A sequel to Shapin’s earlier work, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation again solves the problem of induction by observing that researchers are decent. Shapin dismisses most of the literature on both the philosophy of science and (more so) on the sociology of science as ideologically biased and as irrelevant. Approaches to the book as light reading and as serious scholarly reading are considered before a critical summary is offered as a conclusion.

The Manhattan Project, the allies' project during the Second World War to build the atomic bomb, did not represent a radical break in the development of twentieth-century science but rather an acceleration of developments already underway, ...

This sharp, witty study of a book never written, a sequel to Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, is dedicated to New York City, capital of the twentieth century. A sui generis work of experimental scholarship or fictional philosophy, it analyzes an imaginary manuscript composed by a ghost. Part sprawling literary montage, part fragmentary theory of modernity, part implosive manifesto on the urban revolution, The Manhattan Project offers readers New York as a landscape built of sheer life. It initiates (...) them into a world of secret affinities between photography and graffiti, pragmatism and minimalism, Andy Warhol and Robert Moses, Hannah Arendt and Jane Jacobs, the flâneur and the homeless person, the collector and the hoarder, the glass-covered arcade and the bare, concrete street. These and many other threads can all be spooled back into one realization: for far too long, we have busied ourselves with thinking about ways to change the city; it is about time we let the city change the way we think. (shrink)

A sequel to Shapin’s earlier work, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation again solves the problem of induction by observing that researchers are decent. Shapin dismisses most of the literature on both the philosophy of science and (more so) on the sociology of science as ideologically biased and as irrelevant. Approaches to the book as light reading and as serious scholarly reading are considered before a critical summary is offered as a conclusion.

This paper discusses the critical necessity of teaching students about the social and ethical responsibilities of scientists. Both a university scientist and a middle school science teacher reflect on the value of teaching the ethical issues that confront scientists. In the development of the atomic bomb in the US-led Manhattan Project, scientists faced the growing threat of atomic bombs by the Germans and Japanese and the ethical issues involved in successfully completing such a destructive weapon. The Manhattan (...) Project is a prime example of the types of ethical dilemmas and social responsibilities that scientists may confront. (shrink)

Los Alamos, New Mexico has an enduring and complicated relationship with its past. During World War II, its residents worked to create the world’s first atomic weapons. The nuclear legacies of the Manhattan Project are global, but in contemporary Los Alamos the Project is often primarily considered a local history before a national or international one. The community’s modern identity is constructed in part through creating its history, and this article studies two children’s performances of the (...) class='Hi'>Manhattan Project past. The plots of these performances attempt to sidestep difficult history by avoiding nuclear weapons, which can ironically raise their uncanny specter in the imagination of the audience. The community history created in the performances privileges white scientist perspectives and at times flattens differences between past and present. This performed Manhattan Project is not only domestic – Los Alamos domesticates its complex history through these performances. (shrink)

The development of nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant scientific events of the twentieth century. This revised and updated 3rd edition explores the challenges that faced the scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project. It gives a clear introduction to fission weapons at the level of an upper-year undergraduate physics student by examining the details of nuclear reactions, their energy release, analytic and numerical models of the fission process, how critical (...) masses can be estimated, how fissile materials are produced, and what factors complicate bomb design. An extensive list of references and a number of exercises for self-study are included. Links are given to several freely-available spreadsheets which users can use to run many of the calculations for themselves. (shrink)

The development of atomic bombs under the auspices of the U.S. Army's Manhattan Project during World War II is considered to be the outstanding news story of the twentieth century. In this book, a physicist and expert on the history of the Project presents a comprehensive overview of this momentous achievement. The first three chapters cover the history of nuclear physics from the discovery of radioactivity to the discovery of fission, and would be ideal for instructors of (...) a sophomore-level "Modern Physics" course. Student-level exercises at the ends of the chapters are accompanied by answers. Chapter 7 covers the physics of first-generation fission weapons at a similar level, again accompanied by exercises and answers. For the interested layman and for non-science students and instructors, the book includes extensive qualitative material on the history, organization, implementation, and results of the Manhattan Project and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing missions. The reader also learns about the legacy of the Project as reflected in the current world stockpiles of nuclear weapons. This second edition contains important revisions and additions, including a new chapter on the German atomic bomb program and new sections on British and Canadian contributions to the Manhattan project and on feed materials. Several other sections have been expanded; reader feedback has been helpful in introducing minor corrections and improved explanations; and, last but not least, the second edition includes a detailed index. (shrink)

