by Robert Jungk.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book that described a unique and bitter/sweet page of human history
I first read “Brighter than a Thousand Suns” at the end of 1970. While remembering that I thought highly of the book then, I no longer have much recollection of its contents. Recently, after finishing a couple of books on the history of Maxwell equations, hydrodynamics and thermodynamics, it occurred to me that I would enjoy reading “Brighter than a Thousand Suns” again.
The year 1970 was at the height of the cold war between superpowers with nuclear weapons that can wipe out civilization in seconds. The doomsday clock in 1971 was set by the Editors of the publication “Bulletin of Atomic Scientists” to 23.50, or 10 minutes to midnight. Now in 2021, although the nuclear threat is still there, one would think that the world should be much further from midnight than in 1970, since, after all, it has been 36 years ago that the cold war was declared to have ended. To my great surprise, when I look it up, the doomsday clock in 2021 is only 100 seconds from midnight! This time, humankind faces not only nuclear bombs but also the devastating threat of climate change. At the beginning of 2021, The Bulletin stated that the current issues are "the most dangerous situation that humanity has ever faced."
The book told the events before, during and after the second World War, covering not only the building of the atomic bomb but also the hydrogen bomb, which for a while was known as the Super. Most of the book is heavy reading, as it is filled with serious matters, as well as conflicts of various kinds. The exception is Chapter 2, with the exquisite title “The Beautiful Years 1923-32”. Here it described the time when scientists, students, and professors were free from politics, with stories which were amusing and nostalgic. Every reader who is not a physicist will smile at mathematician David Hilbert’s remark that “Physics is obviously too difficult for physicists.” Among the many heart-warming stories was the one about a young student in University of Gottingen in Germany. He was walking along in a dream, stumbled and fell flat on his face. When a fellow student rushed up and tried to help him to his feet, the fallen student, still on the ground, vigorously repulsed his helper’s efforts, shouting “Leave me alone will you? I’m busy!” Apparently. a new brilliant solution had just occurred to him.
Unfortunately, the beautiful years soon came to an end. The Nazis took over Germany in 1933 and poised to invade countries in Europe .When Einstein moved to the U.S. in the autumn of 1933, taking up the position in the newly formed Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, the French Physicist Paul Langevin said that “The Pope of Physics has moved and the United States will now become the center of the natural sciences.”
The main story of the book was about why and how the American Government decided to build the atomic bomb, how the effort was organized, and what life and work at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge were like for the scientists. Particularly interesting were the episodes depicting the personalities of some famous scientists and mathematicians, including Oppenheimer, Feynman, Dirac, Bethe, Teller, Einstein, Hilbert, von Neumann, among others. The decision processes regarding whether to use the atomic bomb against Japan, whether to proceed with building the hydrogen bomb etc. were documented in detail. It is somber to read “The widespread underestimation in the West, during the first four years after the war, of Russia’s capacity to construct atom bombs within a foreseeable time is almost more astonishing than the earlier overestimation of Germany’s atomic potential.“
There were brief descriptions of the state of atomic physics research in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, particularly the work of Hahn,Joliet-Curie, Frank, Frisch, Rutherford, and Szilard. The later part of the book detailed the origin, the debate, the production and testing of the hydrogen bomb, Oppenheimer’s role in the tragedy of his friend Haakon Chevalier, and the hearing to take away the security clearance of Oppenheimer.
In the chapter on Oppenheimer, the author made the following observation about the modern-day scientist: “His remarkable admission perhaps explains why the twentieth-century Faust allows himself, in his obsession with success and despite occasional twinges of conscience, to be persuaded into signing the pact with the Devil that confronts him: What is ‘technically sweet’ he finds nothing less than irresistible”.
I found the above observation eerily similar to a recent remark former comedian Jon Stewart made on the show of comedian Stephen Colbert:
“I love scientists and they do good work. But they are going to kill us all. Here’s how I believe the world ends, and I say this to you in sincerity…….The world ends, the last words man utters are somewhere in a lab, a guy goes, huh huh, it worked.”
Comedians aside, “Brighter than a thousand suns” vividly described a unique and bitter/sweet page of human history. It should be a must read for anyone seeking to gain some understanding of the complicated modern world.
Einstein arrived in America (Source: Wikipedia)
(Source: Wikipedia)
A billboard encouraging secrecy among Oak Ridge workers (Source: Wikipedia)
(Source: Wikipedia)
The obelisk at Trinity, the remote test site in the New Mexico desert where the world’s first nuclear bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945. (Source: Wikipedia)
President Harry S. Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, establishing the United States Atomic Energy Commission. (Source: Wikipedia)
Physicists at a Manhattan District sponsored colloquium at the Los Alamos Laboratory on the Super in April 1946. In the front row are Norris Bradbury, John Manley, Enrico Fermi and J. (Jeonne) M. B. Kellogg (1905-1981), Robert Oppenheimer, in dark coat, is behind Manley, to Oppenheimer’s left is Richard Feynman. The Army Officer on the left is Colonel Oliver Haywood. (Source: Wikipedia)
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