The Pope of Physics

by Gino Segrè

  In addition to building operational plants, both Sites X and W needed to create residential communities for the projects’ employees. Site X at Oak Ridge evolved into a town of seventy thousand inhabitants by the end of the war. It was designed by the upstart architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in Chicago, which was asked to submit in four days a master plan for housing and amenities. The group of ten architects had no idea where the city would be built or of its purpose, but they managed to get the job done. Site W at Hanford similarly developed into a community, housing fifty thousand workers.

  But Oak Ridge and Hanford were only two legs of the three-legged stool. Sites X and W would produce the necessary materials for an atomic bomb. How to take those materials and forge a weapon out of them was the third leg of the stool. Site Y would be responsible for the assembly and detonation of a bomb. For that, other kinds of skills and talents would need to be tapped.

  At the top of the agenda was who should lead such an effort. The second item was where Site Y should be located. On October 8, 1942, Groves met J. Robert Oppenheimer for the first time at a Berkeley luncheon hosted by the president of the University of California. The two men were a study in contrasts: both tall, but Groves burly and brawny and Oppenheimer stooped and fragile; Groves, the son of a Presbyterian army chaplain, and Oppenheimer, the son of assimilated cultured Jews; Groves gruff and outspoken, Oppenheimer charming and soft-spoken. Yet the two somehow recognized in each other impressive intellect and drive, albeit channeled in different ways.

  In response to Groves’s questions after the Berkeley lunch, Oppenheimer exercised characteristic charisma. He adroitly outlined for Groves his vision of a separate laboratory where experts in different fields would come together to design and test a bomb light enough to be loaded on an airplane. He added that since there were so many unknowns in its development, work on the laboratory should begin at once. Groves was struck by Oppenheimer’s genius but mostly by his “overweening ambition.” It was a trait to which Groves readily related.

  Groves was much in favor of Oppenheimer’s vision, but there were considerable obstacles. Should the laboratory be under military control? Where should it be located? Who should lead it? The director needed to have a stellar scientific reputation and administrative acumen, to be persuasive in recruiting top scientists, and adept at negotiating between them and the military.

  Arthur Compton, Ernest Lawrence, and Harold Urey, all three of them Nobel Prize winners, were the obvious candidates but they were already engaged in key war-related efforts. Fermi was eliminated, too. Foreigners who obtained clearance would be allowed to work on the Manhattan Project, but the army would not tolerate having one in a leadership role. A week after meeting Oppenheimer, Groves had settled on Oppenheimer and offered him the position as director of Site Y.

  Many people thought the decision strange. They knew Groves put a high premium on a director’s possessing a Nobel Prize, but Oppenheimer had not achieved that honor. Moreover, Oppenheimer had never chaired a physics department or even shown much interest in experimental research. Then there were his left-wing political leanings. Because of his associations with Communists, Oppenheimer could be considered a security risk. But Groves wanted him and asserted that Oppenheimer was essential to the project.

  When looked at more closely, this decision was sound. In the summer of 1942, Oppenheimer had organized a secret seminar in Berkeley during which a small number of eminent theoretical physicists attempted to determine what was necessary for building an atom bomb. The leading young theorist of nuclear physics, Hans Bethe, had been reluctant to attend, but Oppenheimer had persuaded him to come. And he also convinced Edward Teller, Felix Bloch, and others. They formed a group that Oppenheimer called his luminaries.

  This elite assemblage concluded that while a nuclear weapon was feasible, building it would require more fissile material than earlier estimates and much more experimental information. They also appreciated Oppenheimer’s brilliance. Groves had chosen well.

  In late October 1942, after appointing Oppenheimer, Groves pondered where Site Y could be located. It needed to be away from prying eyes, have a temperate climate for outdoor testing, and be accessible from physics centers on both the West and East Coasts. Because of fears of infiltration, a further requirement was that its location be at least two hundred miles from any international boundary. The neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico, seemed particularly well suited: Albuquerque was a stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe rail line and for TWA transcontinental flights.

  After a few potential sites were rejected, Groves and Oppenheimer met in New Mexico in mid-November. Oppenheimer knew that part of the world very well. He had once written a friend, “My two great loves are physics and the desert country. It’s a pity they can’t be combined.” He now found that they could. He suggested to Groves, “If you go on up the canyon you come up on top of the mesa and there’s a boys’ school there which might be a usable site.” Site Y, the third leg of the Manhattan Project, had been found.

  29

  SIGNOR FERMI BECOMES MISTER FARMER

  The mesa is an enchanting spot, with a backdrop of the eleven-thousand-foot Jemez Mountains thick with ponderosa pine forests and fir. At lower elevations the fragrance of the pines mingles with that of piñon trees and sagebrush. The breathtaking view across from the mesa looks toward the even higher Sangre de Cristo range, replete with aspen trees, alpine meadows, and craggy mountains capped by snow most months of the year. The sun’s rays, hitting the Sangres with a warm glow, are responsible for its name: Blood of Christ. In between the two ranges lies the wide valley of the Rio Grande, majestically winding its way through deep canyons and high mesas of every shape. The clarity of the air, the constancy of the sun, and the stark beauty of the landscape are exhilarating.

  The small boys’ boarding school was surrounded by old poplar trees, known in Spanish as alamo trees, and comprised the “Big House,” an old lodge built out of massive hand-hewn pine trunks, a dormitory, a pond, a few smaller buildings, and a corral with stables for the boys’ horses. It was situated on eight hundred acres, 7,200 feet above sea level.

  Groves set the purchase in motion. The school closed on January 22, 1943, and was totally vacated by the end of February. Construction began almost immediately on barracks for housing the personnel, roads to transport material up to the mesa, fences to enclose the new laboratory, and a gatehouse that became the main entrance and exit for the secret city.

  Meanwhile, Oppenheimer traveled around the country searching for scientific personnel, relentless in his pursuit, self-describing his recruiting as “absolutely unscrupulous.” It wasn’t easy, because so many scientists were already engaged in war work. Fermi, one of the first people he approached, was completely tied up with the experiments at Argonne that were essential in informing the building of the reactors at Oak Ridge and Hanford. He also contacted Isidor Rabi, the associate director of MIT’s Radiation Laboratory. Rabi was considered indispensable to MIT’s intensive radar research activities, but he convinced a few others to join Oppenheimer.

  The first scientists arrived in the middle of March 1943 at Site Y. Groves had anticipated that they would differ from personnel at Sites X and W: “We were faced with the necessity of importing a group of highly talented specialists some of whom would be prima donnas, and of keeping them satisfied with their working and living conditions.” Prima donnas or not, they were willing to venture forth and put other research on hold.

  Oppenheimer gathered a formidable set of scientists in Los Alamos, superstars in the physics world. In the words of Bob Wilson, head of the lab’s cyclotron group:

  The projected laboratory as described by Oppenheimer sounded romantic—and it was romantic. Everything to do with it was to be clothed in deepest secrecy. We were all to join the army and then disappear to a mountain—to a laboratory in New Mexico—Los Alamos. It sounded especially romantic to me for I had just finished reading The Magic Mountain by T
homas Mann. I almost expected to come down with tuberculosis, certainly expected to explore the philosophical significance of concepts of time and space and freedom and fascism in intense conversations with an Italian philosopher in a snowstorm. And I did, too! Not with Mann’s fictional Settembrini, but rather with a real, live, breathing Enrico Fermi.

  Wilson knew that it would be a while before the “real, live, breathing Enrico Fermi” would join the Los Alamos ranks, but it was clear that an enormous reservoir of talent was being recruited. It helped attract others—famous and not so famous. There was the lure of camaraderie, of empowerment to contribute to the wartime effort, and even of destiny.

  In April, Oppenheimer organized an orientation meeting for the new recruits and prevailed upon both Rabi and Fermi to attend. Five introductory lectures were designed to explain the mission of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) to the congregated scientists. The physicists among the approximately hundred in attendance had a pretty keen sense of what they would be hearing but others, such as chemists and metallurgists, were still wondering.