This book reminds us in yet another context that women's contributions to science can be rendered invisible by “the historical record.” The Manhattan Project, the supersecret midcentury United States research, development, and production enterprise that produced the nuclear bomb, was a massive undertaking, at one time employing 130,000 persons. About 10 percent were women, yet official histories made no mention of female scientists or engineers.Sleuthing by the physicists Ruth Howes and Caroline Herzenberg has documented Manhattan Project (...) contributions by more than three hundred women. Howes and Herzenberg begin with a few well‐known European women pioneers in nuclear science , none Americans and none available for the U.S. bomb effort. They then recount the history of the Manhattan Project via biographical vignettes of women, organized in chapters: “The Physicists,” “The Chemists,” “Mathematicians and Calculators,” “Biologists and Medical Scientists,” “The Technicians,” and “Other Women of the Manhattan Project.”It appears that few of these women knew each other. In her foreword, Ellen Weaver writes: “When I read the personal reminiscences of the men who were nuclear pioneers, I'm struck by the importance they place on their friends and associates, and on the often intense interaction among them, which could lead to major insights in both theory and practice of science. And I'm a bit jealous. By and large, women did not share in that give‐and‐take.”Not only was there little networking among women scientists and technicians in the early 1940s while the bomb was being developed, but there was little opportunity for them to share their experiences later. Only a very small percentage of these women were able to continue their professional careers. The many barriers to women as professional scientists and engineers, temporarily lowered owing to the manpower shortages of wartime, were raised after the war. There did not develop a community of women, engaged in teaching and research, with roots in the Manhattan Project.A web page is being developed to gather and provide further information about the women scientific workers of the Manhattan Project. Howes and Herzenberg are setting up an on‐line archive there, hoping that others who have information about the women scientific workers of the Manhattan Project will contact them via the web page or by email .The magnitude of their endeavor to learn about these women was illustrated vividly to me while writing this review. I attended the memorial service for my aunt, Mary Matilda Morrison Pendleton , and heard in her eulogy that “she worked as a nurse at the Hanford project, near Richland, Washington, where the government was secretly making atomic bombs. She would work shift work, two weeks of day shift, two weeks of swing shift, two weeks of graveyard shift, then she would get seven days off. She wore a badge every day that was checked after each day's work to see how much she had been radiated.” Although I thought that I knew her well, my aunt's role in the Manhattan Project had been unknown to me.The women of the Manhattan Project are finally gaining visibility. For example, Nancy Cook Steeper's book‐length biography of Dorothy Scarritt McKibbon is being published by the Los Alamos Historical Society. Howes and Herzenberg have provided ideas and starting points for many additional biographical projects. Perhaps the greatest long‐term value of their book is the impetus that it will give to further research.The book is well written, easy to read, and attractively printed. An appendix, listing the women and their roles, and a thorough index combine to make this an easily used reference work. There is also an informative sixteen‐page chronology that focuses on the crucial period from 1938 through 1945. (shrink)

Riding the Waves: A Life in Sound, Science, and IndustryManhattan Project to the Santa Fe Institute: The Memoirs of George A. Cowan by Leo Beranek; George A. Cowan.

This article develops a sociology of worth that blurs the traditional disciplinary divide between economic value and social values. Through ethnographic study of a new media startup in Manhattan's Silicon Alley, we examine how a new firm in an emerging industry negotiates an uncertain environment where metrics gauging performance remain illusive as the industry itself gropes toward a clearer definition of its content and contours. Faced with complex foresight horizons, new media firms must develop an organizational capacity for learning, (...) innovation, and flexible adaptation to constantly changing requirements. We examine how the clash of evaluative criteria guiding the work of cross-disciplinary project teams becomes a source for innovation and a resource for learning when deliberation across evaluative principles is combined with an organizational and administrative structure that relies on lateral accountability. (shrink)

(Statement of Responsibility) by Lewis Carroll ; with illustrations in colors.

