The Manhattan Project

Nuclear Arms Race

Hans Bethe's Interview (1982) - Part 2

Hans Bethe: The other was M - A - D, MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction], which essentially says that nuclear weapons make sense only as a safeguard against nuclear weapons. As [Wolfgang] Panofsky has said recently, and there is actually an article by him, "It is not a doctrine. It is a fact of life. Nothing else is possible, whatever you might wish.” So I think you should not present it as something really unavoidable, without any movements in the opposite direction.  

Siegfried Hecker's Interview - Part 1

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?

Hecker: Well, I do not know how you do these things. I am completely in your hands. Whatever you think makes sense.

Robert Lamphere's Interview - Part 3

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 had of it. I just found that fascinating because I learned something.

Rhodes: It’s probably the reason they were willing to cross the two nets.

Robert Lamphere's Interview - Part 2

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 of until I saw that comment.

Lamphere: I did not remember that at all. Don’t remember covering it in my interview.

Ted Taylor's Interview - Part 2

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 all new and different, I don’t know. But he was very articulate and active.

Marshall Rosenbluth's Interview

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 became a student of Teller’s. I’m not quite sure exactly how. He was a professor in one of my courses.

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