  Delivered by Oppenheimer’s close collaborator Robert Serber, the lectures were essentially an updated version of the Berkeley 1942 summer group discussions. The meeting notes were later condensed into a twenty-four-page summary that became the laboratory’s first publication, LA-1. Known as the Los Alamos Primer, it was handed to new arrivals for the next two years. Its first paragraph sets out the laboratory’s goal: “The object of the project is to produce a practical military weapon in the form of a bomb in which the energy is released by a fast neutron chain reaction in one or more of the materials known to show nuclear fission.” One change in language took place soon afterward; at Oppenheimer’s suggestion, the weapon was referred to in the laboratory as the Gadget, not as a bomb.

  The tasks ahead were daunting. Fermi was impressed by the personnel’s spirit. Oppenheimer remembered that after one of the lectures, Fermi said to him, in the ironic tone he sometimes adopted, “I believe your people actually want to make a bomb.” If they had not thought of making a bomb beforehand, the lectures served to consolidate their resolve. Whether motivated by nationalism, fear of Hitler, or the lure of physics, the Los Alamos group pulled together. Later on, some would accuse them of making a Faustian bargain. But with Hitler still in power, reports of the mass slaughter of Jews confirmed, and Japan showing no signs of surrender, there seemed little choice.

  Acting as senior consultant, Fermi returned frequently to Los Alamos; it was anticipated he would eventually move there. But for the time being, his role at Argonne, Hanford, and Oak Ridge took precedence. Conscious of travel demands and the clandestine world of a top secret military mission, Groves made sure the premier scientists associated with the Manhattan Project were afforded adequate protection.

  Groves asked Fermi not to travel by air unless it was essential. While traveling, he was to be known as Henry Farmer. And he was assigned a bodyguard whose orders were to accompany Mr. Farmer everywhere and shield him from danger. With Fermi’s nom de guerre, Laura was amused to see her husband returned to the agrarian roots his family had so proudly escaped. Enrico, who did not even enjoy gardening, was back to farming, albeit in name only. And she, whose ancestors had perhaps never farmed, was suddenly the wife of one.

  Laura described her trepidation upon first encountering Enrico’s bodyguard, John Baudino, in Chicago early in 1943. “One evening I went to answer our doorbell and found myself face to face with a big man who entirely filled the doorway … In a deep voice with no harsh tones, the apparition shyly asked me to tell Dr. Fermi that he would wait for him outside.” Since Fermi had always valued his independence, Laura worried about how he might adapt to having someone constantly at his side.

  But Baudino, a twenty-nine-year-old recent graduate of the University of Illinois Law School, was so good-natured and agreeable that there were never any problems. When walking outside the Fermi house or on the campus, Baudino accompanied Fermi. On daily trips to Argonne, Fermi did the driving, since he didn’t like having others at the wheel, and Baudino sat in the passenger seat. On trips the two of them took to Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, or Hanford, they would often play gin rummy, Baudino keeping a record of the winnings. An associate remembered, “By the time Baudino returned to civilian life, Fermi owed him several million dollars. They were both perfectly straight-faced about this debt.”

  Fermi’s involvement with Oak Ridge was not extensive. He and Arthur Compton went there in November 1943 to observe the X-10 reactor going critical for the first time, but comparatively little was asked of him. Hanford, still in the planning stage, was another story. Design for the Hanford plant was the Argonne Laboratory’s first priority from the summer of 1943 until mid-September 1944.

  The pace of work quickened with the Argonne group testing materials and designing the reactor’s control rods. Leona Woods, who married her co-worker John Marshall in July 1943 and had become pregnant shortly afterward, recalled working right up to the time the baby was born. As she noted, “My work clothes—overalls and a blue denim jacket—concealed the bulge.” She didn’t tell Walter Zinn, who was in charge of CP-2 operations, about her pregnancy “because Zinn would probably have insisted on kicking me out of the reactor building.”

