OPERATION PHOENIX: the Peaceful Atom Comes to Campus Joseph D
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Article forthcoming in Physics Today, February 2016 OPERATION PHOENIX: The Peaceful Atom Comes to Campus Joseph D. Martin* Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul’s invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. — George Santayana1 Reflecting on how university research could meet the challeng- es of the early 1950s, University of Michigan Provost James P. Adams suggested that future historians would consider the heady post–World War II years to be “an age of invincible surmise.”2 He regarded the era with an optimistic eye. More so than at any point in history, Adams maintained, troves last case offers a striking contrast to the story of civilian of useful knowledge lay within human grasp; as American nuclear research as seen from the perspective of the AEC, society sought to turn that knowledge to its advantage, uni- and shows how the pursuit of the peaceful atom reformed versities held “a special responsibility for the guardianship of patterns of support for scientific research at Michigan. truth.” In the postwar years, the University of Michigan dis- charged that responsibility through a homegrown program exploring peaceful uses of nuclear science: the Michigan Me- Phoenix Rising: Idealism and Ambition morial–Phoenix Project. Alongside notable research accom- The Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project started small. Its plishments, the Phoenix Project sparked systematic chang- first crumpled dollars came from a raffle held at the J-Hop, es in the way Michigan supported research and reformed the annual student formal, in December of 1946. The raf- its relationships with its alumni community and industry. fle, organized by the student legislature, raised funds for a war memorial. Operation Phoenix, as it was sometimes The “Atoms for Peace” initiative in the United States was called, was the result. Its mission was both to commemo- most closely tied to the civilian nuclear power program that rate the University of Michigan students and alumni who the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) maintained within had died in World War II, and, as its logo depicting the the national laboratory system. Historians tend to under- rising Phoenix bird illustrated, to refocus the destructive stand the phrase, drawn from a speech President Dwight D. power unleashed in the war to constructive ends (Figure 1). Eisenhower delivered before the United Nations General Assembly in 1953, as a kind of Cold War doublespeak. Yes, The project launched in 1948 in the midst of a massive fund- research on civilian nuclear technologies was a peacetime ap- raising campaign, the first in the university’s history that plication of nuclear physics, but the goals of the AEC and sought support from the entire alumni base. Phoenix offered its national laboratories were inextricable from the strategic grants to a wide array of faculty-led projects dealing with and ideological conflict with the Soviet Union.3 In the same peaceful uses of atomic and nuclear science. By 1960, when era, however, American universities launched their own lo- Donald Glaser won the Nobel Prize for his Phoenix-funded cal efforts to find new uses for wartime science. Stanford work on the bubble chamber, the project had raised over $10 and MIT recognized new government and industry interest million. But at the dawn of 1947, it was little more than a in funding academia as a route to national prominence and twinkle in the eyes of a few sincere students who surmised launched research programs to capitalize.4 The University that they might do a small part to craft a better postwar world. of Chicago established its Institutes for Basic Research to maintain the programs and staff of the wartime Metallur- The students who organized the campaign were not content gical Laboratory.5 And at the University of Michigan, the to build a monument; they insisted upon a living, function- atom came to campus in the form of a war memorial. This al memorial. University administrators embraced this plan, * Joseph D. Martin is a historian of science in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science unit of Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University. 