Lawrence and Oppenheimer

By Nuel Pharr Davis

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: B01I3TA3L0
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: Clarion, Simon and Schuste, 1969
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Unique, Brilliant, Essential!

I was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, where Ernest Orlando Lawrence did his most important scientific research. In my high school days I was shepherded through an uncomprehending tour of Lawrence's vast cyclotron building, and I can still recall the outrage and actual fear shown by my science teacher as he seized some trifling object that a student had picked up and threw it away as if it were a scorpion or a rattlesnake. This teacher, Mr. Clair Elmore, had worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory (founded by Oppenheimer) where he lost the tip of one finger through an accident that he never described. No doubt he was afraid that the small piece of plastic in the innocent student's hand was dangerously radioactive. Some time later I worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where Lawrence's disastrous and doomed experiments with his ultimate particle machine, the monstrous M.T.A., took place (this fiasco was never mentioned by anyone in the Lab, and that glaring omission reminds me of the significant silence of Sherlock Holmes's notorious dog that did not bark in the night). It was at LLNL that I stood within 20 feet of Edward Teller as he gave a speech in his unforgettable Bela Lugosi accent, looking so very much like the original version of Dr. Strangelove, still ready to sink his malicious dagger into Robert Oppenheimer's unsuspecting back. So I have a personal contact, however limited, with some of the issues and personalities described in this book. This book is unique because it strays from the King James version, the universally accepted canon, of the lives of Lawrence and Oppenheimer. I've been an Oppenheimer fan for many years, and recently I greatly enjoyed reading "Oppenheimer, American Prometheus" which is perhaps the most complete version of the "official" life. However, Nuel Davis's book was written before the Oppenheimer legend hardened into orthodoxy, and thus it includes a great deal of material that the last few Oppie books omit or play down. Even though Davis's 384-page book is relatively short, many important episodes in the lives of Oppie and Lawrence are described at much greater length and often with a different emphasis than the conventional renditions in "Prometheus" and other recent bios. One example is Lawrence's pivotal role in the design of the ill-fated M.T.A or Materials Testing Accelerator, an immense device intended for the transmutation of U238 into plutonium. As Davis writes, "Scenes worthy of science fiction took place inside the five-story vacuum chamber." The M.T.A was the ultimate expression, and the ultimate failure, of Lawrence's untutored empiricism. Even when he finally got it working for a precious and unrepeatable two hours, it merely vaporized the targets that it was supposed to transmute, because Lawrence's target cooling arrangements were totally inadequate. But even so, it ALMOST worked! So near, and yet so far! This book views the lives of Lawrence and Oppenheimer

A few years old but a solid read

"Lawrence and Oppenheimer" is a book detailing the works of two scientists that primarily were responsible for the development of the Atomic Bomb. The book covers their developments as scientists, the work on the project and their later lives as they start to get caught in the politics of the time. The book offers an interesting view on the history as it was written in the 1960s and does not have as much hindsight as more recent texts do. I believe the book should be read by someone who is interested in seeing the development of Histories greatest weapon from a slightly different view point. The author does focus on Lawrence a bit much, especially in the early parts of the book but overall it is an interesting read.

Brilliant writing, too simplistic views of Lawrenence

The quality of writing by Davis is some of the best I have ever read dealing with science and technology. The book has a significant weakness in its simplistic treatment of scientific discovery, concerning both Lawrence and Teller. The tremendous achievement of Groves is similarly given less than its due. I think Rhodes two books on this topic are much more balanced, but for the feeling of how science works, this book has few equals. I lent my copy to a friend some years ago (alas), and I'd love to reread this. Interesting two people would write reviews on a book they read many years ago.

Based on reading of 15 years ago

I read this book probably 15 yrs. ago, & at that time realized J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the most historically unrecognized people of our century. This story blends facts with the human side of the man, producing a tragic hero, whose life ended in obscure and unjust abandon.