Authors: Jennet Conant
At first, Serber seemed like an odd choice to lead the conference. He was a slight, mild-mannered, almost puckish character, who spoke softly and with a pronounced lisp. A few minutes into his first talk, Oppenheimer had to dispatch Manley to go up front and tell him to please stop using the word “bomb” and substitute the term “gadget” instead. Serber was not a riveting speaker, but he held their attention despite the chaotic surroundings. At one point, an electrician’s foot came through the ceiling, accompanied by a shower of sawdust, leaving a good-sized hole. It was not clear how the workman had breached Groves’ awesome security, but had he been a spy, they all agreed he would have been treated to an earful. By the time Serber was finished, he had delivered five brilliant lectures, an hour or so each, summarizing what the project was about and the existing state of knowledge about the bomb. The tutorials became instant classics. Before Condon left, he compiled them, and mimeographed copies of
Los Alamos Report Number 1: The Los Alamos Primer
subsequently became required reading for every new physicist who joined the project. “He wasn’t much of a speaker,” one participant recalled. “But for ammunition he had everything Oppenheimer’s theoretical group had uncovered during the last year. He knew it all cold and that was all he cared about.”
While the lectures were proceeding, Oppenheimer began calling in the senior scientists one by one and informing them that, in order to facilitate the work, he was organizing the laboratory into divisions, each with overall responsibility for a number of subdivisions, or groups. Rabi had advised him that the MIT Rad Lab’s structure had worked exceptionally well and that implementing it at Los Alamos would help create a sense of mission and camaraderie. Oppenheimer organized his staff accordingly around the various parts of the project: theoretical physics, experimental physics, chemistry, metallurgy, and ordnance. They would investigate two proposals for the bomb’s design: the most straightforward was the gun-assembly method for the U-235 bomb, which involved firing a subcritical mass of fissionable material, in this case uranium, into a second subcritical mass of fissionable material, producing a supercritical mass, the chain reaction leading to an atomic explosion. The other method, the plutonium gun, was trickier, because theoretically the chain reaction of plutonium would be much faster, so consequently the gun would have to be much faster or it would predetonate. How much faster would have to be explored. Both assemblies would be investigated posthaste, although the uranium bomb was to be given priority.
Groves came in for much derision when he proposed what Teller later called “a very stupid way of assembly” for the plutonium weapon, which the scientists made fun of behind his back. But Oppenheimer always maintained that anyone from the lowliest employee could be the source of a good suggestion, and in the end Groves’ absurd proposal planted the seed of an idea in someone in the audience. Later on, just as Serber was winding up his last lecture, a tall, gangly physicist named Seth Neddermeyer stood up and announced that he believed implosion was the way to go, by directing a blast of high explosives
inward
toward a quantity of fissionable material causing it to reach critical mass and detonate. While he faced considerable skepticism from Bethe, Fermi, and others, Neddermeyers stubborn championing of this means of assembly led Oppenheimer to reluctantly assign him to convene an experimental study group on implosion. It was one more thing that would now have to be looked into, and they had little time and few resources. Neddermeyer later recalled thinking that Oppenheimer looked tired, and that the burden of responsibility for the success of the bomb project, for picking “the things that will work,” was weighing heavily on his thin shoulders.
Rabi had also advised Oppenheimer that, saddled with all the duties of being scientific director, he could not also be responsible for heading the Theoretical Division. Rabi proposed Hans Bethe for the job, and Oppie agreed. When Teller learned that Oppenheimer had made Bethe head of the T Division, and Serber his group leader, he was furious. Oppenheimer had known full well that Teller would feel snubbed, but his primary responsibility was to keep everyone on track and the work progressing as quickly as possible. Teller persisted in talking about his own ideas and introducing obstacles in an effort to control the project and move it in a different direction.
