Man of the Hour

by Jennet Conant

  Conant also maneuvered to have two trusted chemists—William Lewis and George Kistiakowsky—placed on Compton’s committee. Because Bush felt bound to respect the military’s security protocols, he imposed a strict policy of compartmentalization on his wartime agency, which meant no one—scientist, engineer, or technician—was allowed more information than necessary for the performance of his or her task. The atmosphere of secrecy was such that Conant had been unable to confer with Kistiakowsky, who in the last year had turned himself into the NDRC’s explosives expert, about what he had learned from Lindemann. Now he brought his friend up to speed. Kisty was already familiar with the research work on separating uranium-235. “When I retailed to him the idea that a bomb could be made by the rapid assembly of two masses of fissionable material,” Conant recalled, the Russian émigré looked dubious. “It would seem a difficult undertaking on a battlefield,” he replied—his attitude, Conant noted, like his own—every bit that of a “doubting Thomas.”

  A few weeks later, when they met again, Kistiakowsky’s doubts had vanished. “It can be made to work,” he reported with certainty. After reviewing the principles of the method, he was “one hundred percent sold.” Like Lawrence, Kistiakowsky argued that if a wartime bomb was within reach, they had to find out as fast as possible. He, too, had heard that German physicists at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute were hard at work on uranium for military purposes, and was making an independent study of the status of their research for Alfred Loomis. Conant had “complete faith” in Kistiakowsky’s judgment, and allowed himself to be converted by his urgent affirmative. Conscious of the responsibility that came with being chairman of the NDRC, however, he decided to keep his “reversal in attitude” to himself. He would wait for Compton’s final recommendation.

  In Conant’s view, even “more significant” support for the prospects of a bomb came from the British. Two leading German physicists, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, working in England after having fled the Nazis’ anti-Jewish campaign, authored a highly influential memorandum confirming the feasibility of an atomic bomb and the force of its explosion. As a weapon, they argued, the bomb would be “practically irresistible,” and they urged their colleagues to develop a similar device, if only as a “counterthreat.” Instead of being measured in tons, as Bohr and all the other leading investigators had calculated previously, they estimated that the “critical mass”—the minimum material necessary for a self-sustaining chain reaction—of pure uranium-235 could be measured in pounds, not only making a bomb achievable but also making the cost of a plant to produce the explosive insignificant compared with the cost of the war. “We have now concluded,” they stated in their report, “that it will be possible to make an effective uranium bomb which, containing some 25 lb of active material, would be equivalent as regards destructive effect of 1,800 tons of T.N.T.”

  Frisch and Peierls convinced their own secret uranium committee, operating under the code name MAUD, that a weapon of that size could be carried in a number of existing aircraft and would result in an explosion of “unprecedented violence.”I The MAUD Report—which Briggs received in March and unaccountably locked in a safe without showing to anyone—favored purifying uranium though the method of gaseous diffusion, a process by which gaseous uranium was forced through fine mesh barriers, eventually separating the lighter U-235 from the heavier U-238. But the magnitude of the operation, and the investment—estimated at $25 million—virtually prohibited the British from undertaking the work. They urged the Americans to take it on, arguing that the evidence was sufficient to “justify the scheme being strongly pressed.”

  “With the news from Britain unofficially in hand,” Conant recalled in a detailed chronicle of the project’s beginnings he made for his own records, “it became clear to the director of the OSRD and the chairman of the NDRC that a major push along the lines outlined was in order.” Bush took the first step, Conant noted, and during July had a discussion with Vice President Henry Wallace “about the question of spending a large amount of government money on the uranium program.”

  In August Mark Oliphant, director of physics at England’s University of Birmingham, flew across the Atlantic in an unheated bomber on radar business and to make “discreet inquiries” as to why the United States had not begun that push based on the MAUD Report. Although he knew that America did not share England’s sense of urgency about the war, Oliphant was “amazed and distressed” to learn that Briggs had buried the report. He raised the issue over dinner with Conant in Washington and then in a brief meeting with Bush, who did not respond well to pressure tactics and spared him only twenty minutes. Neither of the OSRD leaders let on they knew all about the findings in the MAUD Report. “Gossip among nuclear scientists on forbidden subjects,” was how Conant characterized Oliphant’s unofficial pleading for more zealous action. But he later credited the vocal British scientist with helping to change the direction of the American atomic effort, listing him first among the “all-out advocates of a head-on attack on the uranium problem.”

  A few weeks later, Conant traveled to Chicago, where he and Lawrence were to receive honorary degrees as part of the University of Chicago’s fiftieth anniversary celebration. He had been invited to stay at Arthur Compton’s home while in town and, rather to his annoyance, found himself subjected to an “involuntary conference” on the atomic bomb, with Lawrence as the surprise guest speaker. So on a cool September evening, he sat in front of the fireplace in Compton’s living room, sipping coffee and listening to the two make a passionate case for pressing ahead with the development of the bomb.

  Lawrence was especially upbeat about the latest results from England. He was certain that an atom bomb could be made using only a few kilograms of fissionable material, either uranium-235 or plutonium, the new chemical element discovered in his lab. He supported all the experimental methods for extracting these elements—Harold Urey’s gaseous and thermal diffusion separation at Columbia, Jesse Beams’s centrifuge experiments at the University of Virginia, and his own, expensive magnetic separation—arguing that pressing forward on these processes was a matter of critical importance. The more Lawrence talked, the more worked up he got. The Germans had access to the same theoretical data, and there was every reason to believe they were already working along the same lines. Imagine the consequences to the world if they succeeded!

  Conant had heard the rumors of a Nazi bomb program before—usually from physicists lobbying for more funding—and was inclined to discount them. Still, he could not rule them out altogether. “Though the factual evidence was slight,” he recalled, “the terrifying thought that the Nazis might make an atomic bomb within the next year or two could not be shoved aside.” Sensing Conant’s skepticism, Compton rallied to Lawrence’s side. He confirmed his interpretation of the new scientific findings indicating the “practical feasibility” of a bomb, and provided estimates of its destructive power. He echoed Lawrence’s concerns that the Germans had embarked on their own major atomic program, arguing they would not have done so in the midst of a war unless they believed they might succeed. “We just [cannot] afford to let the Nazis beat us to the making of atomic weapons,” Compton insisted. It would be “inviting disaster.”

  Conant played his characteristic devil’s advocate role and tried to poke holes in their argument. Finally satisfied, he agreed that prudence dictated they do everything possible to prevent the enemy from achieving the bomb first, allowing Compton and Lawrence to believe their arguments had brought him around. Acknowledging that he had long been of the opinion that the uranium project should be dropped from the crowded wartime agenda, Conant admitted he now thought there was a reasonable chance of producing something militarily useful for the war in progress. “If such a weapon is going to be made, we must do it first,” he told them. “We can’t afford not to. But I am here to tell you,” he said flatly, “nothing significant will happen on such a job as this unless we get into it with everything we’ve got.”

  Hav
ing sat through Lawrence’s fervent lecture on how it was vital that the nation’s scientific talent be focused on the uranium project, Conant put his big talk to the test by asking if he was prepared to step up. “Ernest, you say you are convinced of the importance of these fission bombs,” he said, turning his laser focus on the forty-year-old Berkeley physicist, who, in addition to his war work, was directing an ambitious program of research on his giant cyclotron. “Are you ready to devote the next several years of your life to getting them made?”

  The question brought up Lawrence with a start. For a few seconds, he sat staring at Conant, his mouth half open. Compton could almost see the giant brain whirring, calculating the consequences of such a huge commitment. Lawrence hesitated for only a moment before replying, “If you tell me this is my job, I’ll do it.”

