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By Root 2280 0

violet; for Weisskopf the eerie Tchaikovsky waltz and the unbidden memory of the halo in a medieval painting of Christ’s ascension; for Otto Frisch the cloud rising on its tornado stem of dust; for Feynman the awareness of his “scientific brain” trying to calm his “befuddled one,” and then the sound he felt in his bones; for so many of them the erect figure of Fermi, letting his bits of paper slip through the wind. Fermi measured the displacement, consulted a table he had prepared in his notebook, and estimated that the first atomic bomb had released the energy of 10,000 tons of TNT, somewhat more than the theorists had predicted and somewhat less than later measurements would suggest. Two days later, calculating that the ground radiation should have decayed sufficiently, he drove with Bethe and Weisskopf to inspect the glazed area that Feynman saw from an observation plane. The molten sand, the absent tower. Later a small monument marked the spot.

The aftermath changed them all. Everyone had played a part. If a man had merely calculated a numerical table of corrections for the effect of wind on the aerodynamically clumsy Nagasaki bomb, the memory would never leave him. No matter how innocent they remained through the days of Trinity and Hiroshima, those who had worked on the hill had knowledge that they could not keep from themselves. They knew they had been complicit in the final bringing of fire; Oppenheimer gave public lectures explaining that the legend of Prometheus had been fulfilled. They knew, despite their labors and ingenuity, how easy it had all been.

The official report on its development stated later that year that the bomb was a weapon “created not by the devilish inspiration of some warped genius but by the arduous labor of thousands of normal men and women working for the safety of their country.” Yet they were not normal men and women. They were scientists, and some already sensed that a dark association like a smoke cloud would attach itself to the hitherto-innocent word physicist. (A draft of the same report had said, “The general attitude of Americans toward their scientists is a curious mixture of exaggerated admiration and amused contempt”—never again was it quite so amused.) Not long after writing his triumphant letter home, Feynman wrote some arithmetic on a yellow pad. He estimated that a Hiroshima bomb in mass production would cost as much as one B-29 superfortress bomber. Its destructive force surpassed the power of one thousand airplanes carrying ten-ton loads of conventional bombs. He understood the implications. “No monopoly,” he wrote. “No defense.” “No security until we have control on a world level.”

Under the heading “SKILL & KNOWLEDGE” he concluded:

Most was known… . Other peoples are not being hindered in the development of the bomb by any secrets we are keeping. They might be helped a little by our mentioning which of two processes is found to be more efficient, & by our telling them what size parts to plan for—but soon they will be able to do to Columbus, Ohio, and hundreds of cities like it what we did to Hiroshima.

And we scientists are clever—too clever—are you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!

Many of the scientists found their magic mountain hard to leave. Lingering for months, they continued minor research that had acquired its own momentum, or skied near the Valle Grande, where they were intermittently aware that their tow rope had previously served to hoist the bomb up the tower at ground zero. Some joined the hydrogen bomb project that Teller would lead, and some remained at Los Alamos permanently, as the compound behind the fence grew into a major national laboratory and a central fixture of the American weapons-research establishment. The scientists who slowly dispersed began to realize how unlikely they were to work ever again in such a purposeful, collegial, and passionate scientific enterprise.

Nothing held Feynman to Los Alamos. He was joining Bethe’s faculty at Cornell. Raymond