From the Moonchildren program, April 1978, by Miriam Dyson: To describe the sixties in one paragraph would be to describe the color red to someone who is blind. One could ramble on about Vietnam, the riots, the generation gap, any of these things which gave the sixties its label. But the color would be left out. Color is a feeling. The sixties is a feeling, a color. A color seen only by those who lived, fought, loved and survived the sixties.
JUNE 15, 1978, PRINCETON
On Saturday morning I took the train to Washington and walked as usual the two miles through the ghetto area to my hotel. People friendly as usual. No trouble. The hotel is in the posh area two blocks from the White House and four blocks from the academy. After lunch I walked out of the hotel to go to a meeting at the academy. A young black man came up to me and began talking in an educated voice about how to find the quickest way to the Kennedy Performing Arts Center. I walked along with him and chatted in a friendly way. His conversation seemed a bit strange, he used a lot of big words that he didn’t understand, but I was quite unsuspecting. Then as we walked past some bushes his accomplice came quietly behind me and grabbed me around the neck. The accomplice must have been hiding in the bushes but I never saw him. They quickly pulled me into the bushes, hit me three times on the side of the head, and left me lying on the ground while they picked my pockets and briefcase. All they got was a wallet with seventy-five dollars and some pictures of the girls.
I was fully conscious the whole time and in a state of spiritual peace that is good to remember. I saw the bright sunshine filtering down through the bushes, and it was beautiful. I thought, very likely these fellows will put a bullet into me to keep me from talking. I was quite ready for death, and it did not seem frightening at all. I thought, life has been good to me and this death is also good, with the bright sun and the green bushes. It is good to know that death can be so friendly. Then after a few seconds the men ran away and I picked myself up and found a Good Samaritan who drove me the short distance to the academy. My entrance into the academy was quite dramatic. There I was among friends. Best of all, the thugs didn’t even break my glasses. I had the bifocals on when they attacked me. At the hospital in Washington the police came to talk to me, and I told them exactly where the attack occurred and asked if they could look for the glasses. An hour later a grinning policeman came in with the bifocals, not even scratched. Fortunately they let me out of the hospital right away, and so I traveled back to Princeton in great style in a private air-taxi, landing at the little airstrip only two miles from home. In less than five hours from the time of the accident, Imme and the girls came to get me. I looked so ugly that first evening that Miriam couldn’t bear to look at me. But now I am back to my normal beauty with some glorious sunset colors added. I had only two restless nights and no bad pain. For the first two days I was seeing double. That was all. No concussion, no headaches. Amazing luck.
The whole of Monday I was pushed around from one doctor to another, and my head was shot through with X-rays. The score was three fractures, upper jaw, right cheekbone, and the floor of the right eye. This spoilt our family record of not having any broken bones. This morning I passed another important milestone. I sneezed for the first time since the accident, and none of the loose bones fell clattering to the floor. The amazing thing is how well everything functions, brains, eyes, ears, teeth all okay. I only missed one working day at the Institute. Today I called the plastic surgeon, and he said he doesn’t want to see me anymore. Thank God. Now I am out of his clutches. When Imme and I went to see him on Monday, he was itching to get me laid out on the table so he could begin to carve. I must confess he scared me more than the thugs who beat me up in Washington. I am now free of him and can let Nature do her job of healing.
A close encounter with death teaches us important truths about human nature. We are not only social animals. We are also fighting animals. We may dream of universal brotherhood, but when the bugle sounds, we run bravely into battle. Battered and bruised in a surprise attack, I found myself unexpectedly reacting to it with calm courage and joy. I could handle it much better than I would ever have imagined. In every culture and every battlefield, from the Spartans at Thermopylae to the Jews at Masada, the men who died in battle are remembered and honored as heroes. In the battle of Princeton, George Washington rode his horse at the head of his troops, a conspicuous target for the British sharpshooters. He knew that an act of reckless bravery would make him a more effective leader of his country in the long struggle that lay ahead. In the future as in the past, reckless bravery will be honored, and fighters will be leaders. We must try as hard as we can to make peace with our enemies and get rid of weapons of mass destruction, but we cannot expect to extinguish the fighting spirit and tribal loyalty that are deeply ingrained in our nature. Perpetual peace is a worthy goal, but it is likely to remain out of our reach.
A world of turmoil and violence is our legacy to future generations. They need to understand why science has failed to give us fair shares and social justice, and they need to work out practical remedies. This is not a job for scientists to do alone. It will need a worldwide collaboration of scientists with economists, political activists, environmentalists, and religious leaders, to lift science and society out of the swamp where we are stuck. Pure science is best driven by intellectual curiosity, but applied science needs also to be driven by ethics. Our grandchildren will have a chance to make this happen. One of them is the girl with the pink Afro who spoke at the beginning of this book.
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INDEX
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Abel, Niels, 169
Acapulco, Mexico, 264
Advanced Research Projects Agency, 246
“Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” (Yeats), 93–94
Air Force, U.S., 90
Albuquerque, N.Mex., 82–83, 86, 215
Aleut Indians, 366
Alliluyeva, Svetlana, 325, 345–46
Alps mountain range, 4, 121
Alston, Wallace, 375
Amarillo, Tex., 85
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 379
American Federation of Labor, 299
American Journal of Physics, 348
American Physical Society, 63, 134, 155, 201, 232, 276
Amsterdam, 38, 194
Analytical Engine, The (Bernstein), 311
Andersen, Hans, 221
Anderson, Maxwell, 72
Ann Arbor, Mich., 82, 90–94, 99, 120, 138, 153, 164–65, 174
see also Michigan, University of
Apollo mission, 293, 346
Arizona, 220
Arkansas, 298
Arlington Cemetery, 285
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), 283–84, 287–91, 294–97, 319, 340
Armstrong, Robert, 375
Army, U.S., 98, 340–41
Arnold, Matthew, 221
Asano, Taro and Sachiko, 351–55
Asilomar conference, 168, 373
Aspen, Colo., 223–26
Astronomical Advisory Committee, 292–93, 306, 319
Athens, Greece, 344
Atkey, Eleanor (grandmother), 321
Atkin, Oliver, 20
Atlantic Monthly, 139
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 59, 161, 186, 208, 211–14, 309
Australia, 32, 324
Austria, 217, 226
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 226, 313
Bahar, Jacub, 6
Banbury, England, 40
Bangor, Wales, 7
Basel, Switzerland, 157–58, 162
Basel, University of, 162
Bates, Jim, 367, 371–72
Bay of Pigs, Cuba, 280
BBC Studios, 7, 15–16, 187
Beijing, China, 281
Belgium, 297
Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 278–79
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 42
Berkeley, Calif., see California, University of, at Berkeley
Berlin, Germany, 36, 45, 79, 225, 231, 350, 363
Bernstein, Jeremy, 311
Besicovitch, Abram Samoilovich, 2–14, 17–19, 22–25
Bethe, Hans, 56–60, 63–71, 74, 82, 92, 103–5, 117–18, 122, 132, 135, 148, 154, 163, 166, 177–79, 193, 208, 325, 329
Bethe, Rose, 63, 148, 329
Bevan, Aneurin, 284
Bevin, Ernest, 284, 299
Biddle, Martin, 344
Biden, Joe, 316
Bigelow, Julian, 186
Bing, Rudolf, 32
Birmingham, England, 36, 105–6, 167
Birmingham, University of, 60, 63, 135–73, 179
“Birthday Poem for Thomas Hardy” (Day Lewis), 160
Blake, William, 336
Bletchley Park, 149
Bohr, Aage, 154
Bohr, Niels, 130–31, 147, 154, 169, 266–67
Bole, Hazel, xv–xvi
Bomber Command, see Royal Air Force (RAF)
Bonham-Carter, Marcus, 54
Born, Max, 310
Boston, Mass., 113–19, 166, 252, 261, 306, 328, 379
Boston College, 152, 190
Boulder, Colo., 339
Bowra, Maurice, 182
Brahms, Johannes, 38, 233
Brave New World (Huxley), 9
Brazil, 142–43, 146
Bristol, University of, 69, 105, 132–35, 141–43
Britain, see United Kingdom
British Atomic Energy Establishment, 163–64
British Columbia, Canada, 371
British Columbia, University of, 366
Brno, Czechoslovakia, 18
Brookhaven National Laboratory, 174–76, 228–29, 233–34, 281
Brower, Kenneth, 340–41, 364–65, 370–71
Bruckner, Anton, 44
Budapest, Hungary, 145
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 71
Burnell, Jocelyn, 240
Bush, George H. W., 340
Caen, France, 115
California, 63, 66, 69, 82, 94–95, 119, 132, 147, 159, 177, 202, 208, 312
California, University of:
at Berkeley, 63–64, 67–69, 95–98, 102, 105, 117, 132, 137, 141–43, 154, 159, 177, 185, 201, 233, 248, 332–34
at San Diego, 312
at Santa Barbara, 334–37
California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 137, 163
Calvin, Melvin, 66, 95–98
Cambridge, England, xii, 2, 11, 23, 34, 37–38, 42, 56, 75, 147, 150, 298
Cambridge, Mass., 66, 329–30
Cambridge University, xv, 3, 5, 9, 18, 39–41, 69, 73, 78–79, 100, 105, 135, 152, 166, 196, 217, 223, 282, 29
3, 309, 320
Camp David Accords, 305
Canada, 174, 202, 210, 281
Canadian Journal of Mathematics, 149
Canberra, Australia, 323–24
Caras, Roger, 320–21
Carnegie Corporation, 317
Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 172, 313
Carter, Jimmy, 378
Castro, Fidel, 279
Catholic Theological College, 43
Caxton, William, 357–58
Chadwick, John, 191
Chalk River Laboratories, 281
Chang, Cheng Shu, 124
Chapman, Sydney, 182
Charney, Jule, 186
Charpak, Georges, 121, 194
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 173
Chiasso, Switzerland, 168
Chicago, Ill., 54, 88–90, 94, 98–99, 141–47, 151, 166, 179–81, 338
Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, 145
Childhood’s End (Clarke), 312
Chile, 362
Chillicothe, Mo., 234–35
China, 336–37
Churchill, Winston, xv, 21, 267–68
Citizen Kane (film), 33
Civil Rights Act, 289
Clark, Ronald, 347
Clarke, Arthur, 311–12
Cleveland, Ohio, 83, 100
Close, Frank, 202
Cockcroft, John, 164–65
Colorado, 159
Columbia College, 78–79
see also King’s College
Columbia University, 66, 103, 116–21, 124, 135, 138, 154, 157, 179, 189, 206, 222, 225, 232–34, 286, 290
Commonwealth Foundation, 54–56, 82, 117, 163–64
Communist Party, 22, 76, 92, 130, 201
Como, Italy, 157–58
Congress, U.S., 196, 218, 284, 289, 302
Copenhagen, Denmark, 116, 147, 266
Cornell University, 56–58, 64, 69–70, 73, 82–83, 99–100, 103–4, 127, 132, 138, 163–69, 174, 177–81, 184, 200–201, 208, 218, 229, 248–49
Cornwall, England, 26
Council for a Liveable World, 316
Courant, Ernst, 174–75
Crete, Greece, 191
Creutz, Ed, 233
Crick, Francis, xiii
Cuba, 278–79
Cunliffe, Marcus, 54–55
Curve of Binding Energy, The (McPhee), 359
Dachau concentration camp, 31–32
Dallas, Tex., 303
Maker of Patterns Page 41
