Customer Reviews

Robert Oppenheimer (The Los Almos Story, 2)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Bacher died just a few months ago, at a very old age. He and Hans Bethe (who also died recently) were some of the last luminaries left from the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. This book, which was produced with the assistance of the Los Alamos Historical Society, is his biography of Oppenheimer, who directed the Lab during the War.

The book gives numerous personal anecdotes of Oppenheimer, including after the war. But it is perhaps the war years that will attract the most interest.

The book's technical accuracy is also excellent. Many biographies of scientists that you might read are written by people who often have at most an undergraduate degree in those fields. So sometimes the scientific explanations might be slightly off. But Bacher was a top physicist, and the technical observations in the book are spot on. At Los Alamos, Bacher headed the engineers, who actually built the bombs, while Fermi headed the scientists. Bacher reported directly to Oppenheimer.

Bacher is renowned for one impressive achievement. (Amongst others.) In 1945, when the hemispheres of fissile material were made (each half a critical mass), it was found that they were too large to fit into the bomb casings. It was too late in the war to redo the casings. So Bacher held each hemisphere in his gloved hands ("It felt warm") and lathed it down until it fitted into the casings. He probably remains the only human being to have ever done so.

This book was a major disappointment after just having read two dozen books on the Manhattan Project, beginning with "109 E. Palace", "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes and including "American Prometheus" "Day of Trinity" "Oppenheimer Shatterer of Worlds" and "The Manhattan Project" by Kelly.