The Making of a Bomb Scientist
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book reviews In old age, when he was threatened with blindness in one eye, he had to be forced to have a corneal transplant to save his sight. “Doctor,” said Erdös, “will I be able to read?” “Yes,” said the doctor. “That’s the whole point of the surgery.” In the operating room, Erdös immediately demanded to know why the doctor had turned the lights down. “So we can do the surgery.” “But you said I’d be able to read.” The doctor then had 8 to call the mathematics department at the university and have a professor sent over so that Erdös could talk about mathematics during the operation. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is a fas- cinating, affectionate biography, but the title is untrue: Erdös loved many things besides numbers, including children (whom he called epsilons, after the mathematical symbol for a very small quantity) and especially his moth- er, who accompanied him on many of his early “Our manufactured hell”: Serber, centre, assessing bomb damage among the ruins of Nagasaki. travels. He died in 1996. His ashes are buried alongside her, in Hungary. avoid leaving graduate school for Depression Inevitably, then, it was Serber who delivered Alexander Masters is at 10 Hertford Street, unemployment) and was preparing to study the opening technical lectures at Los Alamos Cambridge CB4 3AG, UK. at Princeton with Eugene Wigner on a post- in April 1943 which, written up by Edward doctoral fellowship. After the meeting in Condon, became the famous Los Alamos Ann Arbor, he decided to follow Oppen- Primer. heimer to the University of California at “A couple of minutes into the first lec- The making of a Berkeley instead. They published eight ture,” Serber recalls in Peace and War, papers together and were close friends by the “Oppie sent John Manley up to tell me not to bomb scientist time Oppenheimer accepted an appoint- use the word ‘bomb’ but to use something Peace and War: Reminiscences of a ment with the Manhattan Project as coordi- neutral like ‘gadget’. I did, the word stuck, Life on the Frontiers of Science nator of rapid rupture and, later, director of and after that the bomb was always called by Robert Serber with Robert P. Crease the Los Alamos laboratory. ‘the gadget’ at Los Alamos.” Columbia University Press: 1998. Pp. 241. Serber had moved to the University of Serber also named the gun design Thin $29.95, £24 Illinois at Urbana when his Berkeley col- Man, after a recent movie based on the Richard Rhodes league recruited him for bomb work. At the Dashiell Hammett detective mystery (it secret conference Oppenheimer organized shrank to Little Boy when the barrel was A shy and unassuming theoretical physicist, in Berkeley in summer 1942 — where theo- shortened), and the implosion design Fat Robert Serber was responsible for the design rists Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Richard Tol- Man, after the portly character actor Sidney of the Hiroshima bomb. Born in Philadel- man, Emil Konopinski, Felix Bloch and oth- Greenstreet. phia in 1909, he was a protégé of Robert ers reviewed the bomb’s feasibility — Serber After the first bomb was tested at the Oppenheimer, whom he met at the Universi- continued the work on a fission weapon Trinity site in New Mexico in July 1945, Ser- ty of Michigan’s famous physics summer while Teller diverted the rest of the group ber went out to Tinian, in the Mariana school in Ann Arbor in 1934. with thermonuclear visions. Even implosion islands, to assist with weapons assembly. He Serber had taken his PhD the previous had its origins in discussions between Serber was scheduled to run a high-speed Fastax spring (having delayed as long as possible to and Tolman at Berkeley that summer. camera to photograph the Nagasaki bomb- ing from the air, but the B-29 pilot ejected him at the head of the runway because the crew was short of a parachute, and the AR MUSEUM footage was lost. In September, he travelled with William Penney and other Los Alamos ERIAL W colleagues to Nagasaki and then Hiroshima IMP to assess bomb damage. Recent Japanese estimates of the atomic bombing death tolls give 140,000 for Nagasa- ki. But on 13 September 1945, Serber inter- viewed a Japanese naval intelligence officer in Nagasaki, whose count is now reported in Peace and War: 19,743 dead, 1,927 missing and 40,993 wounded. Serber had encoun- tered emaciated Allied prisoners of war at Nagasaki and burned Japanese bomb victims; he was neither exultant nor apologetic about the bombings. In a contemporary letter to his wife, Charlotte, he called the damage at Ground zero: office safes were among the few items left standing after the bomb fell on Nagasaki. Nagasaki “our manufactured hell”. 