II.
Oliphant and his British sponsors knew that if they could convince Lawrence of the feasibility of a bomb, Lawrence would grab
hold of the idea and push it relentlessly in American scientific circles, while leaving the political ramifications to others.
They thought Lawrence would get it done without asking too many questions. And although Lawrence was quite clearly a political
naïf, they had chosen just the right man.
The relationship between Britain and America was growing closer when Oliphant traveled to Berkeley in late September 1941.
Though still a nonbelligerent, the United States was far from neutral. Its sympathies lay with the hard-pressed British, who
had survived a Nazi aerial blitz the previous summer. In the fall of 1940 the Roosevelt administration had transferred fifty
destroyers to Britain in return for U.S. rights to build bases in British possessions in the Caribbean and the western Atlantic,
and Congress had passed the first peacetime military draft in American history. In the spring of 1941 direct Lend-Lease aid
to Britain began. The United States was edging toward war on the side of Britain.
On Sunday, September 21, 1941, Lawrence picked up Oliphant at the San Francisco train station in his car and drove up into
the green hills above the Berkeley campus, where the magnet for his giant new 184-inch cyclotron was being erected on the
summit of Charter Hill. It was a beautiful autumn day and far below, beyond the gardens and lawns of Berkeley, the bridges
of San Francisco Bay shone in the sun. Lawrence’s driving petrified Oliphant. Pressing the accelerator to the floor and keeping
his face turned toward his passenger, Lawrence threw the car forward in jerks and spasms, swaying from one side of the twisting
dirt road to the other, cutting corners at full speed, paying no heed to other cars as they passed.
Nervously gripping the door handle, Oliphant told Lawrence about Frisch and Peierls’s calculation that a bomb could be made
with just a few kilograms of U-235, and about the methods under study in Britain for separating the isotope from natural uranium.
Lawrence was deeply impressed by the serious view of British scientists not only that atomic bombs were quite possible but
that Nazi Germany might be working on the problem. He suggested the possibility of extracting U-235 through electromagnetic
separation using his new 184-inch cyclotron. He began to describe to Oliphant a fantastic vision of gigantic laboratories
and industrial complexes, armies of specially trained scientists and arsenals of newly invented tools and instruments, his
voice rising with excitement. It was a contagious exuberance that overwhelmed doubt and drowned all sense of reality in a
flood of buoyant optimism. When Lawrence was talking, it was impossible not to fall under the almost hypnotic spell of his
enthusiasm—he even convinced himself. Here was something big enough, Oliphant thought, for Lawrence’s talents and ambition.
That other physicists might find such a vision fantastic would only spur him to prove them wrong.
Lawrence immediately put his Rad Lab staff to work. A chemist at the Rad Lab, Glenn Seaborg, had recently hit upon the discovery
that neutrons absorbed by U-238 transformed uranium into a heavier element—plutonium—that also was fissionable by slow neutrons.
This was an accidental but important discovery, just like fission had been. Not only could plutonium be made in a chain-reacting
pile, but it was a different chemical element, not just another isotope of uranium, and could therefore be separated from
U-238 through a comparatively easier and less expensive process than U-235. Lawrence reasoned that plutonium might supplement
U-235 as a source for atomic bombs.
In the fall of 1941—a time when the war was going very badly for Hitler’s enemies—Lawrence instructed Rad Lab scientists to
convert the cyclotrons for use in the electromagnetic
Oliphant and his British sponsors knew that if they could convince Lawrence of the feasibility of a bomb, Lawrence would grab
hold of the idea and push it relentlessly in American scientific circles, while leaving the political ramifications to others.
They thought Lawrence would get it done without asking too many questions. And although Lawrence was quite clearly a political
naïf, they had chosen just the right man.
The relationship between Britain and America was growing closer when Oliphant traveled to Berkeley in late September 1941.
Though still a nonbelligerent, the United States was far from neutral. Its sympathies lay with the hard-pressed British, who
had survived a Nazi aerial blitz the previous summer. In the fall of 1940 the Roosevelt administration had transferred fifty
destroyers to Britain in return for U.S. rights to build bases in British possessions in the Caribbean and the western Atlantic,
and Congress had passed the first peacetime military draft in American history. In the spring of 1941 direct Lend-Lease aid
to Britain began. The United States was edging toward war on the side of Britain.
On Sunday, September 21, 1941, Lawrence picked up Oliphant at the San Francisco train station in his car and drove up into
the green hills above the Berkeley campus, where the magnet for his giant new 184-inch cyclotron was being erected on the
summit of Charter Hill. It was a beautiful autumn day and far below, beyond the gardens and lawns of Berkeley, the bridges
of San Francisco Bay shone in the sun. Lawrence’s driving petrified Oliphant. Pressing the accelerator to the floor and keeping
his face turned toward his passenger, Lawrence threw the car forward in jerks and spasms, swaying from one side of the twisting
dirt road to the other, cutting corners at full speed, paying no heed to other cars as they passed.
Nervously gripping the door handle, Oliphant told Lawrence about Frisch and Peierls’s calculation that a bomb could be made
with just a few kilograms of U-235, and about the methods under study in Britain for separating the isotope from natural uranium.
Lawrence was deeply impressed by the serious view of British scientists not only that atomic bombs were quite possible but
that Nazi Germany might be working on the problem. He suggested the possibility of extracting U-235 through electromagnetic
separation using his new 184-inch cyclotron. He began to describe to Oliphant a fantastic vision of gigantic laboratories
and industrial complexes, armies of specially trained scientists and arsenals of newly invented tools and instruments, his
voice rising with excitement. It was a contagious exuberance that overwhelmed doubt and drowned all sense of reality in a
flood of buoyant optimism. When Lawrence was talking, it was impossible not to fall under the almost hypnotic spell of his
enthusiasm—he even convinced himself. Here was something big enough, Oliphant thought, for Lawrence’s talents and ambition.
That other physicists might find such a vision fantastic would only spur him to prove them wrong.
Lawrence immediately put his Rad Lab staff to work. A chemist at the Rad Lab, Glenn Seaborg, had recently hit upon the discovery
that neutrons absorbed by U-238 transformed uranium into a heavier element—plutonium—that also was fissionable by slow neutrons.
This was an accidental but important discovery, just like fission had been. Not only could plutonium be made in a chain-reacting
pile, but it was a different chemical element, not just another isotope of uranium, and could therefore be separated from
U-238 through a comparatively easier and less expensive process than U-235. Lawrence reasoned that plutonium might supplement
U-235 as a source for atomic bombs.
In the fall of 1941—a time when the war was going very badly for Hitler’s enemies—Lawrence instructed Rad Lab scientists to
convert the cyclotrons for use in the electromagnetic
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