Tales of the Bomb

The Double Helix, James Watson's personalized account of the discovery of the structure of DNA, the master molecule of life, had one important side effect. It shocked many scientists into the realization that they are public figures—and fair game for biographers, critics and even gossip columnists. Last week the point was driven home again by the publication of another gossipy book, Lawrence and Oppenheimer, in which Author Nuel Pharr Davis calls the roll of America's nuclear greats. He judges them not only as scientists, but also as human beings. Some do not fare too well.

Davis, a University of Illinois English professor, tries to weave the story of the A-bomb around the friendship and eventual falling out of America's two most influential wartime scientists-Ernest Lawrence, who won a Nobel Prize for his invention of the cyclotron, and Julius Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the team of scientists that developed the bomb. The literary device does not quite work. Oppenheimer, after death as in life, dominates the scene; he provides the point, but Lawrence does not emerge as a man big enough to supply the counterpoint. Still,

Author Davis' seven years of research and some 100 interviews were not spent in vain. His book not only adds rich anecdotal material to the already familiar Oppenheimer lore, but brings alive lesser-known atomic scientists and places them in perspective.

Burned-out Beam. While paying tribute to Lawrence's inventive genius and leadership, Davis details his failings, which were considerable. Although Stanley Livingston, graduate student at Berkeley, devised two of the beam-focusing techniques that enabled Lawrence to build the first of the big atom smashers, Lawrence failed to mention Livingston in his patent application and generally avoided crediting him for his work. When Livingston complained, Lawrence coldly suggested that if he felt dissatisfied he was free to drop out of the cyclotron project.

With characteristic optimism and consummate salesmanship, Lawrence raised funds and began building a 100 million-volt cyclotron in 1940, despite warnings by theoretical physicists that complex relativistic considerations would make it unworkable. World War II halted the project and saved Lawrence from great embarrassment. But the postwar years brought another. Putting his prestige and influence in Washington to work, Lawrence overcame the objections of other scientists and won approval for the construction of a monstrous proton accelerator for converting nonfissionable uranium 238 into fission able plutonium, which could be used in nuclear weapons. This time, after three years and huge expenditures, Lawrence completed the accelerator. But to his chagrin, it produced an effective beam of protons for only two hours, then burned out and never could be used again.