UCSF
Library Archive, University of California, San Francisco
1: The Cyclotron Republic
1. Lawrence to Sproul, Lawrence folder, box 64, Vannevar Bush papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
2. A cyclotron is defined as a machine that accelerates charged particles by the influence of a steady magnetic field and a rapidly alternating electrical field. Henry A. Boorse et al., The Atomic Scientists: A Biographical History (Wiley, 1989), 358–59.
3. Kitchen-chair cyclotron: Luis Alvarez, “Ernest Orlando Lawrence, 1901–1958,” Biographical Memoirs (National Academy of Sciences, 1970), 263; J. L. Heilbron and Robert Seidel, Lawrence and His Laboratory: A History of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (University of California Press, 1989), vol. 1, 88.
4. Herbert Childs, An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence, Father of the Cyclotron (Dutton, 1968), 171; Heilbron and Seidel (1989), 84.
5. Childs (1968), 168; J. L. Heilbron, Robert Seidel, and Bruce R. Wheaton, “Lawrence and His Laboratory: Nuclear Science at Berkeley” (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, 1981), 12; Heilbron and Seidel (1989), 100.
6. Transcript of interview with Jack Neylan, box 2, Herbert Childs papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Calif.
7. Transcript of interview with Don Cooksey, box 1, Childs papers; Childs (1968), 89–90.
8. Heilbron and Seidel (1989), 10, 99; Childs (1968), 161.
9. Childs (1968), 169–70.
10. Nuell Pharr Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer (Simon and Schuster, 1968), 198; author interview with Wolfgang Panofsky, Stanford, Calif., Aug. 3, 1993.
11. Luis W. Alvarez, Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist (Basic Books, 1987), 47–48; Childs (1968), 158; author interview with Eldred Nelson, Brentwood, Calif., Apr. 14, 1999.
12. “Autobiography,” series 7, box 1, Henry Smyth papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Penn.
13. Author interview with Molly Lawrence, Balboa, Calif., Aug. 11, 1992.
14. Childs (1968), 154–55.
15. Ibid., 253.
16. Early Rad Lab: Alvarez (1987), 40–44; author interview with Kenneth Street, Alamo, Calif., Aug. 6, 1993; transcript of interview with Arthur Hudgins, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory archives, Livermore, Calif. (LLNL).
17. Kenneth Street interview (1993).
18. Alvarez (1987), 40.
19. Childs (1968), 251.
20. Notes on “How Well We Meant,” Isidor Rabi remarks at the fiftieth anniversary of Los Alamos, Mar. 1983.
21. Boorse et al. (1989), 333–40.
22. Heilbron, Seidel, and Wheaton (1981), 18.
23. Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (Simon and Schuster, 1995), 27.
24. “Atom-Powered World Absurd, Scientists Told,” New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 12, 1933.
25. Solvay Congress: Heilbron, Seidel, and Wheaton (1981), 18–23; Davis (1968), 58–59.
26. Panofsky interview (1993); Alvarez (1970), 266.
27. Emilio Segrè, A Mind Always in Motion (University of California Press, 1993), 134.
28. Author interview with Robert Serber, New York, N.Y., Apr. 4, 1992.
29. Haakon Chevalier, Oppenheimer: The Story of a Friendship (Braziller, 1965), 11.
30. Edith Jenkins, Against a Field Sinister: Memoirs and Stories (City Lights Books, 1991), 23.
31. Robert Oppenheimer: Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon and Schuster, 1986), 119–27; Davis (1968), 20–24; Peter Michelmore, The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story (Dodd, Mead, 1969), 7–9.
32. Transcript of interview with Robert Oppenheimer, box 2, Childs papers.
33. The art was later split between Robert and his brother, Frank, upon their father’s death. My thanks to Robert Oppenheimer’s son, Peter, for allowing me access to his father’s personal papers in his possession.
34. Childs (1968), 143; transcripts of interviews with Paul Horgan, Francis Fergusson, and Jeffries Wyman, Oppenheimer Oral History Collection, MIT archives, Cambridge, Mass.
35. Childs (1968), 510–11.
36. Transcript of interview with John Edsall, Oppenheimer Oral History Collection, MIT.
37. Childs (1968), 144–45.
38. Experimentalists, unlike theorists, apparently did not name their cars.
39. Michelmore (1969), 30; Childs (1968), 127, 144. Oppie’s cars: Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner, eds., Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections (Harvard University Press, 1980), 119, 135, 165 fn.; Frank Oppenheimer to Ed McMillan, n.d., “N.P. Davis” file, series 7, Edwin McMillan papers, RG 434, Federal Records Center, San Bruno, Calif. (SBFRC).
40. S. S. Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist (Princeton University Press, galley proofs, 2000), 63.
41. S. S. Schweber, “J. Robert Oppenheimer: Proteus Unbound,” 7. The author thanks Sam Schweber for a copy of his unpublished manuscript.
42. Smith and Weiner (1980), 144.
43. Lawrence to Oppenheimer, n.d. (fall 1936), folder 9, carton 14, Ernest Orlando Lawrence papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (EOL).
44. Robert to Frank Oppenheimer, n.d., unmarked folder, box 1, Frank Oppenheimer papers, Bancroft Library.
45. Chevalier (1965), 39.
46. Letter to?, n.d., carton 1, Frank Oppenheimer papers; Smith and Weiner (1980), 165 fn.
47. Perro Caliente: Peter Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds (BBC, 1980), 27; U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (MIT Press, 1971) (ITMOJRO), 101.
48. Interviews: Molly Lawrence (1992) and Elsie McMillan, Bellingham, Wash., Sept. 24, 1992.
49. Smith and Weiner (1980), 159.
50. Michelmore (1969) 53.
51. Smith and Weiner (1980), 171.
52. Childs (1968), 172–73.
53. Lawrence to C. D. Shane, Jan. 28, 1936, folder 9, carton 14, EOL.
54. Schweber (2000), 199.
55. Oppie evidently absorbed Adler’s lessons well; he was valedictorian of his class.
56. Schweber (2000), 52.
57. Cited in Oppenheimer to F. Osborn, Feb. 14, 1949, Osborn folder, box 54, Robert Oppenheimer papers, Library of Congress (JRO).
58. Melba Phillips incident: Transcript of Alvarez interview, box 1, Childs papers; Robert Serber, Peace and War: Reminiscences of a Life on the Frontiers of Science (University of California Press, 1998), 27.
59. Transcript of interview with Edwin McMillan, 128, Bancroft Library.
60. Author interview with Robert Wilson, July 16, 1996, Ithaca, N.Y.
61. Cottrell: Heilbron and Seidel (1989), 107–8; Davis (1968), 40.
62. Heilbron and Seidel (1989), 127.
63. Ibid., 116–24; transcript of interview with Robert Stone, Oral History Collection, Library Archive, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
64. Lawrence to Leuschner, April 12, 1935, folder 13, carton 20, EOL.
65. Joliot-Curies and Fermi: Boorse et al. (1989), 362–65, 340–50.
66. Childs (1968), 190, 215; Alvarez (1970), 266.
67. Childs (1968), 221.
68. Martin Kamen, Radiant Science, Dark Politics: A Memoir of the Nuclear Age (University of California Press, 1986), 117.
69. Hamilton and human radiation experiments: “The University of California Case Study,” Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, supplemental vol. 2, Sources and Documentation (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), 600–30.
70. Childs (1968), 146.
71. Transcript