536 NATURE | VOL 394 | 6 AUGUST 1998 Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1998 book reviews After the war, Serber worked with Ernest Snow’s fictional attempt to bridge the Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at “two cultures”, in his series Strangers and Berkeley. Lawrence sent him to Washington NO sex please... Brothers (1947–70), is still relevant to mod- in October 1949 to represent the laboratory NO ern issues of science, ethics and society, and is in the secret debate proceeding in the United by Carl Djerassi a model of how an author can portray scien- States government about whether to hasten University of Georgia Press: 1998. Pp. 276. tists as human, while effectively explaining development of a hydrogen bomb. He was $24.95 their enterprise. These are the goals that surprised to find Oppenheimer doubtful Frances M. Brodsky Djerassi, and others aspiring to the genre, and more senior scientific advisers such as have set themselves. James Conant and I. I. Rabi adamantly NO is the fourth novel in Carl Djerassi’s But the results can only be as good as 8the opposed. The debate, and its odious fallout tetralogy of “science-in-fiction”. Extremely fiction itself. As with many novelists who are in the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing, topical, given the current Viagra-mania, the scientists, Djerassi occasionally lapses into deeply divided the physics community. story of NO evolves around the scientific and scientific mode, stating the point he would One of Serber’s saddest stories concerns biotechnological applications of the multi- like to make, rather than revealing it through this time. Oppenheimer’s attorney asked functional gas, nitric oxide, infamous for its the actions and relationships of his charac- Serber not to communicate with his old regulatory role in penile erection, as well as ters. NO traces the scientific career of Dr friend during the security investigation causing the yawning reflex in rats. Renu Krishnan, a woman of Indian back- because previous (unfounded) accusations In the proselytizing preface, Djerassi ground, whose research leads her to synthe- of disloyalty against Serber and his wife describes his socio-scientific goals in writing size substances that release nitric oxide, and might re-emerge to cause Oppenheimer NO and reveals that the book draws liberally who gets drawn into the commercial devel- harm. Only years afterwards did Serber on his own experiences in the academic and opment of these compounds for the treat- learn that Oppenheimer had not authorized biotechnological world of sex science, as pro- ment of so-called erectile dysfunction. In the attorney’s call and had been hurt by Ser- fessor of chemistry at Stanford and the general, Djerassi plausibly renders the point ber’s silence. No one, not even Teller, bene- organic chemist behind the development of of view of a woman from an ethnic minority, fited from the destruction of Oppenheimer. the contraceptive pill. although he does trip on a few details. The Serber’s contribution to physics included In his laudable campaign to expand the conflict that Djerassi paints between Krish- his participation with Oppenheimer in the genre of “science-in-fiction”, a topic on nan’s Indian background and that of her Jew- theoretical work that led to the discovery of which he has written in Nature and teaches at ish Israeli lover quite effectively brings out mesons. In 1951 he moved to Columbia Uni- Stanford (see Nature 392, 244 & 393, the repressive aspects of both cultures. versity at Rabi’s urging (“You have to choose 511–513; 1998), Djerassi joins a respectable Interestingly, Krishnan is most out of between Ernest and Oppie,” he says Rabi told tradition, well represented in Walter character when giving a scientific presenta- him). There he deduced the existence of the Gratzer’s inspiring anthology A Literary tion. She becomes unconvincingly savvy and elementary particles inside baryons and Companion to Science(Longman, 1989; Nor- calculating, suspiciously resembling the mesons that came to be called quarks. “I took ton, 1990). Gratzer’s book is required read- author himself. Djerassi, by the way, makes [Murray Gell-Mann] to lunch at Columbia’s ing for scientists curious about their image in several cameo appearances in the novel. Faculty Club,” he writes, “and explained this the literary world. It comprises portrayals of The initial interactions of Krishnan with idea to him.” Serber didn’t quite believe it, science by non-scientific writers, such as the male scientific world, discussing treat- however — he remembers thinking the frac- John Updike’s wry description of a Harvard ment of erectile dysfunction, are exploited tional charges were “appalling” — but saw laboratory in the midst of his otherwise soft- for their humour, as well as for inherent the light a day or two later when he calculated pornographic novel Couples, as well as social commentary. Djerassi excels in locker- the magnetic moments. “At that point,” he excerpts from scientist authors of fiction, room jokes, which are ostensibly blessed writes, “I should have published; but I never including the prototype, C.