109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer And The Secret City Of Los Alamos, Jennet Conant

109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, Jennet Conant, c. 2005.

Preface:

• the author is granddaughter of James B. Conant
• very first sentence: trinitite
• Trinity test site near Alamogordo, NM, July 16, 1945
• author grew up in Cambridge, MA, coming of age in the 1960s
• James B. Conant and director of Los Alamos, Oppenheimer opposed the more militant faction, represented by Ernest Lawrence and Edward Teller
• purpose of book, page xix
• not to retrace the saga of scientific discovery which was chronicled in  Richard Rhodes' authoritative book The Making of the Atomic Bomb
• probably obtained much of her information from unpublished memoir of Dorothy McKibben

Chapter One: Charmed

• the story of McKibben
• Santa Fe
• La Fonda
• Spanish and Indian Trading Company
• need to re-read; it's been a long time since I read it for the first time

Chapter Two: A Most Improbable Choice

begins with Oppenheimer meeting with Dorothy McKibbe
Oppenheimer's personal secretary, 23-year-old Priscilla Greene
February, 1942, Greene had landed a job working for Ernest Lawrence, a Nobel-winning physicist at UC-Berkeley
soon after she began working for Lawrence, he doubled her workload by loaning her out to his good friend Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer, then 37 years old
story and description of Oppenheimer up to that poing
need to re-read; it's been a long time since I read it for the first time
whirlwind romance; married Kitty Puening; son, Peter
spring, 1942, Oppenheimer summoned to Chicago: new Metallurgical Laboratory at University of Chicago, Arthur Compton, director
Met Lab: the US "bomb headquarters" for WWII after Pearl Harbor
Compton realