Research Catalog

Title

The Los Alamos primer : the first lectures on how to build an atomic bomb / Robert Serber ; annotated by Robert Serber ; edited with an introduction by Richard Rhodes.

Author

Serber, R. (Robert)

Publication

Berkeley : University of California Press, [1992], ©1992.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Rhodes, Richard.

Description

xxxiii, 98 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"In April 1943, at a new secret laboratory on a mesa in the high New Mexican desert, a crowd of the most brilliant young scientists in America heard five stunning lectures that summed up everything the world knew about how to build an atomic bomb." "The lecturer was Robert Serber, a theoretical physicist and protege of J. Robert Oppenheimer; the laboratory was Los Alamos. Serber's lectures, assembled in note form and mimeographed, became the legendary LA-1, the Los Alamos Primer, the first document passed out to new recruits to the wartime enterprise, classified Secret Limited for twenty years after the Second World War and published here for the first time. Now contemporary readers can see just how much was known and how much remained to be learned when the Manhattan Project began. Would the "gadget," the atomic bomb, really work? How powerful would it be? Could it be made small enough and light enough to carry in a bomber? Could its explosive nuclear reaction be controlled?" "Working with Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the development of the atomic bomb, Professor Serber has annotated the Primer for the nonscientist. His preface, a lively informal memoir, vividly conveys the mingled excitement, uncertainty, and intensity the Manhattan Project scientists felt. Rhodes's introduction reviews the development of nuclear physics up to the day that Serber stood before his blackboard at Los Alamos and summarizes the work that followed." "In this first published edition, the Los Alamos Primer finally emerges from the archives. No lectures anywhere have had greater historical consequences."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Atomic bomb > United States > History
• Manhattan Project (U.S.) History
• Physicists > Biography
• Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory History

Note

• Based on a set of 5 lectures given by R. Serber during the first two weeks of Apr. 1943 as an indoctrination course in connection with the starting of the Los Alamos Project.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction / Richard Rhodes -- Preface / Robert Serber -- The Los Alamos Primer -- 1. Object -- 2. Energy of Fission Process -- 3. Fast Neutron Chain Reaction -- 4. Fission Cross-sections -- 5. Neutron Spectrum -- 6. Neutron Number -- 7. Neutron Capture -- 8. Why Ordinary U Is Safe -- 9. Material 49 -- 10. Simplest Estimate of Minimum Size of Bomb -- 11. Effect of Tamper -- 12. Damage -- 13. Efficiency -- 14. Effect of Tamper on Efficiency -- 15. Detonation -- 16. Probability of Predetonation -- 17. Fizzles -- 18. Detonating Source -- 19. Neutron Background -- 20. Shooting -- 21. Autocatalytic Methods -- 22. Conclusion -- Appendix I: The Frisch-Peierls Memorandum -- Appendix II: Biographical Notes.

ISBN

0520075765

LCCN

91014068

OCLC

• 23693470
• ocm23693470

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries