Richard Rhodes
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
The author is grateful for permission to reprint excerpts from:
Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 1943–1945 by Lawrence Badash, et al., copyright © 1980 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland.
Energy and Conflict by Stanley A. Blumberg and Gwinn Owens, copyright © 1976. Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons and reprinted by permission of Ann Elmo Agency.
Rutherford by A. S. Eve, copyright 1939. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.
Atoms in the Family by Laura Fermi, copyright 1954. Reprinted by permission of University of Chicago Press.
What Little I Remember by Otto Frisch, copyright © 1979. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.
Now It Can Be Told by Leslie R. Groves, copyright © 1962 by Leslie R. Groves. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc.
Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya, translated and edited by Warner Wells, M.D., copyright 1955. Reprinted by permission of University of North Carolina Press.
The Uranium People by Leona Marshall Libby, copyright © 1979. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.
Death in Life by Robert Jay Lifton, copyright © 1982 by Robert Jay Lifton. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, Inc. Publishers.
Children of the Atomic Bomb by Arata Osada, copyright © 1967. Midwest Publishers.
Niels Bohr by Stefan Rozental, copyright © 1967. Reprinted by permission of North-Holland Physics Publishing, Amsterdam.
Enrico Fermi, Physicist by Emilio Segre, copyright © 1970. Reprinted by permission of University of Chicago Press.
Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections by Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner, copyright © 1980 by Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press; also reprinted by permission of Spencer R. Weart at the American Institute of Physics and for quotes from the Bridgeman Papers, Harvard University Archives.
Adventures of a Mathematician by Stanislaw Ulam, copyright © 1977 by S. M. Ulam. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.
Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts by Spencer R. Weart and Gertrude Weiss Szilard, copyright © 1978. Reprinted by permission of the MIT Press.
All in Our Time by Jane Wilson, copyright © 1975 by the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Chicago, 111., 60637. Reprinted by permission of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a magazine of science and world affairs.
In memory
John Cushman
1926–1984
The author acknowledges with gratitude the support of the Ford Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in the research and writing of this book.
Taken as a story of human achievement, and human blindness, the discoveries in the sciences are among the great epics.
Robert Oppenheimer In an enterprise such as the building of the atomic bomb the difference between ideas, hopes, suggestions and theoretical calculations, and solid numbers based on measurement, is paramount. All the committees, the politicking and the plans would have come to naught if a few unpredictable nuclear cross sections had been different from what they are by a factor of two.
Emilio Segre BOOKS BY RICHARD RHODES NONFICTION
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Looking for America
The Inland Ground
FICTION
Sons of Earth
The Last Safari
Holy Secrets
The Ungodly
PRAISE FOR THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB “A great book. Mr. Rhodes has done a beautiful job, and I don't see how anyone can ever top it.”
— Luis W. Alvarez,
Nobel Laureate for Physics, 1968
“… what I read already impressed me with the author's knowledge of much of the history of the science which led to the development of nuclear energy and nuclear bombs and of the personalities which contributed in the U.S. to the development of these. I was particularly impressed by his realization of the importance of Leo Szilard's contributions which are almost always underestimated but which he fully realizes and perhaps even overestimates. I hope the book will find a wide readership.”
— Eugene P. Wigner,
Nobel Laureate for Physics, 1963
“I found The Making of the Atomic Bomb well written, interesting and one of the best in the great family of books on the subject. It is fascinating as a novel, and I have learned from it many things I did not know. Mr. Rhodes has done his homework conscientiously and intelligently.”
— Emilio Segre,
Nobel Laureate for Physics, 1959
“Mr. Rhodes gives careful attention to the role which chemists played in developing the bomb. The Making of the Atomic Bomb strikes me as the most complete account of the Manhattan Project to date.
— Glenn T. Seaborg,
Nobel Laureate for Chemistry, 1951
