Peace & War Reminiscences of a Life on the Frontiers of Science
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr
- Publish date: 04/01/1998
Serber tells movingly of his wartime experiences at Tinian Island and in Japan, in letters to his wife, Charlotte, herself a key player at Los Alamos and the only female group leader there. These letters depict simply -- almost dispassionately -- what Serber saw: the rows of iron office safes protruding from the rubble of Hiroshima; the grazing horse whose hair had been scorched on one side by the fireball but was untouched on the other; the B-29s stacked on the runway "like cars coming back to a city on a Sunday night". Serber is also eloquent about the troubles he faced as a result of his refusal to take part in public debate about the morality of his wartime work; how his opposition to rapidly developing the hydrogen bomb earned him the enmity of Edward Teller and others; how he was investigated and his security clearance challenged, several years before Oppenheimer's. Serber also recounts many previously untold stories involving Oppenheimer, Murray Gell-Mann, Ernest O. Lawrence, Edward Teller,and others.
This incisive portrait of one of the most important theoretical physicists of the 20th century brings to life the excitement of Oppenheimer's close-knit circle; the controversy of the Manhattan project; and the thrill of being present at the creation of so many pioneering discoveries, from black holes to quarks.