The Secret of the Universe is Choice

Presents, a Life with a Plan. My name is Karen Anastasia Placek, I am the author of this Google Blog. This is the story of my journey, a quest to understanding more than myself. The title of this blog, "The Secret of the Universe is Choice!; know decision" will be the next global slogan. Placed on T-shirts, Jackets, Sweatshirts, it really doesn't matter, 'cause a picture with my slogan is worth more than a thousand words, it's worth??.......Know Conversation!!!

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Logo | UC Berkeley Brand Identity

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1. "Big Science" at Berkeley

niversities, like people, have their own distinctive personalities. Berkeley’s Physics Department came to shape the campus’s personality as a whole. As time went on, the prodigious quantity of its experimental resources and the avalanche of discoveries that poured out would loom ever larger on the campus landscape.

The department’s physical presence was substantive and unmistakable, occupying LeConte Hall, the Radiation Laboratory, and the Emergency Classroom Building (now Minor Hall), site of secret atomic research during World War II.

Aerial View of the Campus, 1919 [UARC PIC 300:27]

Aerial View of the Campus, 1931 [UARC PIC 3:41]

New Faculty, New Directions

he arrival of many new faculty, students, and staff propelled Berkeley’s Physics Department into a new era, and in many new scientific directions. Some came because they were attracted by opportunities in both theoretical and experimental physics, others driven by youthful passion for a “California adventure.” Perhaps most came – and stayed – because of the company of great minds. Fear of Fascist aggression and loss of jobs at home also contributed significantly. At home, too, Berkeley was always in the market for the best talent, as Oppenheimer’s recommendation of future Nobelist Richard Feynman to Lawrence indicates.

Emigres enriched the brain pool enormously. For instance, future Berkeley Nobelist Emilio Segre left Palermo in the summer of 1939 for a brief working visit with Lawrence -- they’d been corresponding for several years -- then stayed permanently when stranded at the outbreak of World War II.

Elsewhere, Enrico Fermi vacated the University of Rome, while Leo Szilard escaped the University of Berlin, to find refuge in the United States. Many passed through Berkeley after emigrating to visit friends (Fermi was Segre’s mentor) and meet Rad Lab scientists.

This usually talented, polyglot staff – natives and refugees, gentiles and Jews – created “Big Science” at Berkeley – big machines, big staffs, big money.

Letter from Oppenheimer to Birge Recommending Richard Feynman for a Position at Berkeley, November 4, 1943 [pg. 1, pg. 2]
[BANC MSS 73/79 c]

"... Bethe has said that he would rather lose any two other men than Feynman from this present job, and Wigner said, 'He is a second Dirac, only this time human.'"

Rad Lab Expansion

onsider the dramatic increase of staff at the Radiation Laboratory over a five-year span:

1933: Senior Staff Lawrence, Livingood, Livingston, Lucci; Postdoc McMillan; Sabbatarian Exner. (6 Total)

1938: Senior Staff Lawrence, Cooksey, Alvarez, McMillan, Ruben; Research Associates Seaborg, Brobeck, Corson, Emo, Erf, Farley, Green, Kamen, Hamilton, Langsdorf, Larkin, MacKenzie, McNeel, Salisbury, Segre, Simmons, Tuttle, Waltman; Postdocs Lewis, Aebersold, Marshak, Hoag, Kruger; Graduate Assistants Backus, Condit, Kennedy, Livingston, Nag, Scott, Wahl, Wright, Wu, Yockey; Physics Assistant Lofgren, Raymond; University Fellows Cornog, Helmholz, Wilson. (43 Total)

When Princeton tried to recruit Lawrence by touting that their graduate school had only 200 students, which promised closer contact with students, Lawrence is said to have replied without a smile: “Why, I want that many for myself.” Berkeley gave him close to that number.

