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Technically Speaking

NUCLEAR REMEMBRANCES

A December Anniversary
by Dave Trecker

he blockbuster movie “Oppenheimer” brought back daily walked past what was once the west stands of Stagg Field,
memories for many of us about the atomic era – the then long gone, replaced by a mushroom cloud statue by Henry
T wonderful yet troubling period when splitting the atomic Moore. A fellow chemistry student used to amuse himself by
nuclei led to changes we’re still struggling with today. fiddling with a slide rule in front of the statue as the tour buses
I’m not old enough to remember Trinity Site or Hiroshima or streamed by.
Nagasaki. But as a former University of Chicago student, I vividly Another remembrance was a college friend telling of a dinner
recall some of the fallout. party hosted by her father, a surgeon at Billings Hospital, the day
As many know, the atomic age was born December 2, 1942, the Japanese surrendered. One after another, the scientists told
when Enrico Fermi, in a squash court under the west stands of their wives for the first time about their roles in creating the bomb.
Stagg Field, carried out the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. My friend said in a quivering voice, “I’ll never forget it.”
Control rods that soaked up radiation were gradually withdrawn My major professor at Chicago, a founder of free-radical
from a plutonium pile until critical levels were achieved; the rods chemistry that’s important in chain reactions, consulted for the
were then replaced. military when I was his student. He steadfastly refused to discuss
A cryptic phone call to Washington reported, “The Italian any of his consulting work.
navigator has just landed in the new world.” There would be no Segueing to the present, my wife and I just returned from a trip
turning back. to New Mexico that included a visit to Los Alamos. Streets there
Anecdotes abound about the stupendous breakthrough. are appropriately named Boomer Avenue, Trinity Drive, Bikini
Although activity was overseen by some of the world’s greatest Atoll. Security was tight. We were screened at one entry point and
physicists, there was nevertheless concern about what a disastrous allowed to proceed, apparently deemed to be harmless old dotards.
mishap could do to the densely populated Chicago south side. Over 10,000 scientists now work in Los Alamos, housed in
For that reason, Arthur Compton, a key administrator of the laboratories on three mesas spread out across the barren desert.
Manhattan Project, decided not to ask permission from University We visited the Fuller Lodge where Oppenheimer and his
of Chicago president, Robert Hutchins. Quite remarkably, colleagues met to discuss assembling the first atomic bomb.
Hutchins was kept in the dark about the historical experiment on It’s now an art studio.
his own campus. One of my lasting remembrances of the nuclear age was a visit
Another anecdote has Fermi famously stopping the trial to Hiroshima many years ago as part of a business trip to Japan.
halfway through, replacing the rods and breaking for lunch. You The purpose of the trip was to promote chemicals for use in the
can’t make this up. After lunch the scientists reconvened and made Hiroshima shipyard, one of Japan’s largest. I had a chance to see
history. At 3:53 in the afternoon, Fermi announced. “The pile has Ground Zero, where the first atomic bomb was detonated over a
gone critical.” (For a wonderful account of this and related wartime city … but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I just couldn’t.
Chicago activities, read “The Pope of Physics” by Gino Segre and And I missed the opportunity.
Bettina Hoerlin.) It was probably for the better.
Many years later when my wife and I attended Chicago, we Dr. Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Naples.

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