The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Finished reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb and it is a solid 5/5. Richard Rhodes gets the balance -between writing science, and the human stories- perfect. All the brilliant scientists I’d grown up reading about come together and their science fits in like a perfect mosaic to split the atom.

The chapter on the bombing and effects on the Japanese cities is traumatic to read, a reminder about man’s inhumanity towards man. Reminded me of Voltaire’s, “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

When you read Feynman’s accounts, you have this impression that life at Los Alamos revolved around him. So it was surprising to me that he’s only mentioned thrice in the entire book, and only one of those times, he’s described as doing anything (setting up the radio before the Trinity test)

In chronological order, the architects of our understanding of the atom. Democritus, Aristotle -> Newton, Dalton, Avogadro -> Thomson -> Rutherford (nucleus) -> Plank, Einstein, Bohr -> Rutherford (proton), Chadwick -> de Broglie, Schrödinger, Heisenberg.

And for the splitting the atom. Becquerel, Curie, Rutherford -> Fermi -> Hahn, Meitner, Frisch -> Szilárd -> Bohr, Anderson -> Teller, Wigner, Einstein-Szilárd -> Roosevelt, Oppenheimer, Groves, Manhattan Project.

The Shoulders of Giants.