The Los Alamos Primer; The First Lectures on How to Build An Atomic Bomb, Annotated by Robert Serber

xxxiii, [1], 98, [4] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Formulae. Endnotes. Appendix I: The Frisch-Peierls Memorandum. Appendix II: Biographical Notes. Index. Inscribed to Vic Reis by Sig Hecker. Inscription reads To Vic Reis--I hope you enjoy the bit of physics and history about the Manhattan Project. Thanks for your continued support. Sig Hecker 3/3/94. Siegfried S. Hecker (born October 2, 1943) is an American metallurgist and nuclear scientist. He served as Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 to 1997 and is now affiliated with Stanford University, where he is research professor emeritus in the Department of Management Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering, and senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. During this time, he was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1988) for outstanding research on plutonium and the forming of materials, and for leadership in developing energy and weapons systems. Victor Herbert Reis (born 11 February 1935) is a former U.S. government official. Reis served as Assistant Secretary for Defense Programs in the U.S. Department of Energy from 1993 to 1999, where he led the development of the DOE's Stockpile Stewardship Program. Reis was among the first to recognize the need for a new, formal program in maintaining the U.S. nuclear stockpile, replacing data formerly obtained by testing with data from supercomputer simulation and small-scale non-nuclear experiments. 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.…