Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

ISSN: 0096-3402 (Print) 1938-3282 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbul20

Books

Jane Wilson, Ralph E. Lapp & Victor W. Sidel

To cite this article: Jane Wilson, Ralph E. Lapp & Victor W. Sidel (1969) Books, Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, 25:1, 31-34, DOI: 10.1080/00963402.1969.11455161

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LAWRENCE AND OPPENHEIMER
By NuELL PHARR DAVIS. New York: Simon and Schuster. Pp. 384. 1968. $7.50.
Reviewed by
JANE WILSON
The road which would bring such a ics at the University of California. This
significant part of the physics com- was a promising approach, already
munity to Los Alamos, New Mexico, used with Tizard and Lord Cherwell
during World War 11, the chain of in England. It was an excellent way to
circumstances which resulted in the impose order upon some diffuse and
use of atomic energy for military pur- amorphous data. Oppenheimer and
poses, started in Berkeley, California, Lawrence had different backgrounds,
about 15 years before a successful test different politics, different world
bomb exploded in the desert called views. Even their physics was differ-
the Journey of Death in the summer ent. "Emest Orlando Lawrence was
of 1945. an experimental physicist, Julius Rob-
It is a great story. From the stand- ert Oppenheimer a theoretical physi-
point of drama it has everything: sus- cist" is the first sentence in Mr. Davis'
pense, spies, glittering personalities of panoramic, racy, entertaining account.
worldwide reputation, and minor char- It is also one of the author's few state-
acters with such improbable names as ments that is incontrovertibly true.
"Boris Pash." The effect of the Now it goes without saying that all
atomic bomb upon the world-po- authors sift their raw material through
litically, militarily, and psychologically their own bias and shape their ac-
-was, of course, incalculable. counts according to their own inter-
The epilogue, nine years after the pretation. There must be some line,
birth of the bomb, when J. Robert however, between what is legitimate
Oppenheimer was stripped of his and what is not, between alleged fact
clearance as a security risk, evoked and fiction. Mr. Davis has been care-
shades of Galileo, Captain Dreyfus, less with names and titles. He has
and the Greek tragic heroes. It was a made reckless use of derogatory ad-
mirror for the mythology of one's jectives such as "boorish," "prickly,"
choice. Ironies were heaped on ironies. and "irritable." He writes in a snide,
Many glittering pieces of the story insinuating style: "Lorenzo Ems [sic]
still lie upon the ground waiting to whom the graduate students believed
be scooped up by any novelist, biog- to be an Italian Count," is a typical
rapher, historian, or psychologist who statement referring to Lorenzo Emo,
can use them. It is little wonder, then, who was and is an Italian Count, and
that Professor Davis, a member of the credulity of the graduate students
the English Department at the Uni- has nothing to do with it. The author
versity of Illinois, was attracted by places direct quotations in the mouths
this rich lode, this barely tapped mine. of people who never said any such
Davis was inspired to see his ma- things. These would perhaps be nig-
terial as the confrontation of two very gling objections if the bulk of the
different personalities, friends who fell book did not consist of anecdotes
out, Ernest Lawrence and J. Robert molded by the author to fit his a
Oppenheimer, both professors of phys- priori conclusion that the polarization
January 1969 BuJietin of the Atomic Scientists
between Oppenheimer and Lawrence
made one a villain and the other a
hero. To suit his thesis, he has bent
and twisted his material. Occasionally
he has even invented it.
Such unreliability gives one a sense
of malaise. One does not know what
is true and what is false and ends up
by trusting nothing and doubting all.
Was Robert Oppenheimer such an in-
sulated boob that he had not learned
of the stock market crash by the
spring of 1930? Was Oppenheimer's
first student "a half mad creature"
who eventually made "internationally
known discoveries" and held high
positions? Was General Groves "se-
cretly checking with Alvarez at the
Mesa on Oppenheimer's secret plans?"
Such tales have a meretricious ring.
Lawrence and Oppenheimer nev-
ertheless is eminently readable and
interesting. It has a huge cast of char-
acters. The sweep of people and their
work gives the book a kind of im-
pressionistic reality. One fervently
hopes, however, that future historians
will not jot down tid-bits from this col-
lection of fabulous non-facts and say,
"That's the way it was."
