Customer Reviews

Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists

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Robert Jungk went to a lot of trouble to interview as many people as possible who'd worked on the A-bomb, and produced this well written history of the Manhatten Project. It's a bit dated, but if I had to recommend three books on this subject, this would be one of them (the others would be Richard Rhode's THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB and Lillian Hoddeson's CRITICAL ASSEMBLY). There's interesting information in here I haven't read anywhere else, and I've read over a dozen books on the Manhatten Project.

While an easy to read book, Jungk presents some false information that depreciates the value of the book.

The first is the impression that Von Weisacker and other German scientists attempted to give to the post war world, that they were not really trying to build a bomb, but were merely interested in nuclear power. This is refuted by Jeremy Bernstein, in his book "Hitler's Uranium Club." The historical record shows that there were many memorandums sent to the German Military, by the scientists, about the possibility of producing an atomic bomb.

The more serious misstatement however, is about Klaus Fuchs' espionage on the Manhattan Project which was the most damaging espionage committed by any of the atomic spies of that era. Jungk claims that Fuchs decided to spy for the Soviet Union when he learned about plans to bomb Hiroshima. This is so off base that one has to question Jungk's scholarship or motives. Here is why: Fuchs began spying for the Soviets in 1941 in Britain, before Pearl Harbor and before there was even a Manhattan Project. The decision to acutally bomb Hiroshima was made in 1945. None of the scientists know what the targets were.

This is such a huge distortion of the facts that it should be mentioned in any review of this book. The book has lots of details but if you buy it, beware of some of the downright distortions of history. A better choice is Richard Rhodes's book, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb".

This book was written nearly 50 years ago in the 1950's, so naturally some of the stories are incomplete with todays hindsight, but I wish I'd read this book 20 years ago. It is extremely well written, and full of fascinating anecdotes. Although I am familiar with many of the characters & stories, there was something new for me in every chapter, for example the insights into Oppenheimer in Germany before WWII. It would be wonderful if a revised version could be published incorporating the story of the Soviet Atom Scientists.

An extraordinary book. The story of the University in a small town of Goettingen, and the amazing characters who gravitate there to learn physics. This part on its own, prior to the Manhatten project is an exciting reading. Both the atmosphere of the German University and the characters of the students, inluding the "fathers" of nuclear and thermonuclear bombs, Oppenheimer and Teller, are very well described and vivid. Easy and interesting description of the foundations of physics behind the nuclear weapons. Actually that was my favorite part. The story of the Manhatten project is done very well. The book was powerful enough to affect me to become a physisist - 35 years ago. I am happy to see that it is still in print. Good reading for any age, but especially highly recommended for those who are chosing a profession and are too bright to go to a Medical School.

Recently, in theatres in London and New York, the public was treated to the drama "Copenhagen," by British playwright Michael Frayn, and it revisited the theme of this now old book. The play was about a visit in September 1941 by the then young German physicist Werner Heisenberg to his mentor and dear friend Niels Bohr in Nazi-occupied Denmark. So a detail in a bigger picture, but still a key detail!

The wider subject of Robert Jungk's book is a biographical sketch of the pioneers in nuclear physics, the individual scientist who built the atomic bomb (the time before Hiroshima and Nagasaki), or whose theories were instrumental. The debate about the history, the science, and its implications of the nuclear bomb started after World War II, and it is important to remember that nuclear scientists worked on both sides of this conflicts. Now with hindsight, the Cold War, and nuclear proliferation have taken centre stage, but back in 1956 when Robert Jungk's book first appeared, World War II was still casting a big shadow on events and on the debate about nuclear deterrence. In my opinion Robert Jungk's book was one of the first serious attempts at a general account on what was clearly a watershed in history, a series of events that are shaping our lives even today. Since 1956, Robert Jungk's book was reprinted many times, and many more related books appeared.

Jungk's book is interesting in that it paints a vivid portrait of such scientists as Robert Oppenheimer, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and other leading physicists at the time, and on both sides of that conflict.

What is interesting now is to view Robert Jungk's book in the light of Michael Frayn's play, and especially in light of newly released papers on the Niels Bohr archives in 2002, following the wide attention given to Michael Frayn's version of the 1941 meeting in Copenhagen. The 2002 addition to Niels Bohr's archives is a deposit comprising documents either dictated or written by Niels Bohr referring to what was said at the fateful 1941 meeting.

Michael Frayn's play makes it clear that the two Bohr and Heisenberg were very close both scientifically and personally, and that the 1941 meeting changed all of that. Both men were devastated!

Heisenberg was a leading scientific advisor to the German government in post WWII Europe; and yet he spent the rest of his life attempting to put his spin on his war work; his work on a nuclear bomb for Hitler, or perhaps rather denying these efforts. Niels Bohr who died in 1962 had been extraordinarily tight lipped about his meeting with Heisenberg in 1941. So while the newly released letters supplement and confirm previously published statements of Bohr's recollections of the meeting, especially those of his son, Aage Bohr, this part of the story is not well known, and especially not to Robert Jungk. The letters are from Niels Bohr to Heisenberg, and they are interesting for many reasons, not least of which is that they were never mailed, and so their contents were never known to Heisenbrg. Quoting from one of Bohr's letters to Heisenberg: "--- I think that I owe it to you to tell you that I am greatly amazed to see how much your memory has deceived you in your letter to the author [Robert Jungk] of the book ["Brighter than a thousand suns"],---." Review by Palle Jorgensen, July 2006.

Robert Jungk’s Brighter than a Thousand Suns encompasses one of the most recent subjects in Physics, Atomic Energy. He begins by describing the Environment the most prominent physicists were educated in, Gottingen University in Germany, although an insight into the lives of these emerging physicists was well depicted, I felt that it was little too much background information and not enough explanations of the developments these budding physicists generated. The pattern of excessive background information seems to continue throughout the book, but there is much valuable information to be had throughout the book. The book covers everything from the plethora of atomic physicists sprouting after the First World War to the Manhattan Project and J. Robert Oppenheimer’s trial that removed him from his lofty position at the head of America’s Atomic Energy Commission. This book presents good information, but it is not very accessible as it was written by a German Physicist and later translated into English, and an immense interest in the topic is required to appreciate it.

I read this as a follow up to 'the making of the Atomic Bomb'. It didn't just rehash what I had already read. Lot's of fresh material and interesting insights.

It was shear chance that I came across this book in the library. I have read it twice already and I think I will buy it. Definitely a collectors item for those who are even half as interested as I am in the facts about the bomb and the world war.

Originally published in German in 1956. Some English universities recommended this in the 1960s as general reading. First English translation 1958. It covers events up to the claimed Soviet nuclear H bomb, and the 'Lucky Dragon' incident of supposed irradiated Japanese fishermen. Jungk was apparently a Berlin Jew, born 1913, who studied European classics and got a PhD in 'modern European history' - presumably on Europe since the French Revolution.

I reread this to try to disentangle mythology from truth. Jungk, as might be guessed, says virtually nothing about the science or technology - or mistakes. There is (for example) no account of separation of U235; no account of why 'heavy water' might be important, or how it's isolated; no account even of where uranium was mined. Jungk says in effect that radioactive poison can now be made more or less indefinitely - but this seems not true since the supply of neutrons seemed/seems fixed by the amount of uranium mined. Jungk made little attempt to check anything, though there are a few letters to him from physicists.

Jungk's main attitude is rather awestruck reverence in quotation - for example, a Japanese physicist is quoted as saying only an atomic bomb could do this. (Wrong, in fact). All his judgments of the competence of physicists are second-hand. This approach tends not to work: for example, Jungk says hugely detailed calculations were needed. (He doesn't say what they were and in fact one has to wonder whether it's true - but I suppose if computers then resembled pocket calculators, well, they would be of some use). But if the need for elaborate calculations is true, how come the measured blast from explosions was supposed to be far greater than estimated?

Unfortunately Jungk is also uncritical as regards the political material: as an example there's a whole section on Oppenheimer's fall, but although the type of building, sofa, characters of the interviewee/interrogators, weather, tone of voice, taste in poetry, etc etc are detailed, it's not made clear what he was charged with - let alone of course how serious the charges were. He accepts all World War 2 mythology - on for example Pearl Harbor. He does not take the cost of the operation very seriously.

Sometimes he gets things right - his account of Groves is convincing, for example. So is his belief that the US Navy wanted to get in on the act - hence Bikini. His accounts of security and control of information sound right. The preponderance of 'foreigners' was acknowledged at the time - this may be a codeword for Jews, though Jungk barely mentions this.

An appendix is the 'Franck Report' to I think Stimson. This is full of comment on dangers of nuclear weapons, proliferation, treaties, control, and so on. Astonishingly, this was dated a few months before the first test, at night, in a remote country area, ten miles from observers, with full military secrecy! They had a lot to lose if their huge funding was found not to work.

**There is a very good account of Goettingen [should be o umlaut] University in its great days, mostly of course taken from other sources. Read it and weep over modern times.

I read this book in the 1960s but misplaced my copy. I had such good memories of the book that I bought it in order to read it again.