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Ernest Lawrence poses in front of Big a domed building designed to house and the his 184-inch particle accelerator Invention That Launched the known as the , c. 1950s. Military-Industrial Complex Michael Hiltzik Simon and Schuster, 2015. 549 pp.

embarrassing flop. Instead of describing a new phenomenon that overturned the laws of physics, Lawrence instead broadcast to the world that the Radiation couldn’t keep its samples clean. Lawrence’s problem, as diagnosed by his contemporaries, was that he was more in- terested in the “cult of the machine” than the scientific results. A French visitor once ridiculed the laboratory for having “a ma- nia for gadgets or a post-infantile fascina- tion for scientific meccano [sic] games.” The number of major discoveries that the HISTORY OF PHYSICS Radiation Laboratory ought to have stum- bled across, had it been watching for them, is a long one: The existence of the positron and the neutron were discovered during

Cult of the machine on September 3, 2015 this time by using more modest tools and A major player in 20th-century physics, Ernest Lawrence staffs, for example, as were the phenomena of induced radioactivity and nuclear fission. helped usher in an era of big-budget research projects Yet the funding continued to pour in, in part because of what Lawrence would at By Alex Wellerstein tion of Big Science, in particular its deep his- one point dub “the vaudeville”—his ability torical connections to military research. to project boundless enthusiasm and confi- igh above the hills of the University What kind of was Ernest Law- dence to nonscientific audiences. In a rare of California, Berkeley, sits a physics rence? He was less a discoverer than an in- moment of candor, he once admitted that laboratory that employs more than ventor, more a tool builder than a tool user. he was making the bigger simply www.sciencemag.org 3000 people, boasts an association At the center of Lawrence’s world was the because he could get the money to do so, with 13 Nobel Prizes, and has a bud- circular particle accelerator he invented, not because he had any idea about what the get of over $750 million dollars. The dubbed the “cyclotron.” Around this initially bigness would let him do. HLawrence Berkeley Laboratory is named af- humble creation, Lawrence built an empire To a large degree, Lawrence’s strategy ter its founder, the famed American physi- of labor and of funding and a new way of worked. The cyclotron went from being a cist Ernest Orlando Lawrence. Lawrence’s doing physics. crazy venture to a common tool, earning name also adorns the Berkeley laboratory’s Lawrence’s approach relied on the “re- Lawrence the Nobel Prize in 1939. Part of weapons spinoff at Livermore, a career morseless exploitation of cheap graduate- the reason for this was that, in the right Downloaded from award issued by the U.S. Department of student labor,” as Hiltzik aptly puts it. His hands, it did yield important results. Ed Energy, and an element (the actinide metal first cyclotron, a small device a mere six McMillan, Luis Alvarez, and Glenn Sea- “lawrencium”). By any standard, he was a gi- inches in diameter, was apparently con- borg—all future Nobel Laureates—cut their ant of American physics and, arguably, the structed entirely by a graduate student teeth and did some of their best work in architect of the late-20th-century approach named Niels Edlefsen. Lawrence was sing- the Radiation Laboratory, finding ways to science that required big machines, big ing its successes even before it was clear that to make Lawrence’s chaotic fiefdom work budgets, and big staffs, known fittingly as it worked—which, it turned out, it didn’t. for them. Additionally, when it became “Big Science” (1). The first functioning model was developed clear that cyclotrons could produce radio- Michael Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize–winning by his next student, M. Stanley Livingston, isotopes in quantity for other types of sci- journalist, has written a new biography who debugged the earlier machine and fixed entific research, Lawrence was happy to of Lawrence, the only such monograph its numerous faults. Even before Livingston provide them to collaborators, knowing published since Herbert Childs’s (family- had put the cyclotron prototype through its that he could only gain from their rising sanctioned) book An American Genius was paces, Lawrence was hot on the trail of the applicability. released in 1968 (2). Hiltzik takes a less ha- money needed to build a bigger model. The Second World brought the ul- giographical approach than did Childs, and Lawrence’s methods were viewed with timate patron to Lawrence’s door: the U.S. the book reflects a shift in society’s percep- justifiable skepticism among the scientific military establishment. Lawrence’s involve- greats of Europe. For the first decade, they ment in defense work began with but failed to produce real results. His first ma- hit its stride with nuclear weapons. His re- The reviewer is at the College of Arts and Letters, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA. jor scientific announcement—a theory of lationship with the military would continue

E-mail: [email protected] deuteron disintegration—proved to be an until the end of his life. PHYSICS OF INSTITUTE AMERICAN ARCHIVES, VISUAL EMILIO SEGRÈ PHOTO:

