Then Los Alamos entered the picture.
Part III: Life among the Physicists
Chapter 8. Los Alamos
During the late spring of 1943, I wrote to von Neumann about the possibility of war work. I knew he was involved, because his letters often came from Washington rather than from Princeton. I was not happy with teaching, although I did a lot of mathematics, wrote papers, organized colloquia, and taught war-related courses. Still it seemed a waste of my time; I felt I could do more for the war effort.
One day Johnny answered with an intimation that there was interesting work going on — he could not tell me where. From Princeton he said he was going west via Chicago, and suggested that I come to the Union Station there to talk to him since he had two hours between trains. That was in the early fall of 1943.
I went and, sure enough, Johnny appeared. What caught my attention were the two men escorting him, looking a bit like "gorillas." They were obviously guards, and that impressed me; he must be an important figure to rate this, I decided. One of the men went to do something about his railroad ticket, and we talked in the meantime.
Johnny said that there was some very exciting work going on in which I could possibly be of good use; he still could not tell me where it was taking place, but he traveled rather often from Princeton to that location.
I don't know why — by pure chance or one of these incredible coincidences or prophetic insights? — but I answered jokingly, "Well, as you know, Johnny, I don't know much about engineering or experimental physics, in fact I don't even know how the toilet flusher works, except that it is a sort of autocatalytic effect." At this I saw him wince and his expression become quizzical. Only later did I discover that indeed the word autocatalytic was used in connection with schemes for the construction of an atomic bomb.
Then another coincidence occurred. I said, "Recently I have been looking at some work on branching processes." There was a paper by a Swedish mathematician about processes in which particles multiply quite like bacteria, for example. It was prewar work, and an elegant theory of probabilistic processes. That, too, could have had something to do with the mathematics of neutron multiplication. And again he looked at me almost with suspicion or wonder and smiled wanly.
The Wisconsin astronomer Joel Stebbins, whom I saw occasionally, had told me about some work going on with uranium and about the release of energy from very heavy elements. I wondered if, subconsciously, this prompted my remarks.
During this meeting at the station, Johnny and I also discussed what seemed a general lack of imagination in the scientific community's planning of work useful for the war effort — especially in computations for hydrodynamics and aerodynamics. I pointed out my doubts about the age of some of the main participants (people over forty-five seemed to me at that time old). Johnny agreed there were obvious elements of senility. As usual, we tried to lighten our sadness with jocular comments, observing that someone should establish a "gerontological" society, whose members would be scientists interested in war work and afflicted with premature or "galloping" senility.
Since Johnny could not or would not tell me where he was going except that it was to the Southwest, I remembered an old Jewish story about two Jews on a train in Russia. One asks the other, "Where are you going?" and the second replies, "To Kiev." Whereupon the first says, "You liar, you tell me you are going to Kiev so I would think you are going to Odessa. But I know you are going to Kiev, so why do you lie?" And I told Johnny, "I know you can't tell me, but you say you are going Southwest in order that I should think that you are going Northeast. But I know you are going Southwest, so why do you lie?" He laughed. We talked a while longer about the war situation, politics, and the world; then his two companions reappeared and he left.
I saw him once more, I think, in Chicago, before I received an official invitation to join an unidentified project that was doing important work, the physics having something to do with the interior of stars. The letter inviting me was signed by the famous physicist Hans Bethe. It came together with a letter from the personnel department with details of the appointment, salary, clearance procedures, indications on how to get there, and so forth. I accepted immediately with excitement and eagerness.
The pay was slightly above my university salary, but on a twelve-month basis — around $5,000, if I remember correctly. The professional physicists like Bethe who were there already received little more than their university salaries. I learned later that a chemist from Harvard, George Kistiakowski, had the allegedly astronomical salary of $9,000 or $10,000.
I informed my university of this opportunity to join an obviously important war project and secured a leave of absence for the duration.
A student of mine, Joan Hinton, had left for an unknown destination a few weeks before. Joan was taking a course I gave in classical mechanics. One day she appeared in my office in North Hall to ask if I could give her an examination three or four weeks before the end of the term so that she could start some war work. She produced a letter from Professor Ingraham, the chairman, authorizing me to do that. She was a good student, a rather eccentric girl, blonde, sturdy, good-looking. Her uncle was G. I. Taylor, the English physicist. She was also a great-granddaughter of George Boole, the famous nineteenth-century logician. I wrote a number of questions on the back of an envelope; Joan took some sheets of paper, sat down on the floor with her notebook, wrote out her exam, passed, and disappeared from Madison.
Soon after, other people I knew well began to vanish one after the other, without saying where — cafeteria acquaintances, young physics professors and graduate students like David Frisch, and his wife Rose, who was a graduate student in my calculus class, Joseph McKibben, Dick Taschek, and others.
Finally I learned that we were going to New Mexico, to a place not far from Santa Fe. Never having heard about New Mexico, I went to the library and borrowed the Federal Writers' Project Guide to New Mexico. At the back of the book, on the slip of paper on which borrowers signed their names, I read the names of Joan Hinton, David Frisch, Joseph McKibben, and all the other people who had been mysteriously disappearing to hush-hush war jobs without saying where. I had uncovered their destination in a simple and unexpected fashion. It is next to impossible to maintain absolute secrecy and security in war time.
This reminds me of another story. Since I knew Stebbins well, about a month after arriving at Los Alamos, I wrote to him. I did not say where I was but mentioned that in January or February I had seen the star Canopus on the horizon. Later it occurred to me that as an astronomer he could easily have deduced my latitude since this star of the Southern skies is not visible above the 38th parallel.
I shall pass over our problems in getting train reservations. Even with the priorities I had, our departure was delayed by about a month. On the train I had to offer a gratuity to the conductor to obtain a berth for Françoise, who was two months pregnant at the time. This was the first — and I think last — time in my life that I ''bribed" anyone.
We arrived at a remote, lonely, unimpressive little whistle-stop — Lamy, New Mexico. To my infinite surprise, there to meet us was Jack Calkin, a mathematician I knew well. I had met him several years before at the University of Chicago and had seen him a number of times since. Calkin had been Johnny's assistant and had gone with him to London to discuss probability problems in aerial-bombing patterns and methods. Just a few weeks before, he had joined the Manhattan Project. He was a tall, pleasant-looking man, with more savoir-faire than most mathematicians. Having heard that I was coming, he borrowed a car from the Army motor pool and drove to meet us at the train.