Some information from Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb
about the physicists at Los Alamos and the setting of Los Alamos
by John Engelbrecht Jan 5 2017 because Margaret and I went to Los Alamos on the way home from our 29-day California road trip in 2010
Rhodes was careful to profile each physicist and show how personalities affected the science. Rhodes did this more than you typically see in histories and T.V. programs. The mix of Europeans and Californians is interesting.
When we arrived at Los Alamos from the west, which is where the giant caldera is, it was near sunset in April. To our surprise, there was a five-lane checkpoint like toll booths. This was alarming, because we were tired from a day's drive, and the next place to find motels was a distance. (Actually, casinos down in the Rio Grande valley are close, but we wanted to see Los Alamos.) Only one booth was manned. The lady may have asked what we were there for, and I would have said we were tourists. Someone later told me the access point is more a formality, to demonstrate control is available for the few times control is needed. Or an access point is needed close to classified areas. The town was pretty quiet. We stayed at one of the chain motels.
It is said that Los Alamos is a mesa. It didn't look at all like the top of a mesa. There is a mountain ridge close by that is much higher. It used to be forested, but a controlled burn some years ago got out of hand and burned all the ridge's trees, and also a number of homes!
The other geography feature is a deep, steep-walled canyon that bisects the community. From the streets, we couldn't see the bottom of the canyon. The canyon drains steeply down to the east, where it joins the Rio Grande coming down from the New Mexico mountains of nearby Santa Fe.
Almost no WWII buildings remain. All the lab buildings of WWII were intended to be temporary and quick to build. Several had to be demolished due to radioactivity. There is an excellent bookstore where I did some purchasing. Many books are about topics that used to be classified. (This is also the case at Las Vegas' wonderful Atomic Testing Museum.)
Los Alamos has continuing DOE research, and many residents do that research. But the families are just typical American families. I don't know if the schools are academically leading schools.
Most of the WWII physicists had memorable personalities. Oppenheimer was especially so. He coughed from chain smoking and was thin and nervous, but he liked hiking in the New Mexico mountains and horseback riding. In 1927, Oppenheimer and his brother Frank found recreation in the Sangre de Cristos mountains in New Mexico.
Rhodes relates that Oppenheimer had a great memory and brilliant intellect. He paid attention to what people needed. At parties, wives liked him because he always had in mind something to talk about, something that met the needs or interests of the wives.
But Oppenheimer often came across to physicists with a condescending air. Segre wrote, "Robert could make people feel they were fools." Many of the physicists resented his attitude, but they respected his hard work, broad understanding, and intelligence. They knew he was manipulating military security and procurement to make things easier for the families.
Oppenheimer's interests were wide. He studied Hinduism. In 1936, Oppenheimer wrote of his "smouldering fury about the treatment of the Jews in Germany." Rhodes p. 445. Though he was a theoretician, "He could always see how far any particular experiment would go...thinking about the next thing you might want to try."
Oppenheimer was married but at various times he was cavalier with his affections. Four of his close relations were members or sympathizers with the American Communist Party. http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/oppenheimer-security-hearing McCarthyism reaching its apex. In 1954, J. Robert Oppenheimer was called before a tribunal of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for a hearing on his past involvement with communist organizations, the safety of his continued security clearance, and the possibility that he was a Soviet spy. As a result, his security clearance was revoked, bringing disgrace to Oppenheimer and provoking outrage among his scientific peers. The story surrounding Oppenheimer’s “trial” is one of both scientific and political intrigue.
Teller, along with other members of the Eisenhower administration, supported further development of “strategic,” high-yield nuclear weapons, which would likely be handled by the Air Force. Oppenheimer, by contrast, pushed back against the development of strategic fusion weapons, preferring that America increase its stock of “tactical” fission weapons.
Oppenheimer’s combative nature and caustic tongue made him no friends, and several enemies, including AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss. Oppenheimer had several years earlier humiliated Strauss at a Congressional hearing about whether or not to ban the sale of radioisotopes.
Wernher von Braun said before a Congressional hearing, “In England, Oppenheimer would have been knighted.” Einstein quipped that “AEC” should stand for “Atomic Extermination Conspiracy.”
Oppenheimer died in 1967 of throat cancer.
Teller praised Oppenheimer. "He knew what their relationships with one another were and what made them tick. He knew how to organize, cajole, humor, soothe feelings." "There was human warmth." "The best lab director I have ever seen."
Szilard escaped the Nazis to London and organized rescues of Jewish scientists. During U.S. nuclear work, Szilard could be a rebel. Pages 422-4 in Rhodes. Page 451: "Szilard, urban man, habitué of hotel lobbies...'Nobody could think straight in a place like that [Los Alamos]. Everybody who goes there will go crazy.'" P. 502: Groves: "The kind of man that any employer would have fired as a troublemaker," about Szilard's antipathy to classified-information compartmentalization. The conflict was so serious that Groves prepared a letter for the Secretary of War to sign, for the arrest of Szilard as an enemy alien.
Fermi was an experimenter. Fermi directed the Chicago Pile 1 and calculated the stepped retractions of the last cadmium control rod.
General Groves was a devoted Army man. He wanted to leave the Pentagon and command soldiers in Europe but acquiesced to the Manhattan Project instead. Lt. Col. Nichols writes that Groves was "the biggest S.O.B. I've ever met...ego second to none, he had tireless energy...ruthless in how he approached a problem to get it done...I hated his guts and so did everybody else." Groves infuriated Vannevar Bush but in days Groves was solving problems and proved himself to Bush. Rhodes p. 427. Things really started moving with Groves in charge.