Oppenheimer, Fermi, and Lawrence in Front of the Emergency Classroom Building (now Minor Hall), 1940 [Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Labratory]

E. O. Lawrence, A. Compton, J. Conant, V. Bush, K. Compton, A. Loomis in the Radiation Laboratory, 1940
[UARC PIC 10n:14]

The chalkboard displays a simplified drawing of how a cyclotron works.

http://vm136.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/Exhibits/physics/bigscience01.html

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Copyright (C) 2006 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Document maintained by The Bancroft Library.
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"Ueber Ein Neues Prinzip Zur Herstellung Hoher Spannungen," Von Rolf Wideroee, Archiv Fuer Elektrotechnik, Band XXI, Heft 4, Dezember 17, 1928 [tK3.a7 v.21]

he story of the cyclotron braids together into a single experimental technology so many strands of Berkeley physics that it might be the most instructive way to understand how the department gained its pre-eminent place in physics during the post-war era.

The story begins on a spring evening in 1929, when a young Ernest Lawrence happened to be browsing the Archiv fuer Elektrotechnik (reportedly to stave off boredom in a meeting). He read about a new method for accelerating charged particles.

In that moment, Lawrence thought of a way to dramatically improve the design. Hurrying back to LeConte Hall, he encountered a colleague’s wife and announced, “I’m going to be famous.”

Browsing p. 390 of Wideroee’s article – possibly this very volume, the Library’s copy he would have used -- Lawrence discovered the central idea leading to his invention of the cyclotron

"Ueber Ein Neues Prinzip Zur Herstellung Hoher Spannungen," Von Rolf Wideroee
Archiv Fuer Elektrotechnik, Band XXI, Heft 4, Dezember 17, 1928
[pg. 390, pg. 391] additional [cover as shown above]
[tK3.a7 v.21]

"Prinzip Einer Methode Zur Herstellung Von Kanalstrahlen Hoher Voltzahl," Von Gustav Ising
Arkiv Fuer Matematik, Astronomi Och Fysik, Band 18, Haefte 4, 1928
[pg. 1, 2-3] additional [cover]
[MAIN Q4.A8]

Widerloee, in turn, had found inspiration in this earlier article in a Swedish periodical. The illustration is a proposal for a linear particle accelerator.

The First Cyclotron

Model for Cyclotron Chamber, 1931
[Courtesy Lawrence Hall of Science]

ith the aid of graduate students, especially Stanley Livingston, Lawrence built an ingenious device with a remarkably resourceful hand – he scrounged together shards of glass, metal, wires, and wax to produce the unassuming gadget seen here. The art of accelerator building was learned gradually, as a process that combined ingenuity, fabrication and apprenticeship.

At root, its operation was straightforward. It used magnetic fields to hold charged particles in a narrow, spiraling path. When the particles crossed the gaps, an electric field would accelerate them ahead, from the right side to the left side, then from the left to the right. On each round, the particles picked up speed. They were shot out at high energy and put to work.

It was with this relatively simple technique that Berkeley’s legacy of experimental pragmatism and Lawrence’s training in engineering and physics collided and “big science” was born.

11" Cyclotron, 1931

y summer 1931, Lawrence and Livingston had managed to build a model more powerful than their first tentative effort. They increased the size of the machine and the magnet in order to push charged particles through the equivalent of a million volts. As they competed with physicists elsewhere, accelerating particles in devices with different designs, they launched an experimental culture in which expansion became a defining feature.

The accompanying image offers a rare glimpse of the glow of the cyclotron beam, before a cover was added in 1933.

Glow from 11" Cyclotron Beam [BANC PIC 1984:022:50953--PIC]

Lawrence and Colleague Beside the 27" Cyclotron, 1932
[Courtesy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory]

Lawrence at Work on the 37" Cyclotron, 1937 [UARC PIC 10n:13]

60" Cyclotron, 1939

McMillan and Lawrence Check the Control Panel for the 60" Cyclotron, 1939
[UARC PIC 11c:45]

hrough the 1930s, Lawrence’s machines grew larger. They served different experimental purposes, too. Starting from straightforward nuclear physics – replicating artificial radioactivity and exploring nuclear reactions – the Rad Lab expanded its program. It turned its cyclotron beams to manufacture radioisotopes that other scientists and medical doctors could use. Eventually the huge 60” cyclotron, the largest in the laboratory through the decade, was principally given over to medical uses.

