Like Lawrence, Teller had hitherto shown little interest in politics. Although a resident of Washington, D.C., Edward had yet to visit the Capitol or even listen to one of Roosevelt’s famous fireside chats. But Germany’s invasion of the Low Countries on May 10, 1940, brought a sudden end to Teller’s personal isolationism. He canceled previous plans in order to attend the annual Pan American Scientific Conference a few days later, where FDR was the keynote speaker.
Roosevelt appealed to the nation’s scientists to “act together to protect and defend, by every means at our command, our science, our culture, our American freedom and our civilization,” Teller remembered. For Edward, the moment was one of epiphany: “I had the strange impression that he was talking to me.” Indeed, FDR’s call to arms was the president’s real answer to the letter from Einstein and the Hungarians, Teller felt. Roosevelt’s twenty-minute speech “resolved my dilemma,” Edward later wrote.54
That summer, after Teller and a friend, Cornell physicist Hans Bethe, had finished a teaching stint at Stanford, the pair drove down to Pasadena to ask Caltech’s famed aerodynamicist, Theodore Von Kármán, how they might contribute to the war effort. Bethe and Teller spent two days at Caltech and several more on the drive back east, discussing the behavior of air behind a shock wave—a subject of great importance to ballistics, Von Kármán had told them. A month later, Bethe mailed their paper to Caltech. Although it was unclassified—neither Bethe nor Teller was yet a citizen—the U.S. Army kept the document behind locked doors.55
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At Berkeley, meanwhile, the war had brought about changes both subtle and large. Since travel across the Atlantic was deemed too hazardous, Ernest received his Nobel prize at a ceremony in Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall. Sweden’s consul general stood in for the king.
But the bad news from Europe could do nothing to dim the luster of Lawrence and his laboratory. In February 1940, Life magazine featured a two-page color photograph of the new medical cyclotron at the Crocker lab.56 “There are no insurmountable technical difficulties in the way of producing greater cyclotrons,” Ernest told a reporter from the campus newspaper, adding that only “financial” obstacles remained. “This problem has now been handed over to the University president,” he observed imperiously.57
Because of the Nobel prize, Lawrence had also begun to receive recognition from the world outside science and medicine. That March, he was invited to a “Young Men of the Year” banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria organized by Minnesota governor Harold Stassen. Lawrence was thrilled to be the only physicist in a constellation of ten notables that included Spencer Tracy and Lou Gehrig.58
In early April, the news that Lawrence had been anxiously awaiting finally arrived in a telephone call from Rockefeller’s Warren Weaver, who confirmed the foundation’s grant of $1.15 million for the great cyclotron. Ernest told Weaver that he expected completion of the big machine by late June 1944—presuming no “unforeseen difficulties” intervened.59
Ebullient, Lawrence telegraphed his thanks to Bush. Lawrence showed his gratitude to Alfred Loomis in more tangible fashion: he and Karl Compton sponsored Loomis for membership in the National Academy of Sciences. Recognition by his peers in academe was one of the few things that had eluded Loomis in his life, but there was perhaps nothing he valued more.60
Operating behind the scenes, Alfred continued to make the big wheels turn for Ernest. While Lawrence was in New York for the Waldorf-Astoria dinner, Loomis introduced him to Edward Stettinius, president of U.S. Steel, who promised to set aside enough metal from the current mobilization to build the big accelerator. Following Loomis’s similar appeal to the Guggenheims, the Phelps Dodge Corporation agreed to supply 400 tons of copper at a bargain rate for the machine’s magnetic coils.61
In addition, Loomis continued to support Lawrence in his traditional way. With Sproul’s approval, the wealthy entrepreneur established a $30,000 unrestricted bequest at the university for Lawrence’s personal use. Because of the Loomis fund, Molly could henceforth accompany Ernest on his increasingly frequent trips back east.62
Lawrence had meanwhile located another prospective donor for the giant machine while on a visit with out-of-town guests to the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. As others in his entourage watched the Folies Bergère, Lawrence mentally sized up the portable steel-frame structure that had been custom-built for the show.63
With his appeal to the Folies pending, Lawrence eyed a prospective building site on campus, in Strawberry Canyon, where a stream meandered through tall redwoods. Current occupants included the university’s poultry husbandry department. But Sproul soon offered Ernest a better and far more prominent location: the summit of Charter Hill, where a big white C stood out against the green grass.64 Lawrence no doubt thought it appropriate that the Rad Lab would henceforth occupy the heights above campus, next to the university’s symbol.
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Gradually, however, despite Lawrence’s efforts, the overseas conflict began to impinge upon his Mecca.65 He felt the possibility of an atomic bomb “in his bones,” Ernest told Arthur Compton that spring.66
Still, Lawrence was too busy fixing teething problems with the 60-inch and promoting the great cyclotron to carry out the work that might have settled the question of whether a uranium bomb was feasible. Not enough of the element’s scarce fissionable isotope, U-235, had yet been separated from natural uranium, U-238, to conduct the necessary experiments in any case. The physicist whom Briggs asked to carry out that task, Minnesota’s Alfred Nier, had run into difficulties trying to “soup up” the apparatus he was using to separate the isotopes.67
Others in Berkeley and at the Rad Lab had already begun to respond to the clarion call. At the army’s request, Alvarez designed a Geiger counter that could be concealed in a book and smuggled into Germany, in an
