The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

World War II was a time when secrecy was often a necessary part of security. The secrecy surrounding the development to of the atomic bomb was particularly thick. Since that veil was lifted, Las Alamos, Nevada, has become strongly associated with the bomb, as it should be. However, there were other locations critical to the project. Denis Kiernan discusses one of them, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in her book The Girls of Atomic City.

The Clinton Engineer Works was part of the Manhattan Project. Its purpose was the enrichment of uranium to supply the research, development and construction of an atomic weapon. When it was built, the Army took over thousands of acres of farmland in Tennessee, displacing the residents. Oak Ridge did not exist before the project.

As the title suggests, Kiernan focuses on the role of women at the Clinton Engineer Works, as the area was known when it was a military reservation. The book draws on her interviews with women who worked at the site; the experiences of nine particular women serve as guideposts for the story. These women served in a variety of roles: statistician, chemist, inspector, equipment operator, nurse, secretary, and janitor. Some became wives and mothers as well during the war years. It was an interesting time when there was space for women in science, technology and manufacturing, but not a lot.

Kiernan reaches outside of Oak Ridge to mention other notable women who played a part. German physicist Lise Meitner coined the term nuclear fission; she had Jewish ancestors and fled to Sweden as the Nazis came to power in her homeland. Earlier, Ida Noddack was the first to suggest that the atomic nucleus could split, an idea that was initially rejected by many scientists studying radioactivity and the inner workings of the atom.

The growth of families in a place designed solely for one purpose suggested a result that had not been considered when the Army started to build the Clinton Engineer Works. Oak Ridge was becoming a community and it eventually became an incorporated city (in 1958 by a vote of the residents after federal and state laws opened the opportunity). Though the population dropped dramatically from its war-time peak, Oak Ridge remained a center for research in nuclear energy and the peace-time use of radioactive materials as it transitioned to civilian control. Today the Oak Ridge National Laboratory continues research in energy and computing. The city of Oak Ridge continues as well, still connected to its past as a unique factory town, but in many way a city like any other.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

The Supergirls by Mike Madrid

Kiernan, Denise. The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II. 2013. New York Touchstone: 2014.

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

The technology that has the potential for a breakthrough that could revolutionize life in the next few decades is not one many might think of. It’s the battery. The next generation of battery could make affordable, long-range electric vehicles available to the masses. They could make variable energy sources like wind and solar more viable competitors to traditional, fuel-burning energy.

Though it is not widely publicized, major companies, start-ups and even government agencies are involved in a race to bring the next generation battery to the market. The company that creates it and the nation that can establish the manufacturing base for it will be in a position to make a lot of money. It’s a dramatic story, which Steve Levine relates in The Powerhouse.

Levine provides some background on the development of the lithium ion battery and improvements to it. His focus, however, is Argonne National Laboratory.

Argonne, located near Chicago, started as a lab to research nuclear energy and weaponry. It traces its history back to the Manhattan Project and the University of Chicago lab where Enrico Fermi started a manmade, self-sustained nuclear chain reaction. At the close of the book, Argonne was taking the lead of a hub of battery technology development aimed particularly at creating the battery that will put electric cars in millions of garages.

Argonne is not the only player in the field. Levine also reports on some of the companies, large and small, and countries that are staking out their places in the field. Automakers, particularly General Motors, are particularly interested in these devices that might radically change their industry.

The chemistry of these batteries, particularly the cathodes, is discussed in the book, but not deeply. It is not a textbook on electrochemistry. It is instead a book on the business and politics of an uncertain technological development that has the potential to alter the economic and environmental condition of the world.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Bottled Lightning by Seth Fletcher

The Grid by Gretchen Bakke

Lights Out by Ted Koppel

Professional Amateur by T. A. Boyd

Levine, Steve. The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World. New York: Viking, 2015.

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont (234) & The Revenge of Kali-Ra by K. K. Beck (235)

Malmont, Paul.  The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Beck, K. K.  The Revenge of Kali-Ra.

Paul Malmont clearly loves pulps. The Chinatown Cloud Peril is one of the most fun books I’ve ever read.  He revisits this territory in The Astounding, the Amazing and the Unknown.

Astounding places fictional versions of science fiction authors in a scientific mystery adventure some of them might have been glad to write.  Some of the characters are pulp authors who appeared in Peril (Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, Walter Gibson, and Lester Dent, a fellow Missourian).  Others are authors of the era when the old pulps gave way to comics and sci-fi magazines (Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, and editor John Campbell).

A group of science fiction writers, most of them scientist and engineers as well, are working for the Navy to turn crazy ideas into reality in a proto-DARPA.  They’re not producing a lot of results and their leader, former Naval officer Heinlein, is feeling the pressure.  They stumble upon the suggestion that inventor Nikola Tesla accidentally created a superweapon at Wardenclyffe, which is why the tower he built there came down.  Their search for answers leads them on a twisting trail from the underground rivers of New York to the heights of the General Electric hierarchy.  Red herrings about and these clever authors don’t catch on to the biggest one in the book.