One immediate benefit of the new laboratory structure was that it fell to Bethe to inform the intractable physicist that he was being further sidelined. He suggested to Teller that since he was interested in alternate ways the bomb could be made to work, he should go off and pursue fission calculations with his own small group, including his idea for a fusion weapon. Teller immediately protested, in part because he realized the task might take so long it would prevent him from making any real contribution to the atomic bomb. He had forced their hand with his consistent refusal to cooperate and in the end had to accede to their request that he work outside the Theoretical Division. While Teller never stopped raising questions and challenging ideas at meetings, Oppenheimer had effectively removed him from the main thrust of the activity at Los Alamos. He had brought the major source of disruption on the mesa into line, but at the cost of losing a first-rate mind. Oppenheimer made every effort to placate the brooding Hungarian by meeting with him privately, but after a while he told Greene to limit his audiences with Teller to once a week.
As soon as the opening session was over, Groves moved to clamp down on the scientists’ freedom to discuss problems relating to different divisions of the project. He was alarmed by some of the free-wheeling exchanges he had heard during the first few weeks and strove to have the different sites strictly compartmentalized and to limit open discussion of the bomb. For the most part, Oppenheimer and Groves did not have serious disagreements about how to run the project, but in this area their agendas came into sharp conflict. “Groves wanted to partition everything,” recalled Bethe. “He wanted each group to work by itself and no other group should know about it.” Oppenheimer vehemently opposed any compartmentalization, arguing that progress was only made through interaction, that science was not possible without discussion, cross-fertilization, and collaboration. Groves only agreed after Conant, Rabi, Bacher, and much of the senior laboratory staff took the same line.
Oppenheimer established weekly colloquiums, where the division and group leaders could report their progress and problems in detail. The meetings, which became a Tuesday night tradition, came to be regarded as the linchpin of the laboratory’s productivity and rapid progress. “Oppenheimer insisted that absolutely everyone should be interested, and should know, and should contribute,” explained Bethe, adding that this open-handed approach encouraged even the lowliest of the scientists to take part and promoted a sense of enthusiasm and pulling together that became the heart and soul of their fledgling enterprise. He later wrote that Oppie’s leadership in establishing the “democratic organization” of the laboratory was one of the key factors in its ultimate success:
The governing board, where questions of general and technical laboratory policy were discussed, consisted of the division leaders (about eight of them). The coordinating council included all the group leaders, about 50 in number, and kept them all informed on the most important technical progress and problems of the various groups in the laboratory. All scientists having a B.A. degree were admitted to the colloquium in which specialized talks about laboratory problems were given. Each of these assemblies met once a week. In this manner everybody in the laboratory felt part of the whole and felt he should contribute to the success of the program. Very often a problem discussed in one of these meetings would intrigue a scientist in a completely different branch of the laboratory, and he would come up with an unexpected solution…. Oppenheimer had to fight hard for free discussion among all qualified members of the laboratory. But the free flow of information and discussion, together with Oppenheimer’s personality, kept morale at its highest throughout the war.
Groves subscribed to the opinion of one of his former chief engineers—“[I have] no objection to any committee as long as I appoint them”—and established his own Review Committee after Conant counseled him that forming such a body would improve his relationship with the scientific community, regardless of whether or not he chose to pay attention to their reports.
He [Conant] pointed out that these people were accustomed to making their views known to similar committees appointed by their university administrations, and that our adoption of this system would meet with their approbation. A further advantage which we both recognized was that a review committee, with its fresh outlook, might be able to make a suggestion that would be eagerly seized upon, whereas if the same suggestion came from me, it might be regarded as interference.
The Review Committee, which was composed of five scientists carefully selected by Groves for their familiarity with the project and sympathy with his views, approved the program laid out by the Los Alamos physicists and lauded Oppenheimer’s performance as director.