On one level this is a case study in science, religion, and morality, with special attention to the consequences for morality of science's embeddedness in society. On another level this is the science-and-theology dialogue between the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his brother Karl-Friedrich, a physicist. The influence of Karl-Friedrich and the brothers' exchanges on Dietrich's prison theology receives special attention. Because this study is set in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, and Karl-Friedrich's work intersected Germany's efforts to develop a (...) nuclear weapon, the discussion leads to Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project. The attention there is to the interplay of science, religion, and morality at the time the bomb was detonated at the Trinity site. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: * 1 The Historical Cases of Hiroshima and Nagasaki * 2 “Physicists Have Known Sin?” – Reflections on the Manhattan Project * 3 The Human Dimensions of “Good Science” – Some Research and Teaching Perspectives * References.

The widespread adoption of radioisotopes as tools in biomedical research and therapy became one of the major consequences of the "physicists' war" for postwar life science. Scientists in the Manhattan Project, as part of their efforts to advocate for civilian uses of atomic energy after the war, proposed using infrastructure from the wartime bomb project to develop a government-run radioisotope distribution program. After the Atomic Energy Bill was passed and before the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was formally (...) established, the Manhattan Project began shipping isotopes from Oak Ridge. Scientists and physicians put these reactor-produced isotopes to many of the same uses that had been pioneered with cyclotron-generated radioisotopes in the 1930s and early 1940s. The majority of early AEC shipments were radioiodine and radiophosphorus, employed to evaluate thyroid function, diagnose medical disorders, and irradiate tumors. Both researchers and politicians lauded radioisotopes publicly for their potential in curing diseases, particularly cancer. However, isotopes proved less successful than anticipated in treating cancer and more successful in medical diagnostics. On the research side, reactor-generated radioisotopes equipped biologists with new tools to trace molecular transformations from metabolic pathways to ecosystems. The U.S. government's production and promotion of isotopes stimulated their consumption by scientists and physicians (both domestic and abroad), such that in the postwar period isotopes became routine elements of laboratory and clinical use. In the early postwar years, radioisotopes signified the government's commitment to harness the atom for peace, particularly through contributions to biology, medicine, and agriculture. (shrink)

Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat made significant contributions to nuclear physics and worked on the development of the atomic bomb. He walked out of the Manhattan Project after working there for less than a year, the only scientist to do so. Rotblat gave a comprehensive account of his time at Los Alamos. His Archive is now becoming available and papers contained therein are inconsistent with some aspects of his account. The reasons as to how such anomalies and contradictions could (...) occur are considered. (shrink)

Praise for Volume 1: "... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need." —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books Volume 2 of this convenient two-volume chronological reader’s edition provides the first comprehensive anthology of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce’s mature philosophy. A central focus of Volume 2 is Peirce’s evolving theory of signs and its appplication to his pragmatism.

The Bentham Project is delighted to announce a call for papers for “Bentham and Australia: Convicts, Utility, and Empire”, a conference to be held at University College London on 11-12 April 2019 to mark the forthcoming publication of Writings on Australia, a volume of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. The conference will explore themes such as the influence and impact of Bentham’s ideas on the theory and practice of punishment in convict Australia, on advocates and opponents of co...

Volume 8 of this landmark edition follows Peirce from May 1890 through July 1892—a period of turmoil as his career unraveled at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. The loss of his principal source of income meant the beginning of permanent penury and a lifelong struggle to find gainful employment. His key achievement during these years is his celebrated Monist metaphysical project, which consists of five classic articles on evolutionary cosmology. Also included are reviews and essays from The Nation (...) in which Peirce critiques Paul Carus, William James, Auguste Comte, Cesare Lombroso, and Karl Pearson, and takes part in a famous dispute between Francis E. Abbot and Josiah Royce. Peirce's short philosophical essays, studies in non-Euclidean geometry and number theory, and his only known experiment in prose fiction complete his production during these years. Peirce's 1883-1909 contributions to the Century Dictionary form the content of volume 7 which is forthcoming. (shrink)

Praise for Volume 1: "... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need." —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books Volume 2 of this convenient two-volume chronological reader’s edition provides the first comprehensive anthology of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce’s mature philosophy. A central focus of Volume 2 is Peirce’s evolving theory of signs and its appplication to his pragmatism.

What responsibility do the Manhattan Project scientists have for the atomic devastation of Hiroshima? Krupps scientists for the crematoriums at Auschwitz? Is there no way to revisit the ideals of science once devoted to creating a more reasonable and open society free from prejudices? Disturbing questions like these are at the heart of this sobering exploration of scientific and intellectual responsibility.

