Steven Shapin · Barrel of Greenbacks: Luis Alvarez and the Bomb
A review by Steven Shapin of Collisions: A physicist’s journey from Hiroshima to the death of the dinosaurs. Author: Alec Nevala-Lee.
The Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb, transmuted pure theory into mass slaughter, and it changed everything for the scientists who did the work.
Oppenheimer was called the Father of the Bomb, but Alvarez was the scientist in the delivery room. At the moment the bomb was released over Hiroshima, Alvarez was fully occupied watching the oscilloscope screen that recorded data from the gauges slung under parachutes. Minutes later, he ‘looked in vain for the city that had been our target’, seeing no man-made structures on the ground. He worried that the Enola Gay bombardier had missed, but the crew on the observation plane reassured him that Hiroshima had been annihilated: ‘It was a beautiful job of bombing.’