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[StealthSkater note: this is an extract from this most excellent book that follows the 3 most

important personalities as the atomic bomb was developed.]

"Brotherhood of the Bomb" the Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller

by Gregg Herken

2002 / ISBN 0-8050-6588-1 (hb)

If Science is the story of the 20th

Century, no drama is more compelling than that of "the Bomb" and

its creators. But the riveting tale of human conflict that connects the 3 scientists most reposible for the

nuclear age (Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller) was until now known only in

broad outline.

10 years in the research and writing, Gregg Herken's eye-opening account is based on private papers;

interviews with Manhattan Project survivors; and recently released documents and coded intercepts

obtained from FBI and KGB archives and other sources around the World.

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One of Brotherhood of the Bomb's surprises is the complex game of spy versus counterspy that

surrounded the Bomb's building and later dominated the Cold War. And yet, armies of U.S. security

agents were unable to prevent the Bomb's secrets from being passed to the Russians (sometimes by their

American helpers). At the book's center is the question of loyalty -- to science, to country, to family --

and the wrenching choices that had to be made when such allegiances came into conflict.

Revealed here for the first time are Robert Oppenheimer's efforts while scientific director of the

Manhattan Project to hide his radical past and the complicity of General Leslie Groves (head of the

Bomb project) in keeping that long-held secret. Oppenheimer was ultimately compromised by lies that

he told to protect his brother Frank. These led to his own loyalty hearing during the high-water mark of

McCarthyism in the 1950s.

More than a cautionary tale, Brotherhood of the Bomb is a vital slice of American history. Gregg

Herken's compelling and authoritative book reveals what can happen to individual and group integrity

when big-time Science -- and its practitioners -- are enlisted in the service of the State.

Robert Oppenheimer at age

22. An "overgrown choirboy

… both subtly wise and

terribly innocent."

Ernest Orland Lawrence

holding the first cyclotron. By

sheer force of personality more

than by any power of intellect,

Lawrence was a commanding

presence at Berkeley by the

early 1930s.

Edward Teller at age 17. "I

reached adolescence still a serious

child with no sense of humor."

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Robert and Frank

Oppenheimer, 1918. Oppie

grew unusually protective

of his younger brother. "In

some ways, perhaps part of

a father to him."

Richard and Ruth Tolman, 1941.

Oppenheimer reportedly firt

earned Lawrence's disapproval

when he seduced the wife of

Professor Tolman at Caltech.

Oppenheimer thought Lawrence's riding outfit a curious affectation. He did

not realize it was Lawrence's way of distancing himself from his roots.

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Lawrence and the Rad Lab staff with the 60-inch cyclotron, 1939.

The great cyclotron was to be transformed while still in the womb into a weapon of war.

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Lawrence in the control room. Starting the machine was sometimes accompanied by an

"ensuing sparking, crash, and blowing out of lights" recalled one cyclotroneer.

Oppenheimer and Lawrence at the

cyclotron. "I can only think that

perhaps when they were such really

good friends, maybe they never really

understood each other" observed one of

Lawrence's "boys".

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Joe Weinberg, Rossi Lomanitz, David Bohm,

and Max Friedman on the Berkeley campus,

1943.

Gregori Kasparov, Martin Kamen, and

Gregori Kheifets outside Bernstein's

Fish Grotto, July 1944.

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Haakon Chevalier at Berkeley,

1934. "I certainly don't intend

to resign myself to remaining a

bystander" he wrote his son

Jacques during the War.

Frank Oppenheimer, circa

1949.

Louise Bransten appearing

before HUAC, September

1948. San Francisco's so-

called "apricot heiress" was

known as the "Bernstein

woman" to Steve Nelson and

by the codename "Map" to

her Soviet control officer.

(Left) Klaus Fuchs, Los Alamos badge, 1944. At Los Alamos, project officials were still

innocent of the fact the Nation's real atomic secrets were being driven out of the front gate in

Fuch's blue Buick.

(Right) Wartime Army counterintelligence headquarters in Oakland, California.

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In a March 1948 meeting with his Soviet control in a London pub, Klaus Fuchs passed along an

advanced design for "the Super" (i.e., H-bomb).

Preparing for "Tesla", 1955. While Los Alamos researchers had traditionally transported their

devices on an Army flatbed truck, Livermore bomb designers drove to the shot tower in a late-

model sedan with their bomb crammed into a pair of heavily-reinforced Samsonite suitcases sitting

in the backseat.

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Teller at the Pacific test site for "George", May 1951. He predicted that Eniwetok would not

be big enough for his next bomb.

Aftermath of "Ruth" -- Livermore's first nuclear test, 1953.

Los Alamos weaponeers suggested that next time, their rivals

use either a bigger bomb or a smaller tower.

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Lawrence and the Bevatron, 1957. "His fears that

he was being -- or might be -- undermined in a

position were a terror for him" Oppenheimer

observed.

Edward Teller, 1983. He wrote to Boethe: "I

would say that physicists have known power."

Robert Oppenheimer at Princeton, 1966. "In the forest, in battle, in the midst of

arrows, javelins, fire / Out on the great sea, at the precipice's edge in the

mountains / In sleep, in delirium, in deep trouble / The good deeds a man has

done before defend him."

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About the Author

Gregg Herken is a senior historian and curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and

Space Museum. He previously taught at Oberlin College, Yale University, and the California Institute

of Technology.

He is the author of The Winning Weapon: the Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, Counsels of War, and

Cardinal Choices (a history of Presidential science advising).

Herken received a MacArthur research and writing grant for Brotherhood of the Bomb. In 1984-85,

he was detailed as a senior research and policy analyst to the President's Advisory Committee on Human

Radiation Experiments as a result of some of the discoveries that he made while researching this book.

He and his family live in Alexandria, Virginia.

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