When Fat Boy, the first atomic bomb was detonated at Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1945, moral responsibility in science was forever thrust into the forefront of philosophical debate. The culmination of the famed Manhattan Project, which employed many of the world's best scientific minds, was a singular event that signaled a new age of science for power and profit and the monumental responsibility that these actions entailed. Today, the drive for technological advances in areas such as pharmaceuticals, (...) biosciences, communications, and the defense industry channels the vast majority of scientific endeavor into applied research. In _The Responsible Scientist,_ John Forge examines the challenges of social, moral, and legal responsibility faced by today's scientists. Focusing on moral responsibility, Forge argues that scientists have a responsibility not to do work that has harmful outcomes and that they are encouraged to do work that prevents harm. Scientists also have a backward-looking responsibility, whereby they must prevent wrongful outcomes and omissions that they are in a position to foresee. Forge presents a broad overview of many areas of scientific endeavor, citing the responsibility of corporations, employees, and groups of scientists as judged by the values of science and society's appraisals of actions and outcomes. He maintains that ultimate responsibility lies in the hands of the individual-the responsible scientist-who must exhibit the diligence and foresight to anticipate the use and abuse of his or her work. (shrink)

Change in scientific practice and its implications for the status of scientific claims, examined through an analysis of three episodes at a synchrotron laboratory. After World War II, particle physics became a dominant research discipline in American academia. At many universities, alumni of the Manhattan Project and of Los Alamos were granted resources to start programs of high-energy physics built around the promise of a new and more powerful particle accelerator, the synchrotron. The synchrotron was also a source (...) of very intense X-rays, useful for research in solid states physics and in biology. As synchrotron X-ray science grew, the experimental practice of protein crystallography, garnered funding, prestige, and acclaim. In Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron, Park Doing examines the change in scientific practice at a synchrotron laboratory as biology rose to dominance over physics. He draws on his own observations and experiences at the Cornell University synchrotron, and considers the implications of that change for the status of scientific claims. Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron is one of the few recent works in the sociology of science that engages specific scientific and technical claims through participant observation--recorded evocatively and engagingly--to address issues in the philosophy of science. Doing argues that bureaucratic change in science is neither "top-down" nor "bottom-up" but rather performed in and realized through recursively related forums of technical assertion and resistance. He considers the relationship of this change to the content of science, and the implications of this relationship for the project of laboratory studies begun in the late 1970s. (shrink)

The widespread adoption of radioisotopes as tools in biomedical research and therapy became one of the major consequences of the "physicists' war" for postwar life science. Scientists in the Manhattan Project, as part of their efforts to advocate for civilian uses of atomic energy after the war, proposed using infrastructure from the wartime bomb project to develop a government-run radioisotope distribution program. After the Atomic Energy Bill was passed and before the Atomic Energy Commission was formally established, (...) the Manhattan Project began shipping isotopes from Oak Ridge. Scientists and physicians put these reactor-produced isotopes to many of the same uses that had been pioneered with cyclotron-generated radioisotopes in the 1930s and early 1940s. The majority of early AEC shipments were radioiodine and radiophosphorus, employed to evaluate thyroid function, diagnose medical disorders, and irradiate tumors. Both researchers and politicians lauded radioisotopes publicly for their potential in curing diseases, particularly cancer. However, isotopes proved less successful than anticipated in treating cancer and more successful in medical diagnostics. On the research side, reactor-generated radioisotopes equipped biologists with new tools to trace molecular transformations from metabolic pathways to ecosystems. The U.S. government's production and promotion of isotopes stimulated their consumption by scientists and physicians, such that in the postwar period isotopes became routine elements of laboratory and clinical use. In the early postwar years, radioisotopes signified the government's commitment to harness the atom for peace, particularly through contributions to biology, medicine, and agriculture. (shrink)

