The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Last updated

The Making of the Atomic Bomb
The Making of the Atomic Bomb.png
Author Richard Rhodes
CountryUnited States
Subject Manhattan Project
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Publication date
1986
Media typePrint (hardcover & paperback), E-book, Audio
Pages886 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-671-44133-3
OCLC 231117096
623.4/5119/09 19
LC Class QC773 .R46 1986

The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a history book written by the American journalist and historian Richard Rhodes, first published by Simon & Schuster in 1987. The book won multiple awards, including Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The narrative covers people and events from early 20th century discoveries leading to the science of nuclear fission, through the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Contents

Background

Before writing The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes already authored several fiction books, and worked as an independent journalist. He liked science writing, though his only training, in his own words, was "a course at Yale that we called Physics for Poets". When he started to work on the book he found out that "the early papers in nuclear physics were written very clearly". [1]

Reception

Rhodes with the book, in 2015. Richard Rhodes visits ORNL (21870032743) (cropped).jpg
Rhodes with the book, in 2015.

The book was praised both by historians and former Los Alamos weapon engineers and scientists, and is considered to be a general authority on early nuclear weapons history, as well as the development of modern physics in general, during the first half of the 20th century. Nobel Laureate I. I. Rabi, one of the prime participants in the dawn of the atomic age, called it "an epic worthy of Milton. No where else have I seen the whole story put down with such elegance and gusto and in such revealing detail and simple language which carries the reader through wonderful and profound scientific discoveries and their application." [2] As reported by The New York Times, Rabi's wife "read him the whole book, and he was pleased with it". [1]

Late Sir Solly Zuckerman wrote in his review: "I have no doubt that his book will stand for years to come as an authoritative account of the way our nuclear age started. Above all, lengthy it is, it will be enjoyed as a magnificent read." [3]

The historian of science Lawrence Badash writes positively about the book, but notes Rhodes' descriptions of sketchy biographies unconvincing: "'human interest' material of questionable accuracy becomes psycho-babble", though he notes that "the book is accurate and the characters are well drawn". He concludes that "Altogether Rhodes has produced the most readable, exciting and just book to date that covers both the bomb and the preceding four decades". [4]

William J. Broad praised the book in The New York Times review, writing that it "offers not only the best overview of the century's pivotal event, but a probing analysis of what it means for the future." He especially noted the vast bibliography, "the characters speak in their own voices, in long paragraphs of direct quotation". [1] Another reviewer writes that "If it is the bomb which defines the twentieth century as at once dreadful and rewarding ... then the present book captures this range", and also praised the extensive bibliography. [5] Another review calls it "an exceptionally well-written account of the building and use of the first nuclear weapons". [6]

Sally Smith Hughes notes that while "Rhodes is neither a scientist nor science writer", this "may explain the freshness of his approach and his ability to convey difficult science in layman's terms." She notes the usage of oral histories by the author: Rhodes writes about 21 participants of the events who "generously made time for interviews and correspondence"; he also used oral histories collected by the American Institute of Physics. [7]

Barton Bernstein praised the book, and called it "a compelling book of drama and tragedy, of passion and commitment, and of moral lament. It is historical journalism on a grand scale, with rich detail, colorful scenes, recreated conversations, vivid portraits, and gripping vignettes chronicling the lengthy scientific and political roads to Hiroshima, and briefly beyond". Besides that, his review also contains criticism, as he writes that sometimes "narrative strategy ... neglects analysis, sometimes sacrifices the important to the vivid, and encourages an uncritical use of sources and possibly even skimpy archival research". [8]

Angelo Collins of Stanford University also praised the book, noting that it "is not a pleasure to read (it is thought provoking and makes the reader uneasy) and it is not easy to read (it is long and there are many characters and many settings). But it is fascinating." [9] Carol S. Gruber writes that the "comprehensiveness and the framework within which its main story unfolds, it broadens and deepens our understanding of the familiar subject; and it is a very good read." [10]

Robert Seidel in his essay on the books that cover the Manhattan Project writes that "Rhodes's account is more comprehensive, thoughtful, and accurate than the standard popular history ... the book is a "good read" and makes use of reliable sources critically. We would ask little more of a professional history." [11]

Barton C. Hacker notes that it "reads much like a novel and, like a good novel, can be hard to put down", but also writes about what the book lacks: [12]

What the book lacks, however, is any sustained attention to the institutional shaping and constraint of events. A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation or a Nobel Prize arrives as a virtual deus ex machina just when a scientist needs to study in Berlin or flee fascism - no hint is given that such awards might be something other than natural phenomena. Even the Manhattan Project often seems more a matter of a physicist's views clashing with a soldier's, or a daring foray into the war zone to learn the status of German nuclear research, than the rapid construction and widespread operations of an enterprise that rivaled in size the prewar American automobile industry. Conducting experiments fills many more pages than building production plants. ... I suspect Rhodes really wanted to write the epic of the atomic bomb, an "Atomiad" if you will. Maybe he has.