"For the physicists you are writing
about," I. I. Rabi advised the author,
"make the point that their commit-
ment to the work they found to do
was total. It is in this sense that their
lives ran parallel." But total commit-
ment is not the stuff of best sellers.
Neither the style nor the method of
this book could possibly convey it.
The author interviewed at least 84
people and accumulated a great deal
of tittle-tattle and gossip. In chroni-
cling prejudices and animosities,
something vital in the spirit of his
dramatis personnae escapes him. The
Bomb work during the war was done
in an ecstasy of dedication. Rightly or
wrongly, the people involved thought
they were winning the war against the
Nazis and saving civilization. They
were St. George and the dragon was
Fascism. The people of the Man·
hattan Project were, to themselves,
heroes; they worked inhuman hours,
they were above personal considera-
tions and personal ambitions. For a
few years they were bigger than life.
Mr. Davis' characters appear smaller
than life. This is particularly true of
his protagonists, Oppenheimer and
Lawrence. The author went on a fish-
ing expedition looking for antagonists.
He plucked a bit here and there from
31
his interviews to make the confronta-
tion of the two men dramatic. In do-
ing so, he played them both false.
The author has been particularly
harsh in his portrait of Ernest Or-
lando Lawrence. Lawrence's faults are
magnified, his political influence is
exaggerated, and his enormous scien-
tific accomplishments impugned.
There isn't much indication in this
book that Lawrence, perhaps more than
any other contemporary American
physicist, brought the United States
out of the realm of the second-rate
into the mainstream of physics re-
search. There are those scientists who
believe that the "Berkeley spirit"
which the students of Lawrence spread
around the world, a spirit of total
commitment to great goals, with con-
centrated and intense effort to reach
those goals, is an important factor in
the high level attained by modern
physics.
Mr. Davis stresses La\\Tence's post-
war failures and frustrations without
even a side glance at his great and
continuing success, the Berkeley
Radiation Laboratory. It was and re-
mains one of the world's great labora-
tories. He doesn't seem to understand
that without Lawrence there would
not have been a Berkeley Laboratory.
Then there might also not have been
a Radiation Laboratory at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, which did such a bril-
liant job on radar during the war, or
a Metallurgical Laboratory at Chicago,
or even a Los Alamos Laboratory in
New Mexico. There would certainly
not have been an Oppenheimer as Di-
rector of Los Alamos since it was
Lawrence's friendship and approval
which made the appointment pos-
sible.
Admittedly, Lawrence's greatness
lay more in what he accomplished
than in his personality. He was a
rather straightforward, old-fashioned,
prairie-bred type, psychologically much
closer to the American physicists who
preceded him, the Henrys, the Milli-
kans, and the Comptons, than to the
politically-oriented physicists of today.
In Lawrence and Oppenheimer Law-
rence is shown as a ruthless self-server
who, when it suits him, withholds the
salary of a research assistant and makes
him go hungry. "He's so unfeeling,"
whimpers the assistant. The assistant
in question, now middle-aged, was
never interviewed by the author, never
32
had his salary withheld, never went
hungry, and never complained that
Lawrence was unfeeling. On the con-
trary, Lawrence was concerned about
his students in sickness and in health,
and maintained a warm relationship
with them.
Mr. Davis is much kinder with
Robert Oppenheimer, but probably
misjudges him as well. From the van-
tage point of the late sixties, Oppen-
heimer is certainly a sympathetic fig-
ure. Although he was only a few years
younger than Lawrence, Oppenheimer
had something in common with to-
day's student rebels. He, too, turned
against middle-class materialism and
conformity. His "trial" in 19 54 out-
raged many thinking men and insured
his canonization.
A decade ago, with the same facts
before him as Neull Pharr Davis,
Robert Jungk, in his book Brighter
than a Thousand Suns, characterized
Oppenheimer as a "twentieth-century
Faust" having an "obsession with suc-
cess." This is quoted only to show
that Oppenheimer could seem to be
many things to many men. Almost
any capsule judgment of his character
would be fallacious. In Lawrence and
Oppenheimer he is hailed as a "Phi-
losopher King." One gets the impres-
sion of a religious person, but he cer-
tainly never seemed at all religious to
those who knew him. The adjec-
tive "simple" is often used to describe
him. It is a particularly inappropriate
term to employ.