Solid state physics, the study of the physical properties of solid matter, was the most populous subfield of Cold War American physics. Despite prolific contributions to consumer and medical technology, such as the transistor and magnetic resonance imaging, it garnered less professional prestige and public attention than nuclear and particle physics. Solid State Insurrection argues that solid state physics was essential to securing the vast social, political, and financial capital Cold War physics enjoyed in the twentieth century. Solid state’s technological (...) bent, and its challenge to the “pure science” ideal many physicists cherished, helped physics as a whole respond more readily to Cold War social, political, and economic pressures. Its research kept physics economically and technologically relevant, sustaining its cultural standing and policy influence long after the sheen of the Manhattan Project had faded. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Fehlinterpretierte Dokumente und ignorierte physikalische Fakten: Die Geschichte von,Hitlers Atombombe‘ muss korrigiert werden. Warum haben die deutschen Physiker während des Zweiten Weltkriegs keine Atombombe entwickelt? Seit mehr als 25 Jahren sind sich die Historiker einig, dass die deutschen Physiker wussten, wie eine Atombombe gebaut werden muss, dass aber ein Programm wie das amerikanische Manhattan‐Projekt zu ihrer Realisierung in Deutschland, erst recht während des Krieges, unmöglich war. Eine genaue Analyse aller erhaltenen Original‐Dokumente über die Arbeit an der Atombombe während (...) des,Dritten Reichs‘ zeigt jedoch erhebliche Fehler der Autoren durch unvollständige Analyse der Dokumente, falsches Verständnis naturwissenschaftlicher Erläuterungen und Ignorieren physikalischer Fakten. Es wird nachgewiesen, dass die deutschen Physiker bis zum Ende des Krieges nicht bemerkt hatten, dass eine Atombombe nur mit schnellen Neutronen realisiert werden kann. Nur Heisenberg hatte das richtige Prinzip spät erkannt, es aber nicht eindeutig kommuniziert und auch in keiner Weise physikalisch vertieft. Die physikalisch korrekte Interpretation der Dokumente zeigt, dass die deutschen Physiker während des Krieges erfolglos versuchten, einen Reaktor zu entwickeln, der auch eine Voraussetzung für den Bau einer Plutonium‐Bombe gewesen wäre. Aber sie wussten nicht, wie eine Bombe realisiert werden kann, weil sie nie an einer realistischen Theorie der Atombombe gearbeitet hatten. Summary: Misinterpreted Documents and Ignored Physical Facts: The History of ‘Hitler's Atomic Bomb’ needs to be corrected. Why have the German physicists not developed an atomic bomb during World War II? For more than 25 years, the historians agree that they knew how to build the bomb, but that a bomb‐development programme of the size of the US‐Manhattan‐Project would not have been possible in wartime Germany. A detailed analysis of all preserved documents on the German atomic bomb research during the ‘Third Reich’, however, reveals considerable mistakes by the authors due to incomplete analysis of documents, misinterpretations of scientific explanations and ignoring of physical facts. It is shown that until the end of the war the German physicists did not know that an atomic bomb can only be made with fast neutrons, except Heisenberg, who, however, discovered it rather late, did not communicate it clearly and did not study any bomb physics. The physically correct interpretation of the documents reveals that the German physicists worked unsuccessfully on a reactor, which would have been a prerequisite for a plutonium bomb. But they did not know how to build a bomb because they never worked on a realistic bomb theory. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Fehlinterpretierte Dokumente und ignorierte physikalische Fakten: Die Geschichte von,Hitlers Atombombe‘ muss korrigiert werden. Warum haben die deutschen Physiker während des Zweiten Weltkriegs keine Atombombe entwickelt? Seit mehr als 25 Jahren sind sich die Historiker einig, dass die deutschen Physiker wussten, wie eine Atombombe gebaut werden muss, dass aber ein Programm wie das amerikanische Manhattan‐Projekt zu ihrer Realisierung in Deutschland, erst recht während des Krieges, unmöglich war. Eine genaue Analyse aller erhaltenen Original‐Dokumente über die Arbeit an der Atombombe während (...) des,Dritten Reichs‘ zeigt jedoch erhebliche Fehler der Autoren durch unvollständige Analyse der Dokumente, falsches Verständnis naturwissenschaftlicher Erläuterungen und Ignorieren physikalischer Fakten. Es wird nachgewiesen, dass die deutschen Physiker bis zum Ende des Krieges nicht bemerkt hatten, dass eine Atombombe nur mit schnellen Neutronen realisiert werden kann. Nur Heisenberg hatte das richtige Prinzip spät erkannt, es aber nicht eindeutig kommuniziert und auch in keiner Weise physikalisch vertieft. Die physikalisch korrekte Interpretation der Dokumente zeigt, dass die deutschen Physiker während des Krieges erfolglos versuchten, einen Reaktor zu entwickeln, der auch eine Voraussetzung für den Bau einer Plutonium‐Bombe gewesen wäre. Aber sie wussten nicht, wie eine Bombe realisiert werden kann, weil sie nie an einer realistischen Theorie der Atombombe gearbeitet hatten. Summary: Misinterpreted Documents and Ignored Physical Facts: The History of ‘Hitler's Atomic Bomb’ needs to be corrected. Why have the German physicists not developed an atomic bomb during World War II? For more than 25 years, the historians agree that they knew how to build the bomb, but that a bomb‐development programme of the size of the US‐Manhattan‐Project would not have been possible in wartime Germany. A detailed analysis of all preserved documents on the German atomic bomb research during the ‘Third Reich’, however, reveals considerable mistakes by the authors due to incomplete analysis of documents, misinterpretations of scientific explanations and ignoring of physical facts. It is shown that until the end of the war the German physicists did not know that an atomic bomb can only be made with fast neutrons, except Heisenberg, who, however, discovered it rather late, did not communicate it clearly and did not study any bomb physics. The physically correct interpretation of the documents reveals that the German physicists worked unsuccessfully on a reactor, which would have been a prerequisite for a plutonium bomb. But they did not know how to build a bomb because they never worked on a realistic bomb theory. (shrink)

