Richard Rhodes

Rhodes: Well, I had started to ask you about the Korean War. Was that a shock? Did that worry everyone and accelerate your sense of pressure? Taylor: I don’t think so. I don’t remember any feeling of pressure, that we had to do something by a certain time or else all hell would break lose. […]

Siegfried Hecker: Okay, I was just—a little bit more on the testing business. Again, I will not give you much because eventually, I am sure you will do all the research on this. There are some interesting dynamics in the testing business all the way around, because it is such an emotional issue. So hard […]

Richard Rhodes: Although again, I was struck in Russia with how different a world that was. Ted Taylor: Oh, yeah. Rhodes: How much more closely they were— Taylor: That is why I am so thankful because in many other places people get shot. Rhodes: Yeah. We could not even get directions on the street. Nobody […]

Siegfried Hecker: The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings [Act] brings back memories.    Richard Rhodes:  No, exactly. Hecker: It was very interesting. When I came into the directorship, the thing that I was really immensely concerned about was the future of this institution. I inherited this jewel and it was now in my hands; I had to make sure […]

Richard Rhodes: So what I thought we might do since you just came back from – was this work related to the Russian collaboration? Siegfried Hecker: Yes. Rhodes: Then maybe we should debrief you about that first before we go back and do the earlier part of the story. Does that make sense to you? […]

Richard Rhodes: I really am going to have to go through and revise the Perseus discussion, I think. Robert Lamphere: It’s got Lona [Cohen] and the tissue thing. I think it became a story that she told. But who’s to know? I just found that Greenglass’s information on implosion was the first news the Soviets […]

Robert Lamphere: They said that he [Klaus Fuchs] annoyed some of the people because he wanted to keep certain [inaudible]. That’s a little point of irony.  Richard Rhodes: Although, again, there was one guy who later thought, “Well, maybe he was pushing to find out what was the most valuable information.” Which I hadn’t thought […]

Richard Rhodes: You said [Richard] Courant’s work added realism? Ted Taylor: Yeah. Rhodes: How so? Taylor: By going over various tricks for dealing with the discontinuities, the singularities in the hydrodynamics. I had the impression that he was very helpful to people like Bob Richtmyer. I don’t know that Richard himself came up with anything […]

Richard Rhodes: How did you get involved in the program? Marshall Rosenbluth: Well, you can probably guess. I’ve already told you that I was a student of [Edward] Teller’s. I was in the Navy during the war and then went back to the University of Chicago where my parents were living, to graduate school, and […]

Robert Lamphere: One of the British newspapers speculated about allowing the FBI into see this guy [Klaus Fuchs], because we might actually use the third degree against him – which we thought was funny as hell. But right off the bat, he wasn’t sure he wanted to tell me anything, because of what we filed […]