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| Photo: Angela N. H. Creager |
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| Robert Oppenheimer in 1958. Photo: PHILIPPE HALSMAN/MAGNUM |
After witnessing the 1945 Trinity atomic-bomb test, the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Although this is often interpreted as admitting moral culpability on the part of the Manhattan Project’s scientific director, Oppenheimer remained a central player in the nuclear-weapons establishment until he lost his security clearance in the mid-1950s.
Harold Urey also worked for the Manhattan Project. But by contrast, the Nobel-prizewinning chemist distanced himself from nuclear weapons development after the war. His search for science beyond defence work prompted a shift into studying the origins of life and lunar geology. Now, the absorbing biography The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey by science historian Matthew Shindell uses the researcher’s life to show how a conscientious chemist navigated the cold war...
In the 1920s, Urey was among a small group of chemists who collaborated closely with physicists. Working at Niels Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, he kept abreast of developments in quantum mechanics. There, and on travels in Germany, he met the likes of Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and Albert Einstein. But Urey decided he lacked the mathematical skills to make theoretical advances in quantum chemistry. Moving back to the United States, he started both a family and an academic career.
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Related link
Nature 574, 331-332 (2019)
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| The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey (Synthesis) |
