Making of the Atomic Bomb musings

At Simon’s suggestion Peierls had written to Lindemann on June 2. Together at Oxford later in June they approached Lindemann in person. “I do not know him sufficiently well to translate his grunts correctly,” Peierls reported of the meeting.

- The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes, chapter 11, page 339.


Peierls’s observation just jumped out at me; I knew I had to blog about it. I could’ve used that phrase a dozen times about the teachers, professors, and managers I’ve known over the years. Indeed, there are probably many who could have used it describing me – still to this day.

By the way, don’t know much about Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, other than what little I’ve read so far in the book (I’m almost half-way through it). But he immediately strikes me as a direct ancestor, a straight-line predecessor, of Dr. Sheldon Cooper, if Sheldon was a self-hating Jew with decidedly left-of-center political viewpoints.

By the way, part two, the book is really starting to get interesting. We all know about the Manhattan Project, America’s (and Britain’s, to a smaller extent) effort to build the first atomic bomb. Did you also know we were racing the Germans? Yes? But did you also know – Japan had their own research into nuclear weapons? Don’t hear much about that.

The extent of the German and Japanese attempts, however, are not known to me at this point. But perhaps a follow-up post in two or three weeks might be warranted on these very intriguing facts.