  By the end of the fall, Bush, who had been reassessing his own position, had come to the same conclusion. He had been urged on by Conant, whose recounting of his pivotal exchange with Compton and Lawrence in Chicago factored heavily in the OSRD chief’s growing conviction that they had to get to the bottom of the bomb question as quickly as possible. On October 9, 1941, Bush met with Roosevelt and Vice President Henry Wallace and obtained the go-ahead for a major attempt to determine whether a fission weapon could be developed in time for use in the current war. There is no record of the meeting, save for a memorandum Bush sent to Conant later the same day, but all indications are that the president’s approval was both instant and sweeping. Recognizing the need for security measures far beyond the norm, Roosevelt decided that all knowledge of what they were doing should be confined to himself and five others: Wallace, Stimson, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, Bush, and Conant, soon to be known as the “Top Policy Group.” Whether or not it was wise to reserve such heavy responsibility to a chosen few, the minute Conant learned of the president’s directive, he knew it meant he was about to become “deeply involved in the atom bomb project.”

  In the last days of November, Bush sent Roosevelt the third report submitted by Compton’s committee. Unlike the others, this one explicitly addressed whether a fission weapon could be achieved in time to affect the outcome of the war. The conclusion was unequivocal: “A fission bomb of superlatively destructive power will result from bringing quickly together a sufficient mass of element U-235.” Compton added a physicist’s proviso: “This seems to be as sure as any untried prediction based upon theory and experiment can be.” It was only a matter of time and cost. A weapon using uranium fission would very likely determine “military superiority.” On the basis of Compton’s report, the recommendations of the MAUD Committee, and Kistiakowsky’s projections of its effectiveness, the members of the Top Policy Group decided to commit several million dollars to a crash program to see if a U-235 bomb could be made.

  On December 6 Bush summoned Conant, Compton, Lawrence, and Briggs to his wood-paneled Washington office and told them the president had approved an “all-out” American effort. To meet this challenge, Bush had again overhauled the bureaucratic machinery. Conant’s job would become more important than ever as he took charge of the new, strengthened Uranium Section, designated Section S-1, of the OSRD. As the intermediary between the physicists and Bush, Conant would be responsible for expediting the research into the feasibility of a fission weapon. If in six months their findings were favorable, they could expect authorization to proceed with all the resources that the nation could make available.

  Nothing about the journey to this point had been easy, none of the steps taken lightly. Perhaps Conant, as some of his critics maintained, was slow to comprehend the meaning and potential of fission. But as atomic historians Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson Jr. point out, it is difficult in retrospect to appreciate the position of the men who held “high responsibility” for the decision to make the atom bomb: “No scientist, no engineer held as much as Bush and Conant. Conceivably, they might have moved earlier . . . But [they] had to look at uranium in the light of the entire role science might play in the emergency. They had to turn a deaf ear to blue-sky talk of nuclear power plants and think of weapons. They had to navigate between the Scylla and Charybdis of excessive pessimism and soaring optimism. They had to set a course by the Pole Star of fact.”

  * * *

  It was ironic that the day after Conant learned the decision had been made to proceed “full steam ahead” on the development of the bomb, the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. The surprise attack of December 7, 1941, wiped out the better part of America’s Pacific Fleet, anchored snugly at its Hawaiian base and largely unmanned in the early hours of Sunday morning. News of the devastating raid reached Conant a few minutes before four o’clock, just as faculty members and their wives were arriving for the customary afternoon tea at 17 Quincy Street. He and Patty gathered around the radio with stunned colleagues and listened to the first dispatches of the destruction. It was announced that the president would be meeting with his Cabinet and then congressional leaders later that evening. He would certainly ask for a declaration of war, and Churchill would be right behind him.

  In the big, cold parlor, there was a palpable dread of what was to come: a grim struggle on two fronts. After a bulletin reported the Espionage Act had been invoked, several German professors who had escaped Nazi persecution became distraught, afraid that the United States would be swept up in a wave of nationalism, and they would be ostracized or even interned. Feeling helpless, Patty plied them with cups of tea and murmured words of comfort, but there was little she could say that did not sound trite. No one knew what the future held in store.