The character development is interesting, too.  Heinlein is feeling left out of opportunities to make a real difference, but eventually gets an inkling that his stories can make a difference.  The seeds of Scientology are planted in Hubbard.  I think the strongest character development occurs in the fictional Asimov.  He goes through something like a conventional coming-of-age story.  He starts as a frightened youth, faces his fears and becomes a man.  In addition, is a loner struggling in his marriage who finds a way to bring his wife into partnership with him, having a passion for her that matched the passion he had for his work.  That is good stuff; it adds depth to a story that is mostly and-then-and-then suspense.

For the geeks (that includes me), there are appearances by fictional versions of many other people.  Authors include Nowell Page of The Spider, Hugh Cave, aka Justin Case, and Kurt Vonnegut as an Easter egg.  Actor Jimmy Stewart lends his skill as a pilot.  Mystic and rocket scientist Jack Parsons could spin off a weird tale of his own.  Even Manhattan Project physicists Robert Oppenheimer, Julian Schwinger, and Richard Feynman make an appearance.

While I’m writing about an homage to pulps, I’d like to mention The Revenge of Kali-Ra by K. K. Beck.  I wrote a review of it that got lost in a hard drive crash (even so, I named it one of the best books I read in 2010).  The story focuses on fictional pulp stories featuring the villainous vixen of the title, which may no longer be public domain and may be valuable because of a proposed movie base on them.  The scent of money is in the air, bad characters pick up the scent, decent people are caught up in the events, and mayhem ensues.  Kali-Ra isn’t as good as Astounding, but it’s a fun read.  Beck includes clips from ersatz Kali-Ra tales that are full of the type of florid language one might expect, even hope for, in pulp.

Paul Malmont also wrote The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

The Great Stink by Clare Clark

The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

Google

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman is possibly the most famous physicist and popularizer of physics of the 20^th Century. He was involved in the Manhattan Project, won a Nobel Prize, served on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the disaster of the space shuttle Challenger, and wrote several popular books on physics in addition to his scientific contributions.

One of those popular books was Six Easy Pieces. It is a collection of lectures prepared by Feynman for freshman and sophomore classes at California Institute of Technology (part of the larger collection Lectures on Physics).

It is also one of Feynman’s most popular books, possibly because of its breadth and simplicity. The book covers a wide range of physics from basic ideas about the structure of matter to physics in relation to other sciences, classical mechanics (Newton’s physics) and quantum mechanics.

It is easy in the sense that Feynman assumes his audience has a background in math and science typical of a high school graduate in 1962. There is very little math. Instead, Feynman takes an approach that focuses on commonly known facts, observation and reasoning. Readers won’t need a semester of calculus to follow this book.

Possibly the best thing about Six Easy Pieces is that it offers a view into the way a physicist thinks that is accessible to many people, even people with minimal scientific education. It is easy to think of science as an overwhelming pile of facts. Feynman’s book illustrates that science is also, and more importantly, a method of applying reason and experimentation to learn about the world we live in. The scientific understanding we have now was built on centuries of consideration, study, experimentation and evaluation that is often iterative, challenging, reconsidering and modifying scientific knowledge that was once widely accepted.

The book holds up well after more than 50 years. I might recommended it to a high schooler who is considering a career in science, especially physics, or anyone who is looking for an introduction or re-introduction to physics from someone who knew the subject well enough to not overcomplicate it.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time by Peter Galison 

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

A fictional version of Feynman appears in The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont (235).

Feynman, Richard P. Six Easy Pieces. New York: Basic Books, 1963.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard P. Feynman

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a collection of interviews and speeches of physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard P. Feynman. The theme that runs through most of these items is Feynman’s ideas about what science is and how it is practiced.

 To Feynmen, the essence of a proper scientific attitude is doubt (a version of this idea goes back to René Descartes). It is an honest acceptance that you don’t know anything for certain, and you may accept other ideas about what is most likely true about the world in light of new experiences and better measurements. Science is the testing of ideas to see if they conform to reality and the knowledge that accumulates as a result.

 The physicist is critical of some of the social sciences, some parts of psychology and education research. They use experiment and measurement and other forms from science, but they do not produce results in the manner of the physical sciences. He doesn’t suggest the end of research in these areas, but that they tend to present findings as if there is “scientific” certainty when things are actually very uncertain.

 Feynman led an interesting life, and I took particular interest in his experiences related to very important engineering and policy issues in his lifetime. In one of the interviews, Feynman discussed his work on the Manhattan Project and life at Los Alamos. The editor included Feynman’s minority report on the investigation of the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, which resulted in the death of all the astronauts on board.

 Richard Feynman also wrote

Six Easy Pieces

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in:

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time by Peter Galison 

The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

 Feynman, Richard P. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Jeffrey Robbins, ed. Cambridge, MA: Helix Books, 1999.