The 1984 Nobel Prize for physics wasawarded to two European scientists for theircontributions to the `large project' that ledto the identification of two importantfundamental particles. The citation recognizedthat major discoveries in high-energy physicsdemanded more than intellectual achievement andtechnical innovation. Such qualities had to beembedded in a technological, managerial,institutional and political infrastructure.This paper aims to capture the salient featuresof that infrastructure by insisting that atleast one of the laureates should be viewed,not only as a physicist, but also as a`heterogeneous engineer', (...) who succeeded inmobilizing the human and material resourcesneeded to attain his objectives. As such, hisproject was similar to the Manhattan project,and was typical of the transformation in thepractice of physics that came about during theSecond World War. (shrink)

Kernphysiker in einer neuen Welt: Die Emigranten der dreißiger Jahre in Amerika. - Unter der großen Anzahl derjenigen, die durch Nationalsozialismus zur Emigration gezwungen wurden und zwischen 1933 und 1941 in die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika einwanderten, befanden sich auch mehr als hundert Physiker, und unter ihnen einige der genialsten Kernphysiker der Welt. Die Physik in Amerika hatte damals den Status einer voll ausgereiften Wissenschaft erreicht, und so kam es zu einem bedeutsamen und facettenreichen Zusammenwirken zwischen den emigrierten und den (...) einheimischen Kernphysikern, zumal sie die verschiedenen Forschungsgebiete vertraten, die sich durch die Entdeckungen und Erfindungen des Jahres 1932 (Neutron, Deuterium, Positron, Cockcroft-Walton-Beschleuniger, Zyklotron) aufgetan hatten. Von besonderer Bedeutung Für die Konsolidierung und Entwicklung der gesamten Kernphysik war dabei die Veröffentlichung von drei Artikeln in den Reviews of Modern Physics von 1936 und 1937, bekannt als die „Bethe-Bibel”︁. Nach der Entdeckung der Kernspaltung von 1938 und dem Ausbruch des Krieges 1939 in Europa wirkte die Befürchtung, daß Hitler eine Atomwaffe erhalten könnte, als mächtige, Emigranten und Nicht-Emigranten gleichermaßen erfassende einigende Kraft unter den Atomphysikern in Amerika, und die meisten von ihnen stellten ihre Fähigkeiten in den Dienst der US-Regierung und arbeiteten am Manhatten-Projekt und an anderen militärischen Forschungsvorhaben mit. Bei Kriegsende waren die in den dreißiger Jahren emigrierten Kernphysiker wie so viele Flüchtlinge vor ihnen Amerikaner geworden, und keiner von ihnen kehrte in sein Geburtsland zurück.Among the large number of refugees from Nazism and Fascism entering the United States between 1933 and 1941 were more than 100 physicists, including some of the most gifted nuclear physicists in the world. By that time physics in America had come of age, and a remarkable and multifaceted symbiosis occurred between the émigré and native-born nuclear physicists as they pursued the many avenues of research opened up by the discoveries and inventions of 1932 (neutron, deuterium, positron, Cockcroft-Walton accelerator, cyclotron). Of particular importance for the consolidation and development of the entire field of nuclear physics was the publication in 1936–37 of the three articles in the Revieus of Modern Physics known as the „Bethe Bible”︁. With the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 and the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, the fear that a nuclear weapon might fall into Hitler's hands served as a powerful unifying force among nuclear physicists in Amerika, émigrés and non-émigrés alike, and most placed their talents in the service of the United States Government working on the Manhattan Project and other wartime research. By the end of the war, like so many refugees before them, the émigré nuclear physicists of the 1930s had become Americans, and not one of them returned to the country of his birth. (shrink)