The world of nuclear physics is a
little world where almost everyone
knows everyone else. It is a cozy in-
ternational fraternity which has meet-
ings and parties and dinners where
intramural gossip is the elixir of life.
\Vhat is wrong with Lawrence and
Oppenheimer is not that it retails gos-
sip about sacrosanct figures; it is that
the gossip is often malicious and un-
true. What is wrong with Lawrence
and Oppenheimer is not that the au-
thor has made an interpretation; it
is that the interpretation doesn't fit
the facts. The material has been
mauled and handled to suit the au-
thor's purposes, and in the fingering
the goods have become soiled.
Jane Wilson is boolc review editor of
the Bulletin; she was a personal ac-
quaintance of Lawrence and Oppen·
heimer.
AMERICA IS IN DANGER
By General Curtis E. LeMay (with
Major General Dale 0. Smith).
New York: Funk and Wagnalls.
1968. Pp. 333. $5.95.
Reviewed by
RALPH E. LAPP
General LeMay bisects his world into
the good and the bad. The good is
symbolized by words like: first strike,
victory, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS),
air power, B-52, superiority. The bad
is characterized by: parity, arms con-
trol, McNamara, defense intellectual,
second strike.
The former U .S. commander of the
Strategic Air Command (SAC) and
member of the JCS has authored a
strongly-worded attack on our strategic
policies. (There is ambiguity about his
co-author since the latter does not get
a mention on the book jacket or hard
cover.) General LeMay maintains that
the United States is losing (or has lost)
its nuclear superiority and it must
waste no time in recovering its former
strategic posture. He is a firm believer
in a U.S. capability to mount a first
strike against the Soviet Union. LeMay
uses blunt language-calling for "a
lightening destruction of the enemy's
offensive forces." This he finds unob-
jectionable as a "defensive counterforce
attack." It takes an unusual mentality
to propose such a policy for a democ-
racy, but LeMay's appears to be the
crystallization of the "military mind."
One would expect the former head
of SAC to make a convincing case for
nuclear superiority, based on solid ar-
guments like aim points, CEP, weapon
yield, target damage, and other factors
so germane to attack analysis. The
closest LeMay comes to being quanti-
tative is in terms of megaton arith-
metic.
General LeMay longs for the days
of the heavy bombers and their 24-
megaton payloads. By his own reckon-
ing the United States possessed 27,300
megatons in 1960. On this scale of ex-
plosiveness, the Minuteman-Polaris
warhead gives LeMay little sense of
well-being. He admits that the United
States has a numerical superiority of
ICBMs over the Soviets, but credits
them with a tenfold larger nuclear war-
head. Here he does a little hanky-panky
 with numbers, attributing the high-
yield warhead to all Soviet missiles.
Actually the SS-11 is comparable to
our Minuteman and the SS-9, which
is the lesser fraction of the Soviet
ICBM inventory, has the heavy throw-
weight. He gives the Soviet Union a
5:1 megaton advantage over the United
States.
So there's a megaton gap and Le-
May wants it filled tomorrow. Even
though he admits that the megaton
is not all, he gets very confused trying
to justify his demand for more mis-
siles. In this connection. it is interest-
ing to note that LeMay never once
refers to multiple warheads or to
Minuteman III or to Poseidon. The
United States MIRV (multiple, inde-
pendently targetable reentry vehicle)
allow Minuteman III to carry three to
five warheads and Poseidon to throw
a full dozen. The combination gives
the United States a 10,000-warhead
potential by 1973.
Whereas McNamara defined 400
on-target warheads as constituting an
unacceptable level of population and
industrial damage for the Soviets, Le-
May refuses to discuss levels of damage.
In fact, even in the case of a first-strike
at Soviet missile sites, LeMay makes
no reckoning of the level of damage
required to prevent lethal return fire
from these ICBM holes. He does not
mention the probability that Soviet
commanders will launch their ICBMs
during the attack, but assumes a com-
mand and control instructed to ride
out the attack.