1 Figure 1. The Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project logo: an early concept from 1948, likely drawn by one of the students on the memorial planning committee (left), and the official logo as adopted in the 1950s (right). (Phoenix Project Records, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.) but the exact function the memorial should accomplish was pus, and asked advice on how best to proceed. Among those not immediately clear. Early ideas generated within the plan- who replied were Lewis Mumford, who pitched a fellowship ning committee ranged from the modest—a permanent light to allow students to broaden their horizons by traveling to in a quiet corner of the library—to the grand and idealistic— non-Western countries. E. B. White, reasoning that a war an international program to prevent war. The task of solic- memorial should bolster the institutions of peace, imagined iting further suggestions fell to the dean of students, Erich a fund to send students to sessions of the United Nations. A. Walter. He cast a wide net, beginning with a survey of Others had more utilitarian visions. Orson Wells suggested memorial plans at other colleges and universities across the a dormitory that would alleviate housing shortages for veter- country. Oberlin and Stanford had established scholarships ans and their families. Popular songster Fred Waring riffed to pay tuition for children of alumni or students who had on the suggestion that the memorial be a light of some kind died in the war. The University of Texas and Princeton had to propose that the light be affixed to the top of a broadcast proposed more general scholarship programs. New library tower, possibly for a radio station with the call letters HERO. buildings, student unions, auditoria, and chapels were in the works at Swarthmore, Indiana, Dartmouth, and Michigan The idea that became the seed of the Phoenix Project, how- State. The committee, however, fueled by the students’ insis- ever, came not from a famous writer, warrior, or warbler, tence on a distinctive function for the Michigan memorial, but from an alumnus. Walter issued a similar request for in- was hesitant to follow the precedent these institutions set. put to Michigan alumni, and Frederick Smith, an executive with the New York–based Book of the Month Club, replied In a stark indication of the breath of possibility the memo- in October of 1947: “I think it is wrong to try to think of rial fund represented, and of the sense that the university things to do, or gadgets to build, to perpetuate the memory was navigating unmapped territory, Walter wrote to public of a lot of men who are far more interested in making their figures around the world to solicit their input. These in- work and their sacrifices count for something, than they are cluded American literary stars such as John Hersey, military in being remembered…. It is my feeling that the University giants like Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and international might take unto itself the administration and coordination political icons including Winston Churchill and Madame of research in some specific phase of peacetime atomic re- Chiang Kai-Shek. Walter’s letter emphasized the desire for search.” Smith recalled how he had bristled at the suggestion a functional memorial, gave as an example one veteran’s by Frédéric Joliot-Curie, France’s High Commissioner for suggestion of an enduring light a prominent point on cam- Atomic Energy and an outspoken communist, that the Unit- 2 ed States, having unleashed nuclear weapons on the world, the fresh-faced idealism of the memorial proposal while was shirking its duty to turn nuclear physics to the purposes also supporting the university’s ambition to maintain of peace. After talking with his contacts in the AEC and in and advance its status as a premier research institution. the medical community, however, Smith had grudgingly con- cluded that Joliot-Curie had a point. When Walter’s letter Smith remained involved in the program’s early planning. landed on his desk, he saw an opportunity for his alma mater He sketched a design for a memorial rotunda at the entrance to help right what he percieved as an embarrassing wrong. to the Phoenix laboratory (Figure 2), which, though never adopted, illustrates the close connection the project sought Consensus rapidly crystalized around Smith’s suggestion. between its research and memorial missions. It was also It flattered the students’ idealistic motives and resonat- Smith who proposed that the program be named after the ed with the administration’s ambitions. In the 1920s and Phoenix, suggesting that the image of the mythical bird ris- 1930s, the Michigan Summer Research Institute in Theo- ing from the ashes best illustrated the goal of reclaiming the retical Physics—affectionately known as the “Michigan Sum- atomic nucleus from the forces of war and putting it to work mer School” in physics circles—routinely hosted Europe- on behalf of scientific, medical, technological, and civic prog- an luminaries such as Niels Bohr, Paul Ehrenfest, Enrico ress. The mythological imagery captured his hope, shared by Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, and Hendrik Kramers. These the project’s administrators, that Phoenix would represent symposia were critical to the dissemination of quantum a new, enlightened age born from the destruction, both mechanics in the United States.6 Michigan sought to re- physical and psychological, wrought by nuclear weapons. capture that momentum, which the war disrupted, and nuclear research loomed large as an area that would dom- The program dispensed its first awards in November 1948.