Oppenheimer, despite his rather flamboyant personality, might be just the man to do it.
As Oppenheimer commuted back and forth between Chicago and Berkeley organizing the conference on bomb development, Greene noticed a change in his attitude, a tenseness and excitement that alerted her to its importance. It was May 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor, and everyone involved in war work had a heightened sense of purpose. Many of his close colleagues had already been called on to do defense research. Lawrence was doing double duty at Berkeley and a radar lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Oppie had felt left behind and stuck with a heavier teaching load than usual because of all the absences. He had only been asked to step in and supervise the special summer conference because his predecessor, Gregory Breit, had succeeded in alienating almost everyone with his unreasonable demands and obsession with secrecy. Oppenheimer had been chafing on the sidelines, and he seized the chance to lead a brainy group exploring the possibilities of designing a nuclear bomb. At the same time, he knew that he had inherited a difficult position and that managing so many egotistical scientists, from such widely varied countries of origin, was not going to be an easy task.
In June, Oppenheimer gathered the top theoretical physicists in the country, and they met in two attic rooms at Le Conte Hall. He had assembled a high-powered group, among them the Hungarian physicist Edward Teller, the German physicist Hans Bethe, the leading Swiss physicist Felix Bloch, Richard Tolman, and Oppies former student Robert Serber. Their meetings were veiled in secrecy, and the university had taken unusual measures to safeguard their privacy, including securing the windows and small balcony with heavy wire fencing and fitting the door with a special lock with a solitary key that was kept by Oppenheimer himself. Among the refugee scientists, there was a palpable anxiety to get under way immediately, amid worried conjecture about how far ahead the Germans might be and how much the strain of fighting a war might have slowed the Nazi weapons program.
Greene had discerned this was defense-related work from the official letters she had typed, but when she walked into the room across the hall from the office one afternoon and saw what was on the blackboard, she realized for the first time what all the security precautions were for. “Somebody had drawn a spherical shape and, from the various scribbles, well, it was obviously a bomb,” she said. “So I knew then. I was glad to know what we were doing. Almost immediately after that, everyone started calling it ‘the gadget’”
The goal of the special summer session was for Oppenheimer and his team to calculate to the best of their ability the exact specifications for the design of an atomic bomb. What was known to date was fairly rudimentary—the British had done some preliminary work—and the most they could do was make an educated guess at the force an atomic fission bomb could exert. So they had to begin with the basics, such as the size and structure of the bomb, work up an estimated critical mass, figure out how it might be made to explode, and then begin to try to address the practical problems entailed in assembling such a device, and ultimately detonating it. Oppie delegated teams to research different problems, and they met regularly to exchange information and ideas. Teller, who hardly knew Oppenheimer prior to the Berkeley conference and had only a moderate opinion of his abilities as a theoretical physicist, was impressed by his “sure, informal touch,” by his ability to motivate and guide the various participants, and by how much work was getting accomplished. “I don’t know how he had acquired this facility for handling people,” he said later. “Those who knew him well were really surprised.”
By the end of July, after they had been meeting regularly for almost two
As Oppenheimer commuted back and forth between Chicago and Berkeley organizing the conference on bomb development, Greene noticed a change in his attitude, a tenseness and excitement that alerted her to its importance. It was May 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor, and everyone involved in war work had a heightened sense of purpose. Many of his close colleagues had already been called on to do defense research. Lawrence was doing double duty at Berkeley and a radar lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Oppie had felt left behind and stuck with a heavier teaching load than usual because of all the absences. He had only been asked to step in and supervise the special summer conference because his predecessor, Gregory Breit, had succeeded in alienating almost everyone with his unreasonable demands and obsession with secrecy. Oppenheimer had been chafing on the sidelines, and he seized the chance to lead a brainy group exploring the possibilities of designing a nuclear bomb. At the same time, he knew that he had inherited a difficult position and that managing so many egotistical scientists, from such widely varied countries of origin, was not going to be an easy task.
In June, Oppenheimer gathered the top theoretical physicists in the country, and they met in two attic rooms at Le Conte Hall. He had assembled a high-powered group, among them the Hungarian physicist Edward Teller, the German physicist Hans Bethe, the leading Swiss physicist Felix Bloch, Richard Tolman, and Oppies former student Robert Serber. Their meetings were veiled in secrecy, and the university had taken unusual measures to safeguard their privacy, including securing the windows and small balcony with heavy wire fencing and fitting the door with a special lock with a solitary key that was kept by Oppenheimer himself. Among the refugee scientists, there was a palpable anxiety to get under way immediately, amid worried conjecture about how far ahead the Germans might be and how much the strain of fighting a war might have slowed the Nazi weapons program.
Greene had discerned this was defense-related work from the official letters she had typed, but when she walked into the room across the hall from the office one afternoon and saw what was on the blackboard, she realized for the first time what all the security precautions were for. “Somebody had drawn a spherical shape and, from the various scribbles, well, it was obviously a bomb,” she said. “So I knew then. I was glad to know what we were doing. Almost immediately after that, everyone started calling it ‘the gadget’”
The goal of the special summer session was for Oppenheimer and his team to calculate to the best of their ability the exact specifications for the design of an atomic bomb. What was known to date was fairly rudimentary—the British had done some preliminary work—and the most they could do was make an educated guess at the force an atomic fission bomb could exert. So they had to begin with the basics, such as the size and structure of the bomb, work up an estimated critical mass, figure out how it might be made to explode, and then begin to try to address the practical problems entailed in assembling such a device, and ultimately detonating it. Oppie delegated teams to research different problems, and they met regularly to exchange information and ideas. Teller, who hardly knew Oppenheimer prior to the Berkeley conference and had only a moderate opinion of his abilities as a theoretical physicist, was impressed by his “sure, informal touch,” by his ability to motivate and guide the various participants, and by how much work was getting accomplished. “I don’t know how he had acquired this facility for handling people,” he said later. “Those who knew him well were really surprised.”
By the end of July, after they had been meeting regularly for almost two
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