America would be in mortal danger
if LeMay's preemptive first strike were
to be implemented. Given the quality
and quantity of modem missile forces,
neither side can resort to a first strike.
Any attempt by either party will in-
evitably incite the other to further
arming.
While McNamara was able to im-
pose a ceiling on America's missile
force (LeMay wanted 1,700 Minute-
men but had to settle for 1,000) he
was caught in an "R&D trap." Mc-
Namara had to go along with research
and development of multiple warheads
(MIRV). This in turn telescoped into
deployment of Minuteman III and
Poseidon-into a force loading incon-
sistent with McNamara's criterion of
strategic adequacy.
Why does General LeMay refuse
even to mention MIRV in his 1968
book? I suspect it is because this de- sive from one thousand aircraft, or in
velopment invalidates his whole argu- a thousand sorties of one aircraft, for
ment about United States nuclear example, when roughly the same ef-
inferiority. It leaves him no place for fect could be gained by one aircraft
new SAC bombers. LeMay, who never with a small nuclear weapon?
trusted missiles, now becomes a vic- "We can burst the dikes that make
tim of the MIRV technology. rice farming possible in the Red River
LeMay's views on limited war and delta.... We must be willing to con-
the Southeast Asian theater are tinue our bombing until we have
summed up as follows: destroyed every work of man in North
"The introduction of appropriate- Vietnam if this is what it takes to win
sized nuclear weapons should insure the war."
an early termination of hostilities, re- America is in danger when military
duce casualties among American and leaders ( LeMay is not unique in his
friendly forces, and limit, not expand, views) reveal the superficialty of their
the amount of economic disruption thinking about complex issues.
and destruction always associated with
prolonged military campaigns. Ralph E. Lapp is consulting physicist
"What is the logic in preferring to of the Nuclear Science Service and
drop twenty thousand tons of explo- author of The Weapons Culture.
THE SILENT WEAPONS
By RoBIN CLARKE. New York: David McKay Co., Inc., Pp. 270. 1968. $4.95.
CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
By SEYMOUR M. HERsH. lndianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Pp. 354. 1968.
$7.50.
Reviewed by
VICTOR W. SIDEL
Two distinguished journalists have with the American role in CBW de-
given us two excellent books, published velopment and employment. Neither
almost simultaneously, on chemical slights the subject of the other-
and biological warfare (CBW). As Clarke, for example, well documents
would be expected from their back- the use of chemical weapons in Viet-
grounds, the perspectives of the two nam and Hersh discusses the work of
authors are different. Clarke, previously the British Microbiological Research
the editor of Discovery, is now the Establishment at Porton Down-but
editor of Science Journal and secre- the two books are clearly comple-
tary of the British Association of Sci- mentary.
ence Writers. His book reflects his Chemical and biological warfare-
concern with issues of science and perhaps because it never had its Hiro-
with the ethics of scientists as well as shima or Nagasaki-has never had its
his concern, as a Briton, with the Smythe Report, its William L. Laur-
British role in CBW development and ence, its Effects of Nuclear Weapons,
employment. Hersh, on the other its Albert Einstein, its Robert Oppen-
hand, had worked as a police reporter heimer, its Edward Teller, its Leo
and for United Press International be- Szilard, its Federation of American
fore covering the Pentagon for the As- Scientists, or its Buiietin of the Atomic
sociated Press and, most recently, Scientists. It has indeed had its coura-
acted as Press Secretary for Senator geous opponents such as Theodore
Eugene McCarthy in his campaign. His Rosebury, its determined advocates
book reflects his concern with issues such as Brigadier General J. H. Roths-
of domestic and international politics child, its accurate journalists such as
and with the role of the U .S. Army Elinor Langer, and its concerned or-
Chemical Corps (and other American ganizations such as Physicians for
institutions) in boosting CBW, as Social Responsibility. But CBW has
well as his concern, as an American, never had authoritative summaries:
January 1969 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 33

Science
Forum
A Canadian journal of
science and technology
Coming in the
February issue
THE
CANADIAN
ARCTIC
A group of articles examin-
ing the prospects for its de-
velopment through the use
of science and technology
Science Forum is Canada's
most influential new journal
of science and technology-
a new kind of journal for
scientists, social scientists,
engineers, and all who want
to know what scientists are
doing and thinking, and how
they are helping to shape the
world.
