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49 Cold War Transformation of a Scientific Community: the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories 49 Cold War Transformation of a Scientific Community: The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories Dennis Copeland It is dangerous for an individual or a university to exert strong control over the direction of research activity. Freedom of the individual is a strong tradition. and in no place is individual freedom more important than in research. Dr. John H. Lawrence(1956)1 The Berkeley University campus has a long tradition of inventiveness and individualism. Nowhere were these values more evident than in the scientific research community, partly housed in academic departments on campus and partly housed, since 1936, in Ernest Lawrence’s Radiation Laboratory. By the late 1930s, California had become a mecca for new scientific research, much of it revolving around the penetration of the atom. A new generation of promising, often brilliant, scientists and engineers began to cluster around Lawrence.2 In Berkeley, Ernest Lawrence developed his first high voltage particle accelerator, the Cyclotron, and a scientific team. In so doing he pioneered the complex of specialized machines and interdisciplinary research known as “Big Science.” Scientific research was carried out previously in separate biology, chemistry, engineering, and physics departments. Lawrence’s group outgrew these original habitats, the academic divisions. Although scientists remained attached to the university where they taught, the laboratories were created to house research communities. The Radiation Laboratory performed a dual role as a research and teaching center for graduate students and research fellows from across the nation and eventually the world. The Berkeley “Rad Labbers,” as they were called, were a community whose pioneers expressed a faith in the American classic values of individualism and enterprise. The Berkeley Laboratory also had a reputation in the larger scientific community: “baidheaded in the Berkeley way.” They were that “damn California crowd,” “Lawrence’s group,” the inventors and tinkerers. 1 John H. Lawrence, “Early Experiences in Nuclear Medicine,” northwest Medical Journal 55(1956); 553. From an address delivered to the Society of Nuclear Medicine, June 18, 1955. John H. Lawrence Papers, Box 25, Folder 5. (Hereafter abbreviated as JIlL) 2 the establishment of the Laboratory: [Statement of Radiation Laboratory,J August 1951 and “Minutes of the Regents of the University of California, Berkeley, April 1936, “Lawrence Berkeley Archives (LBL) General Reference Files (History). The other new center for physics on the West Coast was the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. H.M. Miller, Jr. to Ernest Lawrence, September 24, 1940, quoted in Mark Lothrop, Andrew Guthrie, and George Everson, “History of Radiation Lab, September 29, 1945,” LBL Archives General Reference History: 26. See Nuet Pharr Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968): Chapters 2 and 3 for overview of sense of excitement and discovery within the Lab. 50 Ernest Lawrence’s personal characteristics defined the group in the eyes of the public and the larger scientific community: bold, individualistic, informal, exuberant, naive, boyish, and enthusiastic.3 An early biographer of Lawrence depicted him as an American pioneer-hero, a tall, optimistic, Viking-scientist, and a frontiersman in California.4 This characterization of the community and its leader bears some resemblance to how participants actually defined themselves. This self-definition shifted in the late 1940s and the Rad Lab shored up its defenses in a new hostile world. The qualifications for membership changed. The Berkeley scientific community which originated in the 1930s expanded during the Second World War and became transformed in the post-war period. In the Rad Lab’s early years, most of the scientists were Protestant males, of Northern European origins, second-generation Americans, and often Midwesterners or Northeasterners. Teetotalling, devout Chairman Edmund Hall and his assistant, Professor Raymond Birge, sought to expand the Physics Department at Berkeley. Birge, originally from the Northwest, was suspect of Jews and eastern and central Europeans. In his mind, background made a difference. However, to create an active research center on the West coast Hall and Bfrge had to compromise their preferences. They hired the urbane theoretician, Julius Robert Oppenheimer, from New York in 1928. Three weeks later they hired Earnest 0. Lawrence who arrived with his parents and brother John. Midwestern, “they were good folks,” according to Birge. Background, indeed, has a strong influence. The Lawrence brothers were Norwegian, Lutheran, and had grown up in small, primarily Scandinavian and German, South Dakota towns, the sons of a mathematics teacher and a school superintendent