ArchiveJuly 2021

A revelatory paper by UCal historian Sean Malloy shocked me. Check out the final sentence of this conclusion to his masterful analysis: This survey of pre-Hiroshima knowledge of radiation effects in the United States makes it clear that most of the immediate and long-term biological effects of radiation on victims of the bomb were predictable at the time of the A-bomb decision, even if still. . .

Leo Szilard played an enormously important role in the development of the first atomic bombs. His eccentricities are oft mentioned. His core strengths as a physicist were not the complex maths of a theory, nor in conducting imaginative experiments. Rather he was a big-picture thinker, a prodigious one. After WWII ended, he retained some atomic charisma but quickly moved on to biology. One of his. . .