was very terrifying. And the thunder from the blast. It bounced on the rocks, and then it went—I don’t know where else it bounced. But it never seemed to stop." ​ J. Robert Oppenheimer, Los Alamos Lab Director: "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all felt that one way or another." ​ Isidor I. Rabi, Physicist and Consultant: "It was seen to last forever. You would wish it would stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds. Finally it was over, diminishing, and we looked toward the place where the bomb had been; there was an enormous ball of fire which grew and grew and it rolled as it grew; it went up into the air, in yellow flashes and into scarlet and green. It looked menacing… A new thing had just been born; a new control; a new understanding of man, which man had acquired over nature." ​ Maurice Shapiro, Physicist: "The shock wave from the explosion arrived about one and a half minutes after the flash of light, and I heard it as a sharp report. Although I had expected it, the intensity of the blast startled me. My impression at the time was that an enemy observer stationed about 20 miles from the scene of delivery would be deeply impressed, to say the least." ​ Cyril S. Smith, Metallurgist: "At the instant after the shot, my reactions were compounded of relief that ‘it worked’; consciousness of extreme silence, and a momentary question as to whether we had done more than we intended. Practically none of the watchers made any vocal comment until after the shock wave had passed and even then the cheers were not intense or prolonged."

"In that brief instant in the remote New Mexico desert, the tremendous effort of the brains and brawn of all these people came suddenly and startlingly to the fullest fruition. Dr. Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed. He held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead and then when the announcer shouted "Now!" and there came this tremendous burst of light followed shortly thereafter by the deep growling roar of the explosion, his face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief. Several of the observers standing back of the shelter to watch the lighting effects were knocked flat by the blast." Read More

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