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Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943-1945, by Lillian Hoddeson, Paul W. Henriksen, Roge
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This volume is a lucid and accurate history of the technical research that led to the first atomic bombs. The authors explore how the "critical assembly" of scientists, engineers, and military personnel at Los Alamos, responding to wartime deadlines, collaborated to create a new approach to large-scale research. The book opens with an introduction laying out major themes. After a synopsis of the prehistory of the bomb project, from the discovery of nuclear fission to the start of the Manhattan Engineer District, and an overview of the early materials program, the book examines the establishment of the Los Alamos Laboratory, the implosion and gun assembly programs, nuclear physics research, chemistry and metallurgy, explosives, uranium and plutonium development, confirmation of spontaneous fission in pile-produced plutonium, the thermonuclear bomb, critical assemblies, the Trinity test, and delivery of the combat weapons.
- Sales Rank: #1250315 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Cambridge University Press
- Published on: 2004-02-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x 1.18" w x 5.98" l, 1.75 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 528 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
"This book fulfills its declared intention of providing an unprecedentedly full picture of all the actions and processes that were involved in bringing the bombs into existence." A. P. French, Nature
"Generally the presentation is clear and shows the care one expects of the four distinguished authors....The presentation can easily be followed by a scientific reader, and a non-scientist will get an interesting impression of the events." Rudolf Peierls, Science
"...provides detailed discussion of the many experiments that made up the project, including the implosion and gun assembly programs and the interesting consequences of spontaneous fission in reactor-produced plutonium and continues with details of the Trinity test and the actual dropping of the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recommended as an important addition to any college or university library." Choice
"...draw[s] upon a full lode of primary data and explore[s] for the first time the methodology by which researchers at Los Alamos succeeded in their wartime mission. The authors successfully avoid the "official history" pitfall by focusing on individual contributions to scientific and technological advances as opposed to the usual summary of divisional achievements...a well-documented, concise, chronological review of the combination of nuclear physics, chemistry and metallurgy that produced the first fission weapons...also examines the impact of Los Alamos upon the methodology of "big science" at national laboratories in the postwar era." Peter Neushal, Physics Today
"...this is the most technical account of Los Alamos's war years to appear in print...it considers Project Y's significant success in the use of 'big science' methodology....Critical Assembly is a masterful piece of technical writing accomplished by four authors in conjunction with six scientific advisors and editors....essential reading for technically-minded scholars interested in the history of Los Alamos, atomic research, and the development of modern research labs...." Richard Melzer, Western Historical Quarterly
"Critical Assembly has a lot to say about proliferation, much of it relevant to the present. Among other things, it provides a better foundation than ever for evaluating the problems facing countries (or terrorists) with nuclear ambitions." William Sweet, The Sciences
"...an indispensable book...." Barton C. Hacker, American Historical Review
"The book has the great merit of illustrating the depth and breadth of the scientific and technical problems faced by scientists in the laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico...This is an important book, for its insight into the enormously complex activities at Los alamos and, even more for its tantalizing survey of the implications of that research and development." Lawrence Badash, Journal of American History
"...the book certainly does bring together a lot of information that fleshes out the story." New Scientist
"...a notable and richly detailed work....Critical assembly sets a new standard for writings on wartime Los Alamos." Canadian Review of American Studies
From the Back Cover
Unlike earlier histories of Los Alamos, this book treats in detail the research and development that led to the implosion and gun weapons; the research in nuclear physics, chemistry, and metallurgy that enabled clear bomb, the 'Super.'
Most helpful customer reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Read Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" First.
By B James
Without doubt, this is the finest account of the technical aspects of the race to produce an atomic weapon at Los Alamos before the end of WWII. As other reviewers have noted, you don't need a degree in physics to read this book; however, you do need endurance.
"Critical Assembly" is a plodding, straightforward, chronological narrative of how talent and materials came together to make a bomb; a techno-nerd's dream. There is no attempt to delve into politics and ethics, make the characters "come alive" with interesting personal glimpses, or place it all in historical perspective. For that you need Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb."
Still, the authors did not write "Critical Assembly" to be a riveting historical novel soon to be a blockbuster movie. For technical information, it is the best single book available. To understand why anyone would care how the atomic bomb was made, let alone plod through the technical details, read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" first.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Critical Assembly - an important reference book
By Peter Staric, PhD
Hoddeson, Henriksen, Meade & Westfal
Critical Assembly, ISBN 0-521-54117-4
Cambridge University Press, 2004
The title of the book has double meaning. It denotes the critical assembly of uranium 235, or plutonium 239 to start the chain reaction in an atomic bomb. But it also points to the �critical� assembly of numerous scientists, engineers, technicians and US Army personnel. The authors described how in a race with time all these experts were pursuing a single objective: to make an atomic bomb before the Nazi scientists could (supposedly) do it. Each of them was working in his or her special field, but only a handful of the privileged ones knew they were making an atomic bomb. The resolute, competent and mercilessly hard driving conductor of this huge orchestra was General Leslie R. Groves; its concertmaster was the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. To carry on this parable, the musicians - with rare exceptions - were obliged to play their scores with plugged ears. The conductor allowed them to know only their own score, because the whole composition named MED (Manhattan Engineering District) must not become known before the end of the war.
