The American Assembly was a thinktank set up by President Eisenhower in 1950. Part of Columbia University, it staged a few “nuclear” events in the mid 50s. In October 1957, John Cockcroft came from England and delivered an address to one such conference. He called it “Nuclear Power in Britain” and it was his usual mixture of candidness, slipperiness, and factuality. What caught my eye was this sentence:
So it has been natural for us to take up the torch again and building on the work of Fermi and his colleagues in Chicago, take up with enthusiasm the great task of turning this enormous store of energy in atomic nuclei to producing power and heat and radiation from the nucleus for the many applications which are now developing.
Cockcroft, John. 1957. “Nuclear power in the United Kingdom: Address to the Twelfth American Assembly, New York, Oct. 17.” In Atoms for Power: United States Policy in Atomic Energy Development, edited by The American Assembly, 131-39. Columbia University.
We don’t often see businesspeople or government officials venture beyond tailored phrases. Cockcroft was a crusader for scientific openness, he believed in its worth, and “taking up the torch” of Enrico Fermi is his way of saying nuclear energy is a quest of his. And look, he wants to take it up “with enthusiasm,” it’s a “great task.” Toward the end of his speech, he praises “complete freedom and openness of communication in the scientific field.” There is real feeling here, folks.