In a clear, nontechnical account, Jack Goldstein tells the story of this entrepreneurial American scientist who played an essential part in experiments important to the development of quantum mechanics, who later became an advisor to the government during much of the Cold War period, and whose leadership in educational reform resulted in the restructuring of the entire American high school science curriculum. Jerrold Zacharias was a physicist well placed by historical circumstance to take a central part in the development of (...) American science, science policy, and science education. In a clear, nontechnical account, Jack Goldstein tells the story of this entrepreneurial American scientist who played an essential part in experiments important to the development of quantum mechanics, who later became an advisor to the government during much of the Cold War period, and whose leadership in educational reform resulted in the restructuring of the entire American high school science curriculum. Zacharias lived at a time when an individual with imagination and courage could make a difference, whether at the forefront of science or in matters of public policy. He believed that every citizen, even those with modest scientific sophistication and knowledge, could learn to think like a scientist. Now, at a time when the issues of science education and science literacy are again of compelling national interest, his ideas merit close attention.Goldstein describes Zacharias's coming of scientific age in the early 1930s, as a member of 1. 1. Rabi's group at Columbia, and examines the leading role he played during World War II at MIT's Radiation Laboratory and at the Manhattan Project. From about 1955 on, Goldstein observes, Zacharias made significant contributions to science education in physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics at the primary, secondary, and college levels. As a result of his initiatives, science and mathematics curriculum development flourished in a number of third-world countries. (shrink)

Today, the most powerful research technique available for assigning chronometric age to human cultural objects is radiocarbon dating. Developed in the United States in the late 1940s by an alumnus of the Manhattan Project, radiocarbon dating measures the decay of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 (C14) in organic material, and calculates the time elapsed since the materials were removed from the life cycle. This paper traces the interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology and radiochemistry that led to the successful development of (...) radiocarbon dating in the early 1950s, following the movement of people and ideas from Willard Libby's Chicago radiocarbon laboratory to museums, universities and government labs in the United States, Australia, Denmark and New Zealand. I show how radiocarbon research built on existing technologies and networks in atomic chemistry and physics but was deeply shaped by its original private philanthropic funders and archaeologist users, and ultimately remained to the side of many contemporaneous Cold War scientific and military projects. (shrink)

John Canaday, The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics, and the First Atomic Bombs. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. Pp. xviii+310. ISBN 0-299-16854-9. £19.50.Septimus H. Paul, Nuclear Rivals: Anglo-American Atomic Relations 1941–1952. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000. Pp. ix+266. ISBN 0-8142-0852-5. £31.95.Peter Bacon Hales, Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Pp. 448. ISBN 0-252-02296-3. £22.00.A decade after the end of the Cold War, the culture and technology of nuclear weapons (...) had lost much of the overt sense of dread they once inspired. The decline in international tension following the end of the communist regimes of the Soviet bloc produced a massive shift in the ideology of the nuclear in the 1990s. The de-targeting and dismantling of large numbers of nuclear weapons and the demise of the threat of nuclear annihilation created new conditions both for international security and for the writing of nuclear history. With the declassification and release of large quantities of official documentation from the former adversaries, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1995, a burst of histories of various aspects of the nuclear age have appeared over the last ten years, exploring not just the technopolitics, strategy and operational logistics of the Cold War and the arms race, but the cultural history of the nuclear age, its imagery, its architecture, its oppositional politics and its effects on the landscape, national and regional economies and cultures and indeed everyday life. At a time of global economic and political uncertainty and the emergent threat of capricious international terrorism and new nuclear proliferation, the apparent certainties of the Cold War now even evoke a certain nostalgia, and its artefacts and structures are being recast as ‘heritage’. (shrink)