Why was it so large and why did Berkeley need it? Asked this question, Lawrence responded simply. “Because we can get the money,” he said.

The cyclotron’s particle beams could also be collided with target materials to create entirely new elements. This was a field in which Berkeley physicists and chemists excelled from the outset, beginning with the discovery of neptunium (and its secret by-product plutonium) in 1940 by future Berkeley Nobel laureates Edwin McMillan, Glenn Seaborg, and Emilio Segre; and Philip Ablest.

184" Cyclotron, ca 1942

n 1939, Lawrence announced plans for a “large-scale” cyclotron. His contemporaries may have scoffed at his ambitions, but the onset of World War II made his project a wartime priority.

Armed with a magnet face 184” in diameter, Berkeley physicists opened up an entirely new frontier beyond 100 MeV (100 million electron volts), where there lurked (its boosters said) “discoveries of totally unexpected character and of tremendous importance.” But it was soon diverted to other purposes, even before it was built. The magnet for the 184” cyclotron was used to separate the fissile, or explosive, part of natural uranium, U-235, from its much more plentiful companion isotope, U-238.

After the war, the 184” cyclotron was completed as a synchrocyclotron, or synchrotron, incorporating the principle of phase stability developed by McMillan. It would help physicists identify the first known subnuclear particle discovered with an accelerator (the neutral pi-meson, or pion), carry out studies of proton-proton and neutron-proton interactions, and serve as a valuable instrument for biological and medical research.

184" Cyclotron Before Installation of Fifteen-Foot-Thick Concrete Shielding, ca. 1940

Lawrence Above 184" Cyclotron Building, ca. 1941
By Richard F. Hoosn [BANC PIC 1984.022--PIC]

http://vm136.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/Exhibits/physics/bigscience02.html

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Copyright (C) 2006 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Document maintained by The Bancroft Library.
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n 1939, while Germans were smashing Polish borders and Japanese armed forces were smashing Chinese defense lines in Manchuria, Berkeley physicists were smashing atoms. By 1941, as a result of research done at the Rad Lab and elsewhere, the United States began to pursue the creation of a nuclear weapon. Brought into the project by Lawrence, Oppenheimer was assigned the task of calculating fast neutron reactions, a job key to the construction of an atomic weapon.

The scientific principles of nuclear fission were clear enough by this point. Far less clear was the technical feasibility of constructing a deliverable weapon in time to be useful. One challenge overshadowed all others – they needed fissionable material, either highly enriched uranium or the mysterious element plutonium, a man-made radioactive material created thus far only in cyclotrons.

In 1941, in gargantuan facilities above the campus in the Berkeley foothills, from ideas originally conceived in the modest Rad Lab, Berkeley scientists squeezed out plutonium from grudging nature, dime-sized radioactive pellets of uranium.

Scale Used to Measure Early Radioactive Pellets

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Telegrams between Lawrence and Compton, October 1941

[BANC MSS 72/117 c c4f10]

Telegrams between Lawrence and Compton, October 1941 [BANC MSS 72/117 c, Ctn. 27:19]

"...OPPENHEIMER HAS IMPORTANT NEW IDEAS ..."

Lawrence sent an urgent message to Arthur Compton, head of S-1, the Office for Scientific Research and Development’s secret committee in charge of the development of fission weapons, urging that Oppenheimer be invited to a conference in Schenectady, N. Y. Unknown to Compton, Lawrence had already told Oppenheimer about S-1’s work, which was to become the Manhattan Project.

Compton replied that Lawrence could bring Oppenheimer, but suggested that Lawrence consider simply passing on Oppenheimer’s ideas himself, “to avoid duplication of travel cost.” It is amusing to reflect that the expenses costs of the man who would become the head of Los Alamos would be considered unnecessary.

Lawrence was adamant; he offered to let the University of California pay Oppenheimer’s expenses. He wrote,

"I have a great deal of confidence in Oppenheimer, and, when I see you, I will tell you why I am anxious to have the benefit of his judgment in our deliberations."

The Atomic Bomb Conceived

ithin a few months of the Schenectady conference, Oppenheimer’s quick theoretical rigor and his reliability proved indispensable to the project. In a letter to Compton, Oppenheimer outlined some estimates on the efficiency of a device which “could shoot the two halves of the uranium mass together,” a weapon that became the atomic bomb.

In summer 1942, Oppenheimer convened at Berkeley a conference of theorist “luminaries” for a series of secret discussions on the design of an atomic bomb. On the top floor of LeConte Hall, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, John Van Vleck, Robert Serber, Felix Bloch, and Emil Konopski spent a month going over theoretical data. They also discussed Teller’s pet project: the idea of using a fission bomb as a trigger for an even larger weapon, the hydrogen bomb, christened the “Super.”

When General Leslie R. Groves took over the secret atomic bomb effort – code named the Manhattan Engineering District, or Manhattan Project – in September of that year, he decided to create a centralized scientific laboratory for reasons of speed, security, and logistics. Much to Lawrence's frustration and the surprise of many, Groves appointed Oppenheimer as the scientific director of this still non-existent site, despite knowing of his past political affiliations and his lack of administrative experience.

Oppenheimer developed into a competent and inspiring director. His trademark ability to understand concepts as quickly as they were put in front of him, and his prowess in keeping the various disparate details of the project active in his mind at all times, allowed him to expertly coordinate the many hundreds of scientific experts who poured in at all times to work on the project.

Oppenheimer at Los Alamos

Letter from J. Robert Oppenheimer to Ernest Lawrence, October 27, 1944, seeking more staff for Los Alamos [BANC MSS 72/117 c, Ctn. 29:14]

erkeley physics was intimately linked to the building of the bomb at Los Alamos. Behind a high steel fence topped with a triple course of barbed wire, an elaborate communication system was set up to monitor virtually everything, from casual communication carried by the postal service to scientific reading and experimental materials.

Tapped as the ideal candidate to lead a group of scientists through a myriad of scientific and ordnance problems of bomb design, Oppenheimer constantly pressed the military brass to ease regulations, housing restrictions, and isolation. Despite demands for greater security, Oppenheimer often had confidential mail sent to his office at Berkeley and opened weekly progress reviews to any interested scientist on staff.

His mystique and exceptional brilliance inspired the staff at Los Alamos to remarkable scientific achievements. But he also incited suspicion among some federal officials that he was not trustworthy. For instance, Oppenheimer occasionally ignored military orders -- and even the personal requests of his friend and colleague Lawrence – refusing to expand the facility that produced radioactive material.

“A few good men … would make all the difference in the world to us …. …physicists with intermediate training, electrical engineers, and technicians …. … we have always been short on all sorts of engineering talent …."

Telegram from Lawrence to Oppenheimer, May 17, 1944
[BANC MSS 72/117 c, Ctn. 29:14]

“’It has been repeated to me here that you personally are responsible for the fact that the electro-magnet plant is not to be expanded.’”

Lawrence sent this telegram to Oppenheimer at “Site Y, Santa Fe, New Mexico,” to express his disappointment – and perhaps anger – that his suggestions weren’t being followed. It may have been because Oppenheimer suspected there was a better way to separate uranium than Lawrence’s design.

Rad Lab in the Spotlight

fter the war, the Rad Lab’s tenacious growth, and especially its power to command resources on a scale far greater than any other academic program, aggravated a few public critics. But far more people celebrated the lab’s scientific achievements and its contribution to victory in World War II. Popular interest, something physicists so rarely court, became an uncharacteristic obsession. Virtually every mid-20th century U. S. President passed through Berkeley’s physics labs, and celebrity artists and writers also clamored for attention.

Sinclair Lewis and Herbert M. Evans at the Rad Lab, ca. 1950
[BANC PIC 1984.022:64--PIC]

Lawrence and Mexican Artist Diego Rivera at the Rad Lab, ca. 1948
[BANC PIC 1984.022:46--PIC]

http://vm136.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/Exhibits/physics/bigscience03.html

End of Part Three

On to Part Four >>

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