Robert Serber

Robert Serber (1909 - June 1,1997) was a physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project.

Related Topics:
1909 - June 1 - 1997 - Manhattan Project

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PhD, 1934. Went to work with Robert Oppenheimer at UC Berkeley. Professor at Urbana.

Related Topics:
Robert Oppenheimer - UC Berkeley

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Recruited for Manhattan Project, 1941. When the Los Alamos lab was first being organised a decision was made by Oppenheimer to not compartmentalize the technical information among different departments. This had the effect of increasing effectiveness in problem solving and also increasing the urgency of the project in the minds of the technical workers, now they knew what they were working on. So it fell to Serber to give a series of lectures explaining the basic principles and goals of the project. These lectures were printed and supplied to all incoming scientific staff, and became know as The Los Alamos Primer, LA-1. It was declassified in 1965. (Available at Wikimedia Commons)

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Serber developed the first good theory of bomb disassembly hydrodynamics. He also was with the first American team to enter Hiroshima and Nagasaki to assess the damage that the atomic bomb had done.

Related Topics:
Hiroshima - Nagasaki

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After the war, professor of physics at Berkeley, then Columbia. 1948, had to defend himself against anonymous accusations of disloyality, mostly due to the fact that his wife's family were Jewish intellectuals with Socialist leanings, and also because he tried to remove politics from discussions of the feasibility of the fusion bomb, lead to arguments with Edward Teller. (This was the start of a period of political paranoia in the US.)

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Serber went on to be consultant to numerous labs, businesses and commissions.

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• Hoddeson, Lillian, Paul W. Henriksen, Roger A. Meade, and Catherine L. Westfall , Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos Druring the Oppenheimer Years, 1943-1945, Cambridge, 1993
• Serber, Robert, with Robert P. Crease, Peace and War: Reminiscences of a Life on the Frontiers of Science, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), ISBN 0231105460, LoC QC16.S46A3 1998
• Serber, Robert, The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb, (University of California Press, 1992) ISBN 0520075765 Original 1943 "LA-1", declassified in 1965, plus commentary and historical introduction.
• Serber, Robert, Serber Says: About Nuclear Physics. Singapore: World Scientific, 1987.