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Published by AAAS Lawrence was one of the loudest propo- ering support for anti-Communist loyalty procure when the people judging his proj- nents of building the atomic bomb, largely oaths and internal investigations, for ex- ect proposals were fellow physicists who because he claimed that he could practically ample, led to an exodus of top-flight theo- proved less susceptible to his infectious op- pull it off single-handedly. In this, as with retical physicists from his laboratory in the timism. A brief foray into private industry many things, he overpromised. The results- early 1950s. He advocated strongly for the in the 1950s ended in a lackluster failure. driven General Leslie Groves, head of the thermonuclear “super” bomb in 1949 and The things Lawrence was good at (over- , who did not accept the later lent his name, and credibility, to many budgeted one-off technical accomplish- kinds of delays, excuses, and cost overruns questionable projects, includ- ments) were precisely the opposite of the that Lawrence had become accustomed to, ing the development of a so-called “clean requirement for building and manufactur- proved a force to reckon with. Lawrence bomb.” To many contemporaries, he ap- ing profitable consumer electronics. was ultimately able to generate enough peared to be cheapening his reputation as Still, no one could accuse him of a lack highly enriched uranium for the Hiroshima a scientist in order to please his political of initiative, ambition, or energy. But the bomb; however, his approach was scrapped patrons. endless work appears to have taken a heavy in favor of a competitor’s technology in the Lawrence’s hawkish leanings were in toll—in 1958, Lawrence died from complica- early postwar. keeping with the sentiments of many physi- tions from stress-related ulcerative colitis. Lawrence comes off as particularly shal- cists involved in defense work at the time, Ultimately, it is difficult to judge Lawrence low and unreflective in the immediate but his politics would eventually go a step only by his legacy in physics, without con- postwar period. He complained that the further. He played a key role in the “Oppen- sidering the post–Cold War environment who participated in the discus- heimer affair,” the hearing conducted by the in which he worked. The era in which indi- sions about the domestic control of atomic Atomic Energy Commission that ultimately vidual governments forked over huge sums energy were “frittering away so much time resulted in the revocation of Oppenheimer’s of taxpayer funding to build monuments to and energy on political problems, when security clearance. When questioned by the discovery, with the vague expectation of mili- they could be devoting themselves to scien- chief counsel of the review board before the tary benefits, appears to have ended. tific pursuits.” In response to his former col- hearing, Lawrence made disparaging com- In the end, Hiltzik seems uncertain as league J. Robert Oppenheimer’s expressions ments about his former friend, stating at to what genre the book is to belong: blush- of unease, Lawrence glibly remarked that, one point that Oppenheimer “should never ingly flattering at times, damningly critical “I am a physicist and I have no knowledge again have anything to do with the forming at others, he never quite gets inside Law- to lose in which physics has caused me to of policy.” Claiming illness and presumably rence’s head. What was it that drove the know sin.” If one believes these sentiments fearing retribution, Lawrence begged out of man: a true devotion to science or to ego? were rooted in true conviction, one might testifying at the actual hearing at the last Is he a scientific hero or a cautionary tale? be inclined to give Lawrence the benefit of minute. the doubt. But it is all too easy to read these Lawrence’s career was not without mis- REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. P. Galison, B. Hevly, Eds., Big Science: The Growth of Large- comments cynically, as Lawrence benefited steps. His efforts to set up the Livermore Scale Research (Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford, CA, 1992). immensely from taking such unruffled posi- laboratory using the Radiation Laboratory 2. H. Childs, American Genius: The Life of Ernest O. Lawrence tions about the militarization of science. as a model (cheap workers surrounding an (Dutton, New York, 1968). Some of Lawrence’s political opinions all-powerful director) produced a string of eventually caught up with him. His unwav- nuclear fizzles. Funding became harder to 10.1126/science. aac7351

BIOTECHNOLOGY RED POPPY Bio Art: Altered Realities [Ignis Ubinanae] William Myers Flower with Thames and Hudson, 2015. 256 pp. fiery plasma. In Bio Art, writer and curator William Myers offers a timely look at the implications of new and emerging biological technologies as interpreted by more than 60 contemporary artists. Combining microorganisms with traditional media, pieces such as Julia Lohmann’s Co-Existence (2009) probe our evolving understanding of the relationship between human and nonhuman organisms, while others, including Mara Haseltine’s artificial oyster reefs (Oyster Island, 2010), explore how we are reinventing our roles in the earth’s ecosystems. Still other works—including Eduardo Kac’s transgenic petunia, which includes a gene isolated from the artist’s own body (Natural History of the Enigma, 2008)—encourage us to reflect on the possibilities enabled by synthetic biology. Thoughtful and provocative, Bio Art is a compelling contribution to the biotechnology conversation.

CREDIT: VINCENT FOURNIER © CREDIT: 10.1126/science.aad2616

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