Though the fission was discovered in Germany (in the winter 1938/39) many Jewish scientists, being suppressed under Nazi-fascist reign, had left Europe as soon as they could. Among them A. Einstein, H. Bethe, R. Peierls, C. Fuchs (unfortunately also a soviet spy), N. Bohr, E. Teller, E. Wiegner, L. Szilard, E. Fermi and J. von Neumann, to name just the most important ones, arrived in the USA, where they contributed essentially to MED. When Groves began leading the project, it started advancing like an avalanche. What in 1939 was deemed to be a science fiction has become a real bomb within just six years.
To quench the thirst for information after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 6, 1945, Henry de Wolf Smyth of MED had prepared the book "Atomic Energy for Military Purposes". In it the most basic knowledge of how an atomic bomb works, as well as the enormous effort of MED to make it, was made public. But in its preface Groves attached a latch, telling us this is all, which can be released at the time; take it, do not ask any further questions - or else! Though many books published after this date had disclosed this or that, the book "Critical Assembly" has definitely broken that latch by disclosing many minute details, which were classified almost up to present time. In the book we learned how the scientists and other personnel, forced to work under the circumstances as outlined above, starting with micrograms of highly enriched uranium 235 and (up to then non existent) plutonium, have gradually extended the production up to kilogram quantities, determined the critical masses, avoided the nuclear explosion, and had managed to build two combat-ready weapons, which ended the war. The details will certainly be interesting for physicists as well as for engineers of chemistry, electronics, metallurgy, mechanics, ordnance and some others. For the layman the minute descriptions would be mostly too difficult to understand and the same might be valid even for professionals, if the matter lies too far outside of their specialty. But as a whole, the book is a great work of reference, with an enormous collection of interesting data, not known so far. On top of all this the book has 74 pages of references.
Unfortunately, the Department of Energy was too thorough when removing many "sensitive data" from the original text. Initially numerous details became gradually scarce when the discussion advanced toward August 1945. However, some common sense and simple calculations, based on the data published in many other books, magazines and films, converge to the following conclusions: Approximately 10 lbs (4.53 kg) of plutonium was used in the Fat Man and 70 lbs (31.75 kg) of 88 % enriched uranium 235 in the Little Boy bomb. In the uranium bomb the active material of about 3 critical masses was divided into 4 projectiles and one equilateral cylindrical target, with holes to fit the projectiles, placed inside the massive tungsten steel tamper. When three critical masses are assembled, the chain reaction starts spontaneously within about 0.1 s; so an initiator (with dangerously radioactive polonium 210) is basically not needed. Why was such data not mentioned in the book, which is full of less important details? Today nobody would waste so much precious, highly enriched uranium by not resorting to implosion, which needs less than one critical mass. On the other hand, the metallurgy of plutonium is a science in itself and so is the implosion. So why be so scared?
Peter Staric, PhD, BSEE
Ljubljana, Slovenia
32 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Technical/Scientific history of the work at Los Alamos
By A Customer
This is a great book if you are a scientist, particularly if you are a physicist. This is a technical history of the Manhattan project at it relates to the work done at Los Alamos Lab leading to the first atomic explosions. You'll learn the fine details of the work as a scientist would recount them. You'll be amazed at the limited knowledge and instrumentation available at the time!!! You'll be surprised by the methods used to get things done in time! And you will be impressed by the
schedules and the accomplishments made in those years of hard -and we are told in details how and why it was hard- work!
If you have worked at a National Lab (and even if you haven't) you'll understand how the concept of the national laboratory came about by understanding the work in the early days of Los Alamos involving a fine interplay between the scientific, the engineering and the programmatic thrusts.
Recommending this book seems like an understatement. If you are a physicist, a chemist, a mathematician, a computer scientist you want to read this book and understand how they did it!
The only thing that could be improved in this book is possibly including a few diagrams. I am not sure whether that is because they might still be classified, but they must exist the archives at Los Alamos. And adding a diagram here and there would certainly be helpful to the reader. If there had to be a revised edition, that's where improvement could find a home.
I'd challenge the team that wrote this book to tackle other successes such as the history of Fermilab or SLAC for example. And not to shy away from a tougher one -not a success story- the history of the failed SSC project. Use some of that insight and record in a similar manner how science, engineering and a really fine mission (not equaled in the latter half of this century) sadly failed that time around...
See all 12 customer reviews...
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