Matthew Bunn notes Rhodes descriptions of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, writing that they are "excruciating, densely layered with gruesome but telling first-hand accounts of the horrors the bombs inflicted"; he called the book "a wide-ranging tale of the physics and engineering of the bomb, the personalities involved, and the larger story of how society came to think about war". [13]

In 2023, the book became popular among artificial intelligence researchers. The Atlantic reported that "A generation of AI researchers treat Richard Rhodes's seminal book like a Bible as they develop technology with the potential to remake—or ruin—our world." [14]

Awards

Subsequent books

In 1992, Rhodes followed it up by compiling, editing, and writing the introduction to an annotated version of The Los Alamos Primer , by Manhattan Project scientist Robert Serber. The Primer was a set of lectures given to new arrivals at the secret Los Alamos Laboratory during wartime to get them up to speed about the prominent questions needing to be solved in bomb design, and had been largely declassified in 1965, but was not widely available.

In 1993, Rhodes published Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense about Energy detailing the history of the nuclear power industry in the United States, and future promises of nuclear power. In 1995 he published a sequel to The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which told the story of the atomic espionage during World War II, the debates over whether the hydrogen bomb ought to be produced, and the eventual creation of the bomb and its consequences for the arms race. In 2007, Rhodes published Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, a chronicle of the arms buildups during the Cold War, especially focusing on Mikhail Gorbachev and the Reagan administration. The Twilight of the Bombs, the fourth and final volume in his series on nuclear history, was published in 2010. The book documents, among other topics, the post-Cold War nuclear history of the world, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear terrorism.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enrico Fermi</span> Italian-American physicist (1901–1954)

Enrico Fermi was an Italian and later naturalized American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klaus Fuchs</span> German-born British theoretical physicist and atomic spy (1911–1988)

Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom, then migrated to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Teller</span> Hungarian-American nuclear physicist (1908–2003)

Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design. Teller was known for his scientific ability and his difficult interpersonal relations and volatile personality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Robert Oppenheimer</span> American theoretical physicist (1904–1967)

J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist. He was director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II and is often called the "father of the atomic bomb".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanisław Ulam</span> Polish mathematician and physicist (1909–1984)

Stanisław Marcin Ulam was a Polish-American mathematician, nuclear physicist and computer scientist. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, discovered the concept of the cellular automaton, invented the Monte Carlo method of computation, and suggested nuclear pulse propulsion. In pure and applied mathematics, he proved some theorems and proposed several conjectures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Rhodes</span> American author and historian

Richard Lee Rhodes is an American historian, journalist, and author of both fiction and non-fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently, Energy: A Human History (2018).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Otto Robert Frisch</span> Austrian-born British nuclear physicist

Otto Robert Frisch was an Austrian-born British physicist who worked on nuclear physics. With Otto Stern and Immanuel Estermann he first measured the magnetic moment of the proton. With Lise Meitner he advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fission and first experimentally detected the fission by-products. Later, with his collaborator Rudolf Peierls he designed the first theoretical mechanism for the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1940.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seth Neddermeyer</span> American physicist (1907–1988)

Seth Henry Neddermeyer was an American physicist who co-discovered the muon, and later championed the implosion-type nuclear weapon while working on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Bacher</span> American nuclear physicist (1905–2004)

Robert Fox Bacher was an American nuclear physicist and one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project. Born in Loudonville, Ohio, Bacher obtained his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the University of Michigan, writing his 1930 doctoral thesis under the supervision of Samuel Goudsmit on the Zeeman effect of the hyperfine structure of atomic levels. After graduate work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he accepted a job at Columbia University. In 1935 he accepted an offer from Hans Bethe to work with him at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It was there that Bacher collaborated with Bethe on his book Nuclear Physics. A: Stationary States of Nuclei (1936), the first of three books that would become known as the "Bethe Bible".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smyth Report</span> First official account of the Manhattan Project

The Smyth Report is the common name of an administrative history written by American physicist Henry DeWolf Smyth about the Manhattan Project, the Allied effort to develop atomic bombs during World War II. The subtitle of the report is A General Account of the Development of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. It was released to the public on August 12, 1945, just days after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry DeWolf Smyth</span> American physicist and diplomat (1898–1986)

Henry DeWolf "Harry" Smyth was an American physicist, diplomat, and bureaucrat. He played a number of key roles in the early development of nuclear energy, as a participant in the Manhattan Project, a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Henry Manley</span> American physicist, group leader during the Manhattan Project (1907–1990)

John Henry Manley was an American physicist who worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer at the University of California, Berkeley before becoming a group leader during the Manhattan Project.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interim Committee</span> Secret U.S. advisory group on nuclear energy (May–December 1945)