and college president. Like many scientists, they had followed their mentors from school to school. Ernest followed the English physicist, W.G.G. Swann, from the University of Minnesota to the University of Chicago, then to Yale. John followed in the footsteps of his fatherly mentor, Harvey Cushing, from the Yale 3 J.L. Heilbmn; Robert W. Seidel; and Bruce R. Wheaton, “A Strong Interaction between Science and Society: LBL, 1931-1981,” [19811, LBL Archives General Reference Histories: 2; Lothrop, Guthne, and Everson, “History of Radiation Lab, December 29, 1945,” LBL Archives Reference: 1-2, contains quotations from teachers, colleagues, and family members. Quotations on the Laboratory’s reputation are from Physicist James Tuck, Atomic Energy Commissioner Henry Smyth, and Chemist Samuel Weissman. Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer: 99-100, 268- 269. On E.O. Lawrence’s personal traits: Herbert Childs, An American Genius: The Lzfe ofErnest Orlando Lawrence (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1968): 85 (Emiio Segre), 146 (Luis Alvarez): Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer: 120, quoting Paul Aebesold, 193 (Henry Smyth), 269, 275 (Hans Bethe). Also Luis Alvarez, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, August 1, 1901 - August 27, 1958. Biographical Memoir, LBL Archives General Reference Files. Herbert Childs’ An American Genius contains interview material with many of E.O. Lawrence’s friends, colleagues, and family. At times, however, Childs’ biography borders on panegyric. In the early period, obvious exceptions existed to the Northern European-Protestant influence at the Rad lab. The Italian Emilio Segre joined the Lab in 1938; Ryokichi Sagone worked on the cyclotron, then returned to Japan during WW II, and later rejoined the Lab in 1950. Chien-Shiung Wu began graduate work in 1937 and became the only woman to receive a doctorate from E.O. Lawrence. from personal interviews with Wu and others in Childs: 267, 306; also Jill. 1.5, “1942 Q-Z.” by the late 1930s, emigres from Europe, many fleeing fascist persecution, joined the Rad Lab. Birge’s assessment of the Lawrences quoted in Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer: 16. j 51 Medical School to Harvard Medical School.6 When asked what he found most appealing about his native South Dakota, John Lawrence recalled the “mixture of immigrants from many nations and their descendents.” His favorite memories were “the people, their integrity, friendliness, courage, honesty, hard work”; “the small communities where you learn to know people. You miss this in the big cities where you lack an acquaintance with your neighbors.” He recalled fondly the churches, local clubs, and community organizations; the beautiful prairies and the Missouri River; his hunting and fishing expeditions with his brother and father. The state’s great resources were land, its products, and the potential for industrial development.7 Enterprise and hard work were key elements. In a letter to his brother’s biographer, John Lawrence recalled Ernest’s hard work and energy. He had worked as a hod-carrier, and, later as an undergraduate, Ernest had sold kitchenware to farm women. Rationalism, empiricism or pragmatism, belief in the rule of law, progress, and individualism have often been ascribed as the values of scientists.8 In a speech on the promotion of medical research, John Lawrence summarized the qualities of outstanding scientists, such as Cushing: first, “the ability and jj to carry out.. .the magic work WORK.” Second, to “bring tremendous enthusiasm and devotion to their work”; third, “an inspiring personality which translates enthusiasm to students and colleagues”; and, lastly, “a genius in designing experiments.” These traits could well have described the Rad lab founders, especially the Lawrences.9 John Lawrence agreed with the comments of San Francisco attorney-financier and Laboratory legal consultant, H. Rowan Gaither, that he had faith in the individual’s responsibility for the group and “in the individual’s initiative to solve” community problems. These qualities, he suggested, have “roots deep in our history.” Like the scientist, the early American settlers had to “face critical [physicalJ problems... and to create the proper atmosphere for the survival of their values.” Like the settler, the scientific investigator faced critical problems in securing the necessary resources for research and for a research community which nurtured scientific values.” Like the settler, the scientific investigator faced critical problems in securing the necessary resources for 6 W.G.G. Swann in Childs: 65, 93; E.O. Lawrence’s Letters to Swann: 158-159. Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer: 12; JHL 4.1 (1951); JHL 34.2, “Harvey Cushing.” Richard Rhodes suggest an interesting relationship of science mentors and their students in The Making
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