  Fermi did know about her pregnancy for a while, and when it became obvious that the birth was imminent, he worried about whether there was enough time to drive from Argonne to the University of Chicago’s Lying-In Hospital. Preparing for all eventualities, Fermi asked Laura for instructions on delivering a baby. This did not please Leona Woods Marshall: “When he told me he was ready, it stiffened my resolution that under no circumstances would he get the chance to practice midwifery.” Fortunately, Fermi’s newly acquired, although limited, skill was not solicited. After a healthy delivery in the hospital, Marshall was back at work at CP-2 within a week.

  Most of the work Fermi accomplished in early 1944 was carried out at Argonne, but by midyear he was making more frequent trips to Hanford. Several members of the Argonne group, including the Marshalls with their new baby, felt that moving there was necessary to oversee the reactor’s workings. Activity in Los Alamos was also reaching a pivotal stage, and Fermi’s presence was urgently requested there as well.

  The family scheduled their move to the mesa for mid-August 1944. Fermi was eager: the scientific atmosphere there was stimulating, the challenge exciting, and the environs well suited to his love of the outdoors. There was also more than a touch of patriotic fervor. On July 11, 1944, swearing their allegiance to the United States before a Chicago District Court judge, Laura and Enrico Fermi had become United States citizens. The family, who had been labeled as enemy aliens a few years before, took the solemn oath of loyalty and swore to “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” The Fermis had by then decided their future was firmly planted in America. Living in Italy, even after the war, was not an option. Enrico’s quip upon disembarking in New York in January 1939 that “We have founded the American branch of the Fermi family” was now backed by the family’s official status.

  A few days before the family’s move, Fermi was summoned to Site W in the state of Washington. Laura would have liked Fermi by her side as she traveled with the children to this peculiar destination, but she was intrigued by a new adventure and by now reconciled to his recurrent absences. Weighing whether to stay in Chicago until Fermi got back, she had asked him when that might be. He confessed, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  In any case, Chicago was hot and humid in the summer, whereas Enrico had reported that New Mexico in August was dry and pleasant. The children, Giulio, now eight, and Nella, thirteen, were smitten by images of the Wild West and the prospect of Indians, cowboys, and horseback riding. But at the same time they were reluctant to leave their Chicago home and their classes at the progressive University of Chi
cago Laboratory School. They would be starting a new school in Los Alamos, one that Laura had been assured would be excellent, thanks to the many highly educated physicists’ wives who were eager to have meaningful employment as teachers while their husbands were off working on the Gadget.

  And so Mrs. Farmer and the young Farmers boarded the train to Site Y while Mr. Farmer left for Site W. Enrico assured his family they would like Los Alamos but provided few details of what they might expect. Laura was only told that she would be met when she got off the train in Lamy, New Mexico. A drive to Santa Fe brought them to 109 East Palace Avenue, the small, inconspicuous office of Dorothy McKibbin, who inevitably served as the first point of contact for those bound for Los Alamos. McKibbin greeted the Chicago family warmly, putting them at ease within the office’s protective adobe walls and arranging for their ride up to “the Hill.” She also issued them the required security passes to enter and exit the gated city. She was known as the gatekeeper of Los Alamos, the ultimate secret city, its address only Post Office Box 1663, Santa Fe.

  The drive from Santa Fe to Los Alamos has to count among the world’s most stunning. Starting from one of America’s oldest settlements, founded in the early seventeenth century by the conquistadors, one leaves quaint adobe dwellings sheltered by giant cottonwood trees and heads toward arid desert marked by tumbleweed, scruffy shrubs, arroyos, and remnants of volcanic lava from centuries ago. The road, turning into a washboard surface, skirts Indian pueblos and crosses the Rio Grande before climbing steeply and often treacherously up among ancient cliff dwellings and towering mesas. Every bend in the road offers even more dramatic views of the encircling mountains.

  The magnificence of the New Mexico scenery contrasted sharply with the unattractive town of Los Alamos, hastily erected with regimented rows of green dormitories and apartments. It had all the appearances of the army base that it was. The old houses of the boys’ school were an exception, its lodge and the nearby buildings reserved for the lab’s scientific crème de la crème. Known as Bathtub Row because they included the luxury of bathtubs, in contrast to ordinary showers in other housing, they were premier dwellings.