Men and Atoms : The Discovery, the Uses, and the Future of Atomic Energy

Description

So, on July 16, 1945, in the desert of New Mexico. the first atomic Atomic bomb exploded. The Atomic Age had begun. William L. Laurence watched the birth of the Atomic Age from a few miles away. Now, fourteen years later, he has written the history—and the future—of the atom. Nobody is better qualified than William Laurence to write this story. The Science Editor of The New York Times, he was the only correspondent to whom the secrets of the Manhattan Project were revealed. He worked beside his friends, the great scientists who discovered the principles of nuclear fission, at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Hanford, in an atmosphere of tense excitement and rigid security. He was present at the first atomic bomb test and was the official eyewitness when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. From his knowledge in the field, from his numerous friends among the leading scientists, and from his own experiences, William Laurence has written this dramatic and timely account of the discovery, the uses and the future of the atom. Mr. Laurence tells of the discoveries of the great pioneers —Henri Becquerel, the Curies, Einstein—and of the explorations into the unknown by Rutherford, Planck, Fermi, Bohr, and many others, that culminated in the "great green supersun” rising over the New Mexico desert in 1945. He tells the story of the German scientists’ attempt to build the bomb, and of the heroic exploits of the Norwegian resistance fighters to destroy their key plant. And he describes the lost opportunities and the mistakes that have profoundly altered the course of history in our time. But Men and Atoms does not stop at the present; it goes on to the future, to give the reader a glimpse of the new world that the atom is already in the process of creating. Mr. Laurence has included an "Atomic Primer", in which he presents a clear, straightforward picture of the universe of the atom and the new and staggering dimensions in space and time that it has revealed to us. About the Author William L. Laurence has been reporting science for The New York Times since 1930 and is now the Times's Science Editor. He has twice been awarded the Pulitzer Prize—the first time, in 1937, for his reporting of the Harvard Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Sciences, the second time, in 1946, for his eyewitness account of the bombing of Nagasaki and the ten subsequent articles he wrote on the development, production and significance of the atomic bomb. In 1946 he won the George Westinghouse Distinguished Science Writers Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His numerous awards include two citations from the War Department, the University of Missouri Medal for Distinguished Service to Journalism, the Lasker Award and the Grady Gold Medal of the American Chemical Society. Among other events, Mr. Laurence has covered the Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in 1955. and the major tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs in Nevada and the Pacific.