  The following evening, Conant addressed a wildly cheering crowd of six thousand students and teachers who jammed Sanders Theatre and several specially wired lecture halls, as well as Memorial Church, to hear Harvard’s apostle of interventionism call for a “speedy and complete victory” over the enemy. Japan’s treachery had ended the debate over the war. But Pearl Harbor was too great a tragedy—Roosevelt that morning had called it “a date which will live in infamy”—for Conant to feel anything but a “rush of hot anger” at the way America had been forced into the fight. His speech was simple and direct, every word addressed to the students whom he hoped to inspire and fortify for the severe trials that lay ahead. The majority—like his son Jimmy, a freshman at the University of Michigan, and enrolled in a naval officer training corps—would soon be uniform.

  “Some defeatists have said that a democracy could not fight a war and still stay free,” he stated, powerful emotions pushing through the prepared sentences. “By our deeds and words, may we show that this nation can pass through the flames of war and emerge victorious and free.” A great shout rose up from the boys, and the roar grew rapidly and built to a crescendo, spreading to the hundreds of students standing outside in the chill night air and echoing in the old Yard.

  When he was able to resume speaking, Conant pledged all the resources of Harvard to help the country achieve what he described as the twofold task before them: achieving total victory and preserving the American way of life. As everyone in the audience knew, these were not just fine words; the first surge of patriotic feeling that followed the outbreak of hostilities. Conant had commandeered their ivied halls for defense work months ago. The campus was already dotted with buildings where research on everything from explosives to radio detection was being done. In the hours after the Japanese attack, he had taken the precaution of tightening security, and extra watchmen had been posted outside a number of laboratories contracted to the military.

  Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Conant moved quickly to put the university on a wartime footing. By the time students returned from Christmas vacation, they found their college altered drastically and already well on its way to becoming a military training camp. With the draft age lowered to twenty and likely to go to lower within a year, the number of men in uniform would soon outnumber those in mufti. Conant revised the academic calendar, putting it on a year-round schedule and adding a twelve-week
summer semester that would enable students to earn their baccalaureate degree in three years. He expanded the curriculum to include courses in navigation, camouflage, meteorology, and map reading, as well as other military subjects. With the graduate school enrollment dwindling, he created a dozen or more special schools for the army and navy, accepting three thousand officers. He readied the Overseers to expect wartime deficits and shrinking enrollments. “The mobilization of young men for the fighting forces,” he wrote in his annual report, presented in January 1942, “must be the key to the immediate future of our educational institutions.”

  As head of the NDRC, Conant immediately began funneling war projects Harvard’s way. He expanded the university’s Radio Research Laboratory, a spin-off of Loomis’s Rad Lab at MIT, into a $16 million project concentrating on countermeasures, and organized an $8 million Underwater Sound Laboratory to focus on a new submarine-detection device called sonar (sound, navigation, and ranging). He signed more than a hundred government contracts for research—a total of $33.5 million, exceeded only by MIT and Caltech. He met with Bill Donovan, who was “organizing some kind of a superintelligence service for the government,” soon to be known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and helped find “just the people they were looking for.” By the end of summer, Time dubbed Harvard’s wartime transformation “Conant’s arsenal.” With so many on the faculty engaged in classified research, and much of the physical plant leased to the military, the old easygoing college atmosphere was gone. “Of what goes on behind closed doors,” Conant acknowledged, “no word may now be told.”

  The war emergency opened Harvard’s doors to women, but not because Conant wanted to blaze a path to coeducation. It was economic necessity, not enlightenment, that forced him to overcome his conviction that it should remain a men’s college. As he memorably put it, “The last thing in the world I desired when I took office was to open Harvard College to young ladies.” But with the pool of professors shrinking, Conant instructed Paul Buck, his judicious provost, to find a solution to the wasteful practice of having Harvard teachers give duplicate lectures at Radcliffe. Buck worked out an agreement by which the university would assume responsibility for educating Radcliffe students in exchange for the lion’s share of their tuition, but recalled that when he tried to tell Conant about the radical departure from tradition, the latter was so immersed in his secret reports he hardly looked up. Once he changed his mind, however, he resolved to see it through. When the Overseers later tried to block the decision by the Medical School to admit women, Conant threatened to go public if the motion was not passed.