The Interim Committee was a secret high-level group created in May 1945 by United States Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson at the urging of leaders of the Manhattan Project and with the approval of President Harry S. Truman to advise on matters pertaining to nuclear energy. Composed of prominent political, scientific and industrial figures, the Interim Committee had broad terms of reference which included advising the President on wartime controls and the release of information, and making recommendations on post-war controls and policies related to nuclear energy, including legislation. Its first duty was to advise on the manner in which nuclear weapons should be employed against Japan. Later, it advised on legislation for the control and regulation of nuclear energy. It was named "Interim" in anticipation of a permanent body that would later replace it after the war, where the development of nuclear technology would be placed firmly under civilian control. The Atomic Energy Commission was enacted in 1946 to serve this function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Morrison</span> American astrophysicist (1915–2005)

Philip Morrison was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and for his later work in quantum physics, nuclear physics high energy astrophysics, and SETI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of the Manhattan Project</span>

The Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District; "Manhattan" gradually became the codename for the entire project. Along the way, the project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion. Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and producing the fissionable materials, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons.

<i>Los Alamos Primer</i> The first five lectures (1943)

The Los Alamos Primer is a printed version of the first five lectures on the principles of nuclear weapons given to new arrivals at the top-secret Los Alamos laboratory during the Manhattan Project. The five lectures were given by physicist Robert Serber in April 1943. The notes from the lectures which became the Primer were written by Edward Condon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert L. Anderson</span> American physicist (1914–1988)

Herbert Lawrence Anderson was an American nuclear physicist who was Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago.

<i>American Prometheus</i> 2005 biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a 2005 biography of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan Project which produced the first nuclear weapons, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin over a period of 25 years. It won numerous awards, including the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Hamilton Hall</span> American physicist

Jane Hamilton Hall was an American physicist. During World War II she worked on the Manhattan Project. After the war she remained at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she oversaw the construction and start up of the Clementine nuclear reactor. She became assistant director of the laboratory in 1958. She was secretary of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1956 until 1959, and was a member of the committee from 1966 to 1972.

Lawrence Badash was an American professor of the history of physical sciences, specializing in the history of physics, particularly the history of nuclear physics and nuclear weapons.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Broad, William J. (February 8, 1987). "The Men Who Made the Sun Rise". 7. The New York Times (Late City Final ed.). New York. p. 1. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved August 6, 2012.
  2. The book's entry on Amazon.com has this quote under "Editorial Reviews"
  3. Zuckerman, Solly (August 22, 1988). "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". The New Republic. 199 (8): 38. Retrieved August 2, 2023.
  4. Badash, Lawrence (July 1987). "The men behind the bomb". Nature. 328 (6128): 301–302. doi: 10.1038/328301a0 . ISSN   0028-0836.
  5. "Reviewed Work: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes". Social Studies of Science. 20 (3): 565–566. August 1990. doi:10.1177/030631290020003009. JSTOR   285000. S2CID   220880171.
  6. Wang, Zuoyue (October 1989). "Reviewed Work: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes". Technology and Culture. 30 (4): 1078–1081. doi:10.2307/3106232. JSTOR   3106232.
  7. Hughes, Sally Smith (1988). "Reviewed Work: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes". The Oral History Review. 16 (1): 187–189. doi:10.1093/ohr/16.1.187. JSTOR   3674840.
  8. Bernstein, Barton J. (1990). "An Analysis of 'Two Cultures': Writing about the Making and the Using of the Atomic Bombs". The Public Historian. 12 (2): 83–107. doi:10.2307/3378693. JSTOR   3378693.
  9. Collins, Angelo (1988). "Reviewed Work: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes". The American Biology Teacher. 50 (8): 532. doi:10.2307/4448825. JSTOR   4448825.
  10. Gruber, Carol S. (May 22, 1987). "Reviewed Work: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes". Science. 236 (4804): 974–975. doi:10.1126/science.236.4804.974. JSTOR   1699656. PMID   17812757.
  11. Seidel, Robert (September 1990). "Books on the Bomb". Isis. 81 (3): 519–537. doi:10.1086/355462.
  12. Hacker, Barton C. (June 1990). "Reviewed Work: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes". The American Historical Review. 95 (3): 935–936. doi:10.2307/2164503. JSTOR   2164503.
  13. Bunn, Matthew (May 1988). "The Bomb's Brilliant History". Arms Control Today. 18 (4): 29–30. JSTOR   23623906.
  14. Warzel, Charlie (July 20, 2023). "The Real Lesson From 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb'". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on July 22, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  15. "The 1988 Pulitzer Prize Winner in General Nonfiction". The Pulitzer Prizes | Columbia University . n.d. Archived from the original on 5 March 2022. Retrieved 5 December 2022. For a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category, Three thousand dollars ($3,000).
  16. "The Making of the Atomic Bomb | Winner, National Book Awards 1987 for Nonfiction". National Book Foundation . n.d. Archived from the original on 29 June 2022. Retrieved 5 December 2022.
  17. "1987 Winners & Finalists". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved April 20, 2021.