Oppenheimer had always been quick to grasp technical problems, but his adept handling of mesa politics, and particular finesse when it came to Groves, far exceeded expectations. Bethe, who prior to Los Alamos had regarded Oppenheimer as “a difficult human being” and someone who could be very tactless and cutting when he wanted to be, was pleasantly surprised by the change in his demeanor. For all his initial doubts, Manley, too, was impressed by the “astonishingly rapid transformation of this theorist” into a highly effective leader and administrator. Though he had become more aware of Oppenheimer’s warmth and consideration as they worked together on the early stages of the project, he still had seen nothing to suggest the hidden talents that emerged at Los Alamos. Manley was most impressed by Oppenheimer’s subtle orchestration of all the various players, which he likened to a “ballet,” with each person knowing what was expected of him and playing his assigned part. “He had no great reluctance about using people,” he observed. “But … it was an enjoyable experience because of the character of Robert to do it so adroitly.” Manley often wondered if Groves, who was a very astute judge of people, “sensed the breadth of stature and capability of this man in areas which his previous activity had given so few objective hints for the future.”
Greene, too, took note of this new, more mature turn in Oppenheimer’s character. “It’s a real mystery that he rose to this so fast, considering that he was a very diffident, shy person to begin with,” she said. But he had the scientists’ respect and their unstinting confidence—that he understood the problem and that it really could be done—and this gave him a new kind of strength and confidence. “He had that behind him,” she said, adding that statesmanship was “something he learned, and perhaps not too well.”
After the April gathering, Groves moved to tighten his hold over Los Alamos. In the wake of Condon’s resignation, he rescinded Oppenheimers authority to designate who came onto the Los Alamos site. From May 8, 1943, only he, and he alone, would have the power to authorize visitors to the secret city. Under his supervision, Oppenheimer would from then on periodically issue supplemental “Notes on Security,” clearly designed to clarify and further amplify the policy of compartmentalization laid out in the original “Memorandum on the Los Alamos Project,” which had been sent out to the scientists before they came and had served as an ominous introduction to their future life. The first memo had been stamped “Restricted” and warned the reader not to share the document with anyone but known project members—wives could be acquainted with the contents only if they were sworn to silence—and included a copy of the Espionage Act. It had provided the barest minimum of information, stated that limited movement outside Los Alamos and in the immediate area would be permitted, and concluded with a stern note from Oppenheimer:
The extent to which we shall be able to maintain this comparative freedom will depend primarily on our success in keeping the affairs of the laboratory strictly within the confines of the Laboratory, on the cooperation which the project personnel affords us in its discretion on all project matters, and on our willingness to rupture completely our normal associations with those not on the project.
A subsequent note from Oppenheimer on May 22, 1943, which had Groves’ fingerprints all over it, was far more severe in tone: “It is important that our personnel should maintain no social relations with people in the neighboring communities.”
It was not enough that the scientists were shut away from prying eyes; they were to avoid any human society beyond the gates. The censorship regulations dictated that they never introduce themselves to local residents, identify their occupation in any way other than as “engineer,” or mention where they were staying even in the most general terms lest the smallest detail betray their location. “Don’t mention the topographical details which are essential to the Project,” another security pamphlet warned. “Box 1663” was the only address they were allowed to give out—it went on their new IDs, forwarded mail, boxes containing their furniture, auto registrations, driver’s licenses, insurance policies, bank accounts, and ration coupons. They could not sign their name to any form, even something as innocent as a library card, that might give away their identity or whereabouts. They were forbidden to travel more than one hundred miles from Los Alamos, circumscribing their lives within a tiny fragment of the map bordered by the New Mexican towns of Albuquerque, Cuba, Las Vegas, and Lamy Exceptions would be made only for trips related to laboratory business and personal emergencies. If they passed people they knew on the street, they were to cut them dead. If they were recognized at any time, or happened upon an old friend from their former life, they were to keep the conversation short and would have to submit a lengthy report to the security force. They were
RESTRICTED
, as they were reminded again and again in large, bold letters in every new instruction booklet and directive.