The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures On How To Build An Atomic Bomb

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xxxiii, [1], 98, [4] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Formulae. Endnotes. Appendix I: The Frisch-Peierls Memorandum. Appendix II: Biographical Notes. Index. Robert Serber (March 14, 1909 - June 1, 1997) was an American physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project. Serber's lectures explaining the basic principles and goals of the project were printed and supplied to all incoming scientific staff, and became known as The Los Alamos Primer. The New York Times called him "the intellectual midwife at the birth of the atomic bomb." He was recruited for the Manhattan Project in 1941, and was in Project Alberta on the dropping of the bomb. When the Los Alamos National Laboratory was first organized, Oppenheimer decided not to compartmentalize the technical information among different departments. This increased the effectiveness of the technical workers in problem solving, and emphasized the urgency of the project in their minds, now they knew what they were working on. So it fell to Serber to give a series of lectures explaining the basic principles and goals of the project. The primer was declassified in 1965. Serber developed the first good theory of bomb assembly hydrodynamics. Serber's wife was appointed by Oppenheimer to head the technical library at Los Alamos, where she was the only wartime female section leader. Serber was with the first American team to enter Hiroshima and Nagasaki to assess the results of the atomic bombing of the two cities. In 1951, he became a professor of physics at Columbia University at the behest of Manhattan Project colleague I. I. Rabi. The classified lectures that galvanized the Manhattan Project scientists, with annotations for the nonspecialist reader and an introduction by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. In March 1943 a group of young scientists, sequestered on a mesa near Santa Fe, attended a crash course in the new atomic physics. The lecturer was Robert Serber, J. Robert Oppenheimer's protégé, and they learned that their job was to invent the world's first atomic bomb. Serber's lecture notes, nicknamed the "Los Alamos Primer," were mimeographed and passed from hand to hand, remaining classified for many years. They are published here for the first time, and now contemporary readers can see just how much was known and how terrifyingly much was unknown when the Manhattan Project began. Could this "gadget," based on the newly discovered principles of nuclear fission, really be designed and built? Could it be small enough and light enough for an airplane to carry? If it could be built, could it be controlled? Working with Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the development of the atomic bomb, Professor Serber has annotated original lecture notes with explanations of the physics terms for the nonspecialist. His preface, an informal memoir, vividly conveys the mingled excitement, uncertainty, and intensity felt by the Manhattan Project scientists. Rhodes's introduction provides a brief history of the development of atomic physics up to the day that Serber stood before his blackboard at Los Alamos. In this edition, The Los Alamos Primer finally emerges from the archives to give a new understanding of the very beginning of nuclear weapons. No seminar anywhere has had greater historical consequences.