Science Forum is available
in the United States only by
subscription.
One year (six issues) $6.00
Two years $10.00
Cheques and mail orders
should be made payable to
University of Toronto Press
and sent to: Periodicals De-
partment, University of To-
ronto Press, Toronto 5, Can-
ada. Or write for further
information.
General Rothschild's Tomorrow's
Weapons, which came closest until
these two volumes appeared, was seri·
ously marred by his role as an advo-
cate. And it has never had the sort
of public exposure and discussion
which surrounds nuclear weapons.
Yet, as Clarke points out, "biological
weapons threaten the ecology of our
planet-or at least a substantial por-
tion of it-to a greater extent than
nuclear weapons do."
Only in recent years have these
weapons begun to intrude into pub-
lic concern. The Bulletin has done its
share, as Hersh notes, beginning with
publication in 1946 of the Merck Re-
port, and in 1962 of an article by Dr.
E. James Lieberman on psychochemi-
cals as weapons; other journals such as
Nuclear Information (now Scientist
and Citizen) have also tried. But it
required the use of chemical weapons
in Vietnam, an accident such as the
ki1Iing of sheep in Utah, and univer-
sity involvement with CBW research
and researchers to bring the issue to
the fore. It is now at the fore, in
Britain even more than in the United
States, and these two volumes are an
important product of, as well as a
significant contribution to, the in-
creasing concern.
Clarke's The Silent Weapons: The
Realities of Chemical and Biological
Warfare has a special interest because
of its simultaneous publication in
Great Britain and in the United
States. Comparison of the two edi·
tions is instructive and saddening.
The title of the British edition is
We All Fall Down, which is drawn
from the nursery rhyme attributed to
fourteenth-century plague with its red
rash (ring of roses), its supposed
amelioration by flowers (pocketful of
posies), and its high case-fatality rate;
perhaps this title was thought too
subtle for an American audience. The
British edition has two excellent fold-
in appendix tables detailing the prop-
erties of potential chemical and bio-
logical weapons. In the American
edition the tables have been truncated,
leaving out such information as chemi-
cal structure and dose information for
the chemical weapons and route of
transmission and extent of immunitv
for the biological agents; perhaps
books don't sell as well in the United
States when they have detailed fold-
in tables in the back. The editions
seem otherwise the same (except for
physical appearances) , and are worth
every penny spent for them in either
country, but why can't an American
audience have the same privileges of
wit in the title, detail in the appen-
dices, and economy of construction
as their British colleagues?
Hersh's Chemical and Biological
Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal is
to be commended especially for its
last two chapters-"What Other
Countries Are Doing?" and "The
Problems of Disarmament"-and for
its detailed bibliographic notes. One
wishes, however, that both volumes
had spent more time discussing pos-
sible methods for control and dis-
armament. We have reached the point
in the discussion of these weapons
when it is no longer sufficient to
describe past efforts and demonstrate
the difficulties which lie in the way of
effective inspection or of reaching
agreements for limitation of such
weapons. It helps but little to be told,
as both Clarke and Hersh tell us and
the clock on the cover of the Bulle-
tin told us for so long, that the hour
is late and the task difficult. What
is needed are some bold new propo-
sals, most likely for action by physi-
cians and scientists and other con-
cerned citizens outside of normal gov·
ernmental channels, to bring an end
to the development, production, stock-
piling, and use of toxic weapons. The
nuclear test-ban and the nonprolifera-
tion treaty, limited as they are, were
once thought beyond the realm of ac-
complishment; there is no insur-
mountable reason why similar progress
cannot be made for chemical and
biological weapons and, given the
natural abhorrence of them among
all peoples, why the progress cannot
be even more rapid and more com-
plete.
These two books will help us in
this task by making the facts and is-
sues easily and clearly available, and
we owe their authors a large debt of
gratitude. But we must go on from
these volumes, and the concern which
produced them, to some effective ac-
tion to end a threat every bit as dam-
aging to human values and to life it-
self as the spectre of nuclear weapons.
Victor W. Sidel is associate in Medi-
cine, Harvard Medical School, Bos-
ton, MassachuseHs.