The paper points to quite a surprising change of the attitude among general public towards science and scientific progress that seems to have happened at the turn of the 20th century, and, to an extent, stays on: from holding scientific enterprise in high esteem to treating scientists and fortune˗tellers on a par, from hopes that science will eventually resolve our problems, both theoretical and practical, to anxiety and fear of what scientific experiments can bring about in nature and human life. (...) After considering, in Part 1, possible reasons for this change, the paper focuses on supposedly real dangers associated with some particular scientific achievements. Part 2, “Physicist’s nightmares”, recalls some historical instances of the progress in physics, from the Manhattan Project to the opening of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2008, fears that those experiments raised, and arguments ˗ both convincing and not quite so ˗ that were offered to reassure the public of their safety. Part 3, “Biologist’s dangerous plays”, turns to genetic engineering and certain fears this discipline raises which are captured in the term the “Frankenstein Syndrome”, e.g. the danger of genetically modified organisms getting to an unintended environment, or unexpected results of intended modifications. Here the paper offers some considerations regarding the notions of “intention” and “expectation”, which leads to fundamental doubts about plausibility of the conviction of the dangerous character of the research in question. Final conclusions point to a quite fundamental discrepancy between the power of science and the power of nature as the ultimate argument against exaggerated fears of scientific progress, and the post˗concluding remark offers additional support for it in terms of a brief theological observation for those who share Christian tradition. (shrink)

Communities of nuclear workers have evolved in distinctive contexts. During the Manhattan Project the UK, USA and Canada collectively developed the first reactors, isotope separation plants and atomic bombs and, in the process, nurtured distinct cadres of specialist workers. Their later workplaces were often inherited from wartime facilities, or built anew at isolated locations. For a decade, nuclear specialists were segregated and cossetted to gestate practical expertise. At Oak Ridge Tennessee, for example, the informal ‘Clinch College of Nuclear (...) Knowledge’ aimed to industrialise the use of radioactive materials. ‘We were like children in a toy factory’, said its Director: ‘everyone could play the game of designing new nuclear power piles’. His counterpart at Chalk River, Ontario headed a project ‘completely Canadian in every respect’, while the head of the British project chose the remote Dounreay site in northern Scotland because of design uncertainties in the experimental breeder reactor. With the decline of secrecy during the mid-1950s, the hidden specialists lauded as ‘atomic scientists’ gradually became visible as new breeds of engineers, technologists and technicians responsible for nuclear reactors and power plants. Mutated by their different political contexts, occupational categories, labour affiliations, professional representations and popular depictions, their activities were disputed by distinct audiences. This chapter examines the changing identities of nuclear specialists and the significance of their secure sites. Shaped successively by Cold War secrecy, commercial competition and terrorist threats, nuclear energy remained out of site for wider publics and most nuclear specialists alike. The distinctive episodes reveal the changing working experiences of technical workers in late-twentieth and early twenty-first century environments. (shrink)

J. Robert Oppenheimer, a leading physicist in the Manhattan Project, recognized that scientific inquiry and discovery could no longer be separated from their effect on political decision-making, social responsibility, and human endeavor in general. He openly addressed issues of common concern and as a scientist accepted the responsibility brought about by nuclear physics and the atom bomb. In this collection of essays and speeches, Oppenheimer discusses the shift in scientific awareness and its impact on education, the question of (...) openness in a society forced to keep secrets, the conflict between individual concerns and public and political necessity, the future of science and its effects on future politics---in short, the common and uncommon sense we find in our modern day reality. (shrink)

After his father passed away, James Nolan's mother gave him a box of materials that his dad had kept private. To Nolan's complete surprise, the contents revealed the role his grandfather had played as a doctor in the Manhattan Project. Dr. Nolan, it turned out, had been a significant figure. A talented radiologist, he cared for the scientists on the Project, helped organize the safety and evacuation plans for the Trinity Test at Alamogordo, escorted the "Little Boy" (...) bomb from Los Alamos to Japan, and was one of the first Americans to enter the irradiated ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The documents set Nolan on a hunt for more information about his grandfather and more generally about the conflicted role that medical personnel played in the early years of atomic testing. The result is a compelling history of the dawn of the atomic age as seen through the eyes of men and women torn between their duty and desire to win the war and their oath to protect life. Nolan follows his grandfather and medical colleagues as they seek to maximize safety while serving leaders determined to minimize delays, and as they consider the ethics of ending the deadliest of all wars with the most lethal of all weapons. The result, Nolan shows, was a very human pattern of caution, co-optation, and complicity. A vital and vivid account of a largely unknown chapter in atomic history, Delivering Little Boy is also a profound meditation on the professional and moral dilemmas that ordinary people face in extraordinary times. (shrink)