Los Alamos Quotes

This is an interesting historical quotation because it shows how easily the United States commandeered private property during World War II. All it took was a letter from the Secretary of War. This particular quotation and letter had further historical significance. The school was acquired as the first facility for the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. This was where the atomic bomb was built.

The normally highly individualistic scientists from so many different cultures amazed all, especially the military, with the teamwork and organization of their effort. They all wanted to be sure that the Germans would not first develop the bomb and the refugees from Europe shared experiences that motivated them all. Also, the Army was very ham handed in trying to organize a community of scientists, and there was a great deal of cohesion to keep the army out of their day to day affairs. The other major factor was J. Robert Oppenheier, the scientific director, who despite his lack of managerial or leadership experience, rose to the occasion and became one of the great scientific administrators of all time. Ulam with Edward Teller were the first to design the Hydrogen Bomb.

The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. Oppenheimer was the chief scientist developing the atomic bomb. However he was a theoretical physicist who had little personal experience making things that had to actually work. It worked flawlessly just as all the theory predicted it would.

While the President had total faith in American scientists, at the time the state of American physics was not world class in several key areas. Oppenheimer, was for example, the ONLY senior American theoretical physicist at the outbreak of the war, and he had been trained in Germany. What the President did not quite realize was how many of the key scientific positions on the Manhattan Project were foreign refugees who had fled the Nazis in Europe. Many American scientists and engineers did not want to go to Los Alamos where they could not leave for the duration of the war, had to give up their own personal research, and whose relatives who did not accompany them would never know where they were or what they were doing. But there were enough great American scientists who Oppenheimer recruited that combined with the Europeans formed the greatest and most effective concentration of scientific manpower working in history.

The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. The quotation is very interesting for two reasons. The first is the cover story that people were told in the New Mexico communities surrounding Los Alamos. Second, it shows the incredibly extensive and detailed degree to which the Scientific Director was involved in the details of the Manhattan Project. The more that Oppenheimer could do, the less the army needed to do and the cultural gap between the army and the scientists was huge. Whatever the military handled ending up being insensitive to the scientists and their families as the military was used to simply making decisions and ordering its troop to live with the decisions. Oppenheimer, in one of the great leadership and management achievements in history was trusted by all the scientists and by General Groves and the Civilian advisors. As a result, when he did something it would be accepted and there was much hardship the scientists had to live with in this isolated area with few amenities and he was believable when he told the scientists and their families that this was the best that could be done at the time. The Army mid level officers and security agents were never happy with the project and kept identifying possible “security risks” on the staff. Every one they identified turned out to have been totally loyal. There was one spy—a British scientists working for the Russians, but he had all his credentials and history in order and was never identified as a potential security risk.

The cultural difference between the Army and the scientists was vast. Groves constantly was at odds with the scientists, but he himself was an engineer and had a closer understanding of scientists than most other military officers. He learned a great deal, adjusted his own procedures and thanks to Groves and Robert Oppenheimer, who worked very well together, everyone compromised a little on the cultural and security issues and the project was a great success.

Feynman was then a young brilliant graduate students working with colleagues far senior to him. He not only criticized the lax security of the safes, but when combination safes were later installed, he would infuriate the army security people by “hacking” the safes when scientists had lost their combinations.

The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. The focus of the scientists had been to beat the German’s who were terribly evil might develop a bomb first. After the defeat of some scientists began to have concerns about their purpose. Most were very distrustful of the army and believed little of what they were told, by the military at Los Alamos. However, in a remarkable our de force of leadership, Oppenheimer had the trust of virtually all of the staff. This memo and a briefing of the invasion plans of mainland Japan (see {629858} ) convinced the scientist to maintain their intense and punishing pace.

Oppenheimer was cleared but many of the rest of the staff were including those with access to the highest, most critical secrets in the land. See {629854} for a greater understanding of the situation.

Conant, a great scientist in his own right, had the confidence of the political, academic, and industrial establishment and was appointed to the Committee that was to set policy for the Manhattan Project representing President Roosevelt. Germany had been the world leader in Physics before the war. American leaders and scientists were certain that we were in a scientific race with the Germans. Even after Germany had been defeated, President Truman was told that we had beaten the Germans in the race for the bomb. Actually, although almost no one in the US government realized it then, the Germans had NO PROGRAM of nuclear weapons development at all. Hitler did not trust the Theoretical Physics and Theory of Relativity because Einstein and other Jewish scientists had been instrumental in its development. He derogatorily referred to it as “Jewish Science”. Germany bet its scientific efforts on the V2 Rockets and the Jet Airplane, both of which they were successful with but too late to have any material effect on the war. Ironically, even after most of the great German physicists were run out of Germany, there were still two of the greatest who may well have been capable of nuclear weapons development. But neither Werner Heisenberg or Otto Hahn were inclined to engage in that kind of research, and neither of them were even asked whether or not they thought it was possible. The anti-Semitic Nazis just assumed that it could not be. Truman and his associates did not find out for another year or more that there was no race. There was one OSS spy, Moe Berg, who had actually talked to Heisenberg in the midst of the war, and concluded that he not only was not working on an atomic bomb, but was not up on the latest pre-war critical research needed to develop a bomb. Hahn knew and had created the first chain reaction for which he later won the Nobel prize but he was a chemist and didn’t really understand the Physics and mathematics involved in making a weapon and was a confirmed pacifist. Ironically, his colleague, Lise Meitner who had done the physics and mathematics on that experiment was Jewish and had to flee Germany. In Denmark she gave the results to Niels Bohr, who shared them with Leo Slizard and Einstein when Bohr came to the United State and that initiated the famous letter that was sent to FDR which triggered the Manhattan Project. The German first nuclear reaction was used by the Americans because the politicians listened to the scientists, while in Germany, the politicians gave no credence to their scientists and their experiments in nuclear fission.

Bethe and other European refugees joined American and British scientists at Los Alamos, NM, for the development of the atomic bomb.

When the atomic bomb was first tested at Los Alamos, some of the scientists were concerned that Aston’s warning might come to pass. The result was that they conducted a series of calculations to preclude the possibility. Oppenheimer, Fermi, Bohr, Teller, Alverez, Feynman and dozens of others calculated that given the parameters that they were testing, there was no danger. None the less, in their memoirs most admit that in the back of their head, there was lingering this possibility that was first raised by this quotation from another great scientist.