![]() Lawrence also invented a color TV system that was eventually incorporated into Sony’s Trinitron technology. It was due to his influence that UC was awarded the contract to run Los Alamos after the war, which it still holds, albeit with somewhat diminished authority. Lawrence’s skill at explaining complex scientific principles in lay terms kept him in the public eye via radio talks and newspaper articles and helped him attract millions of dollars in foundation and government funding for his Radiation Laboratory - the “Rad Lab” - at UC Berkeley. 1, 1937, over the caption “He creates and destroys,” and won the Nobel Prize in 1939. The inventor of the cyclotron, the most important atom-smasher of its era and the invention that transformed particle physics in the 1930s, Lawrence was featured on the cover of Time magazine on Nov. Before and during the war, the South Dakota native was the most famous and influential scientist in America - arguably the first home-grown scientific celebrity in American history. Lawrence sealed the deal for his friend by promising Groves that if Oppenheimer failed in his task, he would take it over himself.Ī few words about Ernest Lawrence. Lawrence, who at that time was a close friend of Oppenheimer, his valued colleague at UC Berkeley - he named his first son Robert after Oppenheimer - assuaged Groves’ concerns about Oppenheimer’s leftist politics and lack of a Nobel Prize. Oppenheimer was Groves’ second choice, but he turned to Lawrence for assurance that Oppenheimer could effectively run the bomb lab. He originally wanted Lawrence to run the lab that was eventually built at Los Alamos, but decided Lawrence was too important to be limited to the bomb-designing task. ![]() Lawrence was the scientist whose advice Groves trusted the most. Though Groves was the overall boss, the project’s scientific management was divided, rather tetchily, between Lawrence and Arthur Holly Compton of the University of Chicago. Its job was to actually build the bomb, drawing on the research of labs at Columbia, the University of Chicago and Berkeley. Oppenheimer was merely the boss of Los Alamos, one of the project’s numerous separate labs and technical installations. (Matt Damon would have had to put on at least 50 or 60 pounds to more accurately impersonate Groves, who tipped the scales at nearly 300 pounds.) The most glaring historical gaffe is the film’s perpetuation of the myth that Oppenheimer was the boss of the Manhattan Project it shows him assuring Gen. Bush - who is played by Matthew Modine - vociferously contradicted the story. ![]() Business Column: 75 years ago today, the Trinity A-Bomb test ushered in the era of nuclear warfareħ5 years ago today, an a-bomb test in the New Mexico desert launched the nuclear ageīut the film doesn’t cover Alvarez’s resentful and damaging testimony in the Oppenheimer security hearing, during which he claimed to have heard Vannevar Bush, the top science advisor to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, reveal that Truman had not trusted Oppenheimer. ![]()
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