Peace and War [Hardcover]

Robert Serber (Author), Robert Crease (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231105460 | ISBN-13: 978-0231105460 | Publication Date: May 15, 1998 0

A prominent member of the Manhattan Project, Robert Serber was one of a team of scientists who assembled the bombs on Tinina Island for transport to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was also one of the first Americans to walk among the Japanese ruins after the catastrophe. This revealing self portrait is the story of Serber's life before, during, and after World War II.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Nonphysicists will find parts of this fascinating memoir unintelligible, but that should not be a deterrent. Seber, one of the most important theoretical physicists of this century, was a key member of the Manhattan Project, which developed the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War ll. He was also a close friend of Robert Oppenheimer. His memoir is replete with stories and anecdotes about physics, physicists, and his own personal life, though it is his wartime experiences that will likely generate the most interest here. One of the first people to view the damage caused by the bombs, he describes what he saw in letters to his wife, Charlotte. Serber's style is very matter of fact no matter what he is discussing, and though one wishes he had elaborated on certain aspects of his life and relationships, it is the science of physics that dominates his recollections. Historian Crease provides an excellent introduction, putting Serber and his work into the context of the times. Serber died in June 1997. Highly recommended for science collections.AKate Kelly, Treadwell Lib., Massachusetts General Hosp., Boston
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This is a thoroughly fascinating memoir by one of the principal scientists in the Manhattan Project. The late Serber calculated the critical mass for the uranium bomb and designed its gun-type detonation mechanism. After Nagasaki, he surveyed the destruction, deducing from burnt crates and crushed gas cans the explosive parameters of the bomb. The laconic acuity with which he recalls his part in the nuclear drama is this memoir's hallmark and also applies to his remarks about the quirks of famous physicists he worked with. His characteristic style is dry understatement: having briefed Paul Dirac on his research, the young Serber "braced for his comments. [Dirac] said, `Where is the nearest post office?'" Regrettably, Serber, a close friend of Oppenheimer's, is not very expansive about Oppenheimer's charismatic and complicated personality; in any event, Serber felt no guilt over working on the bomb, as Oppenheimer eventually did. This absorbing and pithy memoir will appeal to fans of Richard Rhodes' classic The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1987). Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (May 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231105460
• ISBN-13: 978-0231105460
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,060,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A life at the frontiers..., May 18, 2006

By 

Ashutosh Jogalekar "Sciencecat" (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Peace and War (Hardcover)

Robert Serber's definitive quality is understatement. Even the opening line of his book starts with the mundane "I was born on..." His style may seem to point to a manifestly boring book. It is only when one knows the importance of the ages which he lived through, that one realizes that Serber does not need to exaggerate or dramatize anything he says. The most noteworthy achievements are those which simply need to be stated, never eloquently dramatized. And Serber's life, his times, and his achievements are all more than noteworthy.
Robert Serber is not a name known to even most enthusiasts of science and history. But consider the major events of his life; childhood spent in Philadelphia, PhD. with Nobel Laureate John Van Vleck, post doctoral studies and a lifelong friendship with J. Robert Oppenheimer, time spent at Los Alamos as one of the primary participants in the Manhattan project, work on the hydrogen bomb, teaching and research at Berkeley, Illinois, and Columbia, and a life devoted to science, teaching, and scholarship. No wonder Serber does not need to overstate things. His words and observations do the talking and dramatization. And yet there is warmth, compassion and appreciation in his words, which may be subtle, but which are nonetheless an important ingredient of his writing.

This downplaying of major events and times is a characteristic that is not just a style of writing, but an inherent part of Serber's personality. The austere physicist from Philadelphia with a steel-trap mind liked to be a detached observer. He preferred to be a scribe who would record events for posterity. He describes some of the most important and personal events in his life, including tragic ones, with unblinking objectivity. Even though he participated in some of the earth shattering (pun intended) events in twentieth century history, his narration of those times reads like a journalistic account, with scant editorial comment. But this does not make the matter any less interesting, as his detached position gave Serber a clear mind and an attention to detail, that others would lack because of their impassioned involvement. Flowing smoothly with the narration is a dry and understated sense of humor, and unconventional observations on politics, scientists, and society.
Serber's main achievements were building the atomic bomb, and more importantly, being part of a unique mission to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a few months after the bombs were dropped. His job was to take readings, make measurements, and in general document the general destruction the bombs had wrought.

Serber lived in a unique age and time, possibly the most important period in the history of American physics, when the American scientific establishment was burgeoning and assimilating resources that would launch it into the front rank of world science and technology. He was also lucky to be at the right place at the right time, and brilliant enough to be sought by the leading theorists of the century, many of who were Nobel laureates. After growing up in Philadelphia, he obtained his PhD. at the University of Wisconsin with John Van Vleck, a future Nobel laureate known for his pioneering studies of magnetism. After Wisconsin, Serber received a National Research Council fellowship, one among only five awarded every year during Depression times, to study physics at the institution of his choice. He planned to work with Eugene Wigner at Princeton, another future Nobel laureate. But fate intervened when Serber attended the then famous summer physics school at the University of Michigan. At Ann Arbor, Serber heard J. Robert Oppenheimer lecture; "His mind was so quick and his speech was so fluent, that he dominated almost every gathering". Serber was so taken with `Oppie', that he decided to change plans and drive west to Berkeley instead, where Oppenheimer had created the greatest school of theoretical physics in the United States. A measure of Oppenheimer's influence can be gleaned from the fact that, among the five NRC fellows throughout the country that year, three chose to work with him.

At Berkeley, Serber quickly became Oppie's closest associate and worked with a dozen of his students, who would go on to become important scientists themselves. Those were Depression times, and Serber describes how he and Oppie's students were introduced to an unfamiliar way of life, wining and dining with the theorist, and acquiring his erudite tastes in literature, poetry, and art. Some of Serber's most important papers were coauthored with Oppenheimer, and he became Oppie's close friend and research associate. He says that his role was to act as translator for Oppie, and explain to students what the master really meant. Once in a while, Serber and his wife and Oppie the bachelor would catch a movie or dinner across the San Francisco bay, and then work late into the night with Beethoven's string quartets playing in the background. The lover of metaphysical poetry, and the quiet, unassuming student, made a fine pair. In summers, Serber and his wife Charlotte would drive to Oppie's ranch in the New Mexico mountains and mesas, where horse back riding was the norm for traveling. Late in the 1930s, Serber moved to the University of Illinois, where he taught for three years. Then of course, war broke out.

Oppenheimer invited Serber to join the atomic bomb project, and Serber was part of the elite group of theoreticians who Oppenheimer assembled in the summer of 1942, to work out basic bomb theory. These luminaries included Hans Bethe and Edward Teller. Serber recalls the stimulating discussions in the summer heat, involving calculations on whether the bomb would set the earth's atmosphere on fire.

At Los Alamos, Serber's most important initial job was to give a set of lectures that would indoctrinate the new, brilliant recruits with the basics of nuclear fission and bomb physics. Despite the impediment of a slight, lifelong lisp, the young theoretician lectured with authority to people like Enrico Fermi, irreverent Richard Feynman, and a dozen other Nobel laureates. These lectures were written up and declassified after the war, and in 1992, were published with Richard Rhodes as a co-author, as the Los Alamos primer. A PDF version is available here.

Serber's group did important work on the implosion method for the plutonium bomb. Unlike some other participants, Serber does not leave a record of having participated in discussions about the moral implications of the bomb. He was the scribe, and he let the leaders do the talking and equivocation.

Probably the most important part of the book concerns Serber's trip to Japan right after the bombs were dropped. His job was to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and document the damage done by this new force of nature, as well as collect samples. During that period, he wrote dozens of letters to his wife, and these letters paint an evocative picture of the period, his thoughts, and his observations. It is possibly the only time in the book, when he lets himself indulge in some emotion and awe; both of a nation almost completely destroyed by war, and of the incredible power of the new weapon which he had helped to create. He documents little amusing incidents of island life, and his descriptions give us a flavour of the life of American soldiers and civilians scattered on those little islands in the Pacific, who had been fighting for their life against a desperate and almost fanatical enemy. He also narrates the brutal destruction that had been inflicted in turn by Curtis LeMay's incessant strategic bombing, which killed many more civilians than the atomic bombs (about 2.5 million)

After the war, Serber lived a relatively quiet life, first teaching at Berkeley, then finally moving to New York to teach at Columbia. About ten percent of his book is devoted to non-mathematical, but technical descriptions of his work in nuclear physics with Oppenheimer, and at Berkeley and Columbia. These accounts can easily be skipped by uninterested readers.

Serber's characteristic understatement sometimes hides emotion and sentiments. It's a little amusing, when he recounts incidents like a colleague propositioning his wife, with nothing more than a one line objective description. Apparently, after a party, the colleague led Charlotte into the nearby woods, and made a pass at her. When she refused, he asked her why (!) Charlotte, as austere as her husband, quietly pointed to the ground and replied, "Poison oak"

There is one time when you cannot help but feel that this man is trying to hide his pain and sadness under the guise of journalistic reporting. In 1967, the man who had brought Serber into the mainstream of American physics, and who had been a guiding light for physics and conscience in America, died. Serber planned to deliver a eulogy for Robert Oppenheimer's memorial service, but characteristically, he refrained after his wife told him that he was not good at doing these things. Later in the same year, Serber's wife committed suicide from depression. If there is one person whose name appears in Serber's account even more than his own, it is his wife Charlotte's. Serber does not need to say that his wife was a very important and constant presence in his life. It is quite obvious; the two had been together through every phase of his life since graduate school, and she had been a lifelong companion in every sense of the term, participating in his adventures, and having an important say in his life. Even though Serber does not devote a single sentence to describing how he felt after the incident, again, he does not need to. His wife's unflinching support of him is evident throughout the book, and one cannot help feel somber and sad, even while reading this apparently most detached of accounts.
Later, Serber... Read more ›

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating story by a nuclear pioneer, May 5, 1999

By 

Stephen M. St Onge "Stephen M. St. Onge" (Mpls, MN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Peace and War (Hardcover)

Robert Serber was J. Robert Oppenheimer's student, friend, and first recruit for the atomic bomb laboratory at Los Alamos. Serber recounts this, as well as the most of the rest of his life, in an engaging informal style. I wish he'd been a little more forthcoming about his and Oppenheimer's politics, but even the little bit he tells adds vital new information to these subjects. He also recaptures how the A-bomb project looked to people who were AT WAR, who actually had to choose between killing the enemy and letting their countrymen be killed. Highly Recommended.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful, readable, 1st-hand account of 20th-C. physics., April 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Peace and War (Hardcover)

Serber, one of the most important and influential physicists of this century, tells it all. His perceptive and candid accounts of Los Alamos, Hiroshima, and US physics before and after WWII is amongst the best I have ever read. Of particular interest are a series of transcribed letters Serber and his wife exchanged while Serber was leading a group to Japan to study the effects of the bombs. These original accounts of his first impressions, untempered by decades of reflection, alone make this book worth reading. Any scientist, historian or well-read person will enjoy and learn from Serber's reminiscences.