Edward Teller was a talented pianist who sometimes played till late at night.
These were the code names for Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
After Bohr was smuggled out of Germany to Sweden in a fishing boat, his granddaughter followed after, smuggled in a shopping case carried by a friendly diplomat. From Kunetka, The General and the Genius; Does anyone know exactly what a “shopping case” is?
In 1943 in the early days of the Manhattan Project, six ducks appeared mysteriously on Ashley Pond. A second lieutenant had come here from a Texas R and R facility for shell-shocked soldiers. Seeing that there was no military activity here, he thought it was another R and R and ordered the ducks as a psychological lift. Of course, everyone loved the ducks.
Tuck’s Table was the last of the well-named “Seven-Bump” mesas that stretch north south in parallel with the Main Hill Road (Route 502). British physicist James (Jim) Tuck loved to climb on the most easterly one, and the most tricky to ascend, for picnics. Seven-Bump Mesa is now returned to San Ildefonso Pueblo. Tuck said, “Here at Los Alamos, I found a spirit of Athens, of Plato, of an ideal republic.”
“Peasley’s Crawl” is the knife-edge approach to climbing Lake Peak where then graduate student Al Peasley took to all fours for safety.
Robert Serber, a protégé of Oppenheimer, was asked by Oppenheimer to give a lecture to incoming scientists, eventually printed as the “Los Alamos Primer.” He chose the names “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” because of their size and comparative shape.
These were among the locations considered for the testing of the first atomic bomb.
When General Groves asked him, Oppenheimer mentioned two poems by John Donne, suggesting that the second one might have been the reason. It begins, “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.” Composer John Adams uses this poem as a major aria for the lead singer in his opera Dr. Atomic.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt died, Oppenheimer called a gathering where he spoke these words.
Before the detonation of the bomb at the Trinity Site, Donald Hornig was the one person who, in case of an emergency, could stop the detonation by pulling what he named the “chicken switch.”
It was their agreed-upon code to let her know that the Trinity Site explosion had been successful.
When the first atomic bomb was exploded at the Trinity Site, the desert sand at the heart of the explosion was discovered to have been fused into a dull green glass, which the scientists named “Trinitite.”
Henry Stimson, Secretary of War, had visited Kyoto and recognized that it had great beauty and historical significance.
The Smyth Report (Atomic Energy for Military Purposes) was the federal government’s official report on the development of the atomic bomb. Henry De Wolf Smyth was the only 1 of 5 who in 1954 didn’t vote to strip JRO of his security clearance.
Bradbury said his greatest need was for a lot of decent housing.
George Kennan spoke these words at Oppenheimer’s memorial service (the other two speakers were Hans Bethe and Henry DeWolf Smyth). Kennan was the first JRO memorial speaker in 1972.
The initials stood for “What Would Oppenheimer Want?” Some ideas were clearing Oppenheimer’s name; having community forums on major issues; sponsoring a regional gathering on global climate change.