Isidor Rabi Quotes
We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids ?
Rigden, John S. Rabi, Scientist and Citizen. Basic Books, 1987, p. 215.
India built the bomb, and then Pakistan djd at great economic sacrifice.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. Oppenheimer was the great physicist who directed the successful development of the atomic bomb so as to build the weapon before Hitler did in World War II. However, as the technology evolved, he had doubts as to the wisdom of creating even more powerful hydrogen weapons. His viewpoint was hurting the administration’s policy of rapid unlimited nuclear weapons development, and he was the victim of a character assassination whereby his security clearance was withdrawn. The “father” of the atomic bomb was the first American casualty of atomic weapons development.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb
Fermi was the scientist who organized and planned the first controlled nuclear chain reaction as a part of the Manhattan Project and was one of the major scientific advisors to the Atomic Energy Commission until he, Oppenheimer, and several other scientists opposed the development of the Super (the name Edward Teller had given to the proposed hydrogen bomb). The scientists knew that we had and could make enough atomic bombs to destroy any nation and to make it doable with just a few bombs as opposed to many they saw as of little military
value. They further expected that the Russians and some others would be forced to keep up with us in an arms race and that the bomb would never be able to be used without retaliation in kind and the destruction of most of America. The politicians and military did not really believe that the Russians had the scientific capability to develop hydrogen weapons and some thought if we had them and no one else did, we could dictate a “pax Americana” to the world. Others feared that Russia or some other country would develop a hydrogen weapon and then dictate to us. We did have a monopoly on the Super for a few years and America never dictated to the rest of the world. When other countries developed the weapons, we entered the era of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
Isidor Isaac Rabi was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used in magnetic resonance imaging. He was also one of the first scientists in the United States to work on the cavity magnetron, which is used in microwave radar and microwave ovens.
