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Bird of passage: Recollections of a physicist

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For Rudolf Peierls, an optimist is a person who believes the future is uncertain.

His autobiography contains first hand information on the characters of 3 generations of physicists (e.g., Klaus Fuchs, Edward Teller or Robert Oppenheimer). It is full of anecdotes, also about his personal life and his family, which was confronted with 2 world wars and racism in Nazi Germany and other countries. As an `alien enemy' or an `undesirable' he had problems to obtain visas.

Apparently, he was a brilliant teacher, who focused on general knowledge of theoretical physics, because it widened the range of jobs open to his students and enabled them to do their job better.

In his research he found that the hardest thing to do was to ask the right questions.

But probably he will be best remembered as a collaborator in the `Manhattan District' project under R. Oppenheimer.

His evaluation of his atom bomb work is perfectly clear: he was too optimistic. As a scientist, he saw `the ease with which the atomic bomb could be used'. He thought that `the American authorities were reasonable and intelligent people, and would make responsible decisions', like `drop a bomb on a sparsely populated area to show its effects.'

On the question if scientists should have refrained from working on the bomb, his answer is that a strike was unrealistic. The bomb would in any case sooner or later be developed by someone.

Fighting against the misuse of science, Rudolf Peierls became chairman of the now defunct Pugwash Conference whose aim was avoidance of nuclear war (see also C. Djerassi). He received a great shock when R. Oppenheimer was condemned for `grave defects of character' during the McCarthy witch hunt.

This book is the expression of a true humanist. It is a must read for all those interested in the history of mankind, and of science in particular.

Nevertheless, one needs to have a solid basic knowledge of physics in order to understand it completely.