editorial Physics, physicists and the bomb

Scientists involved in nuclear research before and after the end of the Second World War continue to be the subjects of historical and cultural fascination.

Almost 70 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the military, historical and moral implications of the nuclear bomb remain firmly lodged in the public’s consciousness. Images of mushroom clouds serve as powerful reminders of the destructive capability that countries armed with nuclear weapons have access to — a capability that continues to play a primary role in shaping the present geopolitical landscape of the world. For physicists, the development of the nuclear bomb generally brings up conflicting feelings. On the one hand, physicists played a central role in helping to create it; on the SCIENCE SOURCE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY PHOTO SOURCE/SCIENCE SCIENCE other, they were also among the first to realize © its terrifying power. This contradiction is most Manhattan Project physicists at Los Alamos. From left to right: Kenneth Bainbridge, Joseph Hoffman, famously epitomized by Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Oppenheimer, Louis Hempelmann, Robert Bacher, Victor Weisskopf and Richard Dodson. the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, who, on witnessing the first test of the atomic bomb, the Trinity test, in July 1945, in this context that the public can truly come race following the Second World War, there was reminded of a quote from the Hindu to feel the growing sense of disillusionment is no question that Churchill was an early scripture Bhagavad Gita: “Now, I am become of those scientists as they realized their goal; and influential champion for government- Death, the destroyer of worlds.” a sense of lost innocence, that knowledge that sponsored science and technology in Britain. Although Oppenheimer and the has been unleashed cannot be ‘unknown’. Although allies during the war, rising Manhattan Project have certainly become Although driven by the US government political and military tensions between the part of the popular narrative of the events and associated with Los Alamos, it is United States and the Soviet Union stoked leading to the end of the Second World also interesting to consider the genesis of by nuclear weapons soon gave rise to the War and the beginning of the nuclear industrial-scale nuclear research programmes Cold War. In Half-Life — reviewed on age, many other figures and events are, to more broadly. Britain had the lead for a short page 207 by Andrea Taroni — Frank Close the general public at least, much less well while in the early 1940s, mostly because of tells the story of Bruno Pontecorvo, the known. However, as popular sitcoms such as two scientists based there, Rudolf Peierls and only Western scientist involved in wartime The Big Bang Theory attest, there currently Otto Frisch, who first realized that the amount nuclear projects to have defected to the seems to be an appetite for accurate portrayals of uranium required to sustain a nuclear chain Soviet Union. What emerges from this of scientists on television and cinema screens. reaction was roughly five kilograms — far less biography is a brilliant physicist and a Given the upcoming anniversaries associated than previously thought. But after May 1940, complex man, with a multitude of possible with the war, now is a good time for cultural they also had a prime minister who had an reasons for choosing to defect. Like many of events that seek to shed light and bring interest in nuclear technology, in the shape his colleagues in the 1940s, his early aversion attention to the fascinating history of nuclear of Winston Churchill. His largely under- to fascism and his international outlook research in the 1940s. appreciated scientific legacy is the topic of made him sympathetic to communist ideals. Tom Morton-Smith’s Oppenheimer, a new Churchill’s Scientists, an exhibition at London’s But as outdated and misplaced as these ideals play performed by the Royal Shakespeare Science Museum — reviewed on page 209 by may appear today, any moral judgement of Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, Luke Fleet. Pontecorvo is almost beside the point, at is a case in point. As Iulia Georgescu describes The history of Britain’s role in the race least compared with the ethical quandary in her review on page 208 of this issue, the play to develop the atomic bomb, although little posed by the invention of the bomb itself. not only provides an engrossing account of known, has recently been examined in The ‘original sin’ of modern physics is the first ever ‘big science’ project — a template Graham Farmelo’s book, Churchill’s Bomb. therefore something all physicists have to live that continues to influence the way science is Although it paints a picture of diplomatic with, one way or another. However, although carried out today — it also provides a realistic misunderstandings and missed opportunities by no means the only template for carrying description of the excitement, pressure on both sides of the Atlantic, in the end it out fundamental research, big science and worries that scientists working on the was inevitable that the British atomic bomb projects such as CERN are now synonymous Manhattan Project would have experienced at project, known as Tube Alloys, would be with international collaboration and the time, and indeed the serendipity, teamwork subsumed into the far larger and more achieving a fundamental understanding of and managerial brilliance that helped to focused Manhattan Project. And although nature’s inner workings. Perhaps it is a search ensure the project was, ultimately, successful he eventually became intensely preoccupied for atonement, as much as pure curiosity, that in delivering the bomb. It is by placing things with easing tensions in the Cold War arms now drives these incredible endeavours. ❐

NATURE PHYSICS | VOL 11 | MARCH 2015 | www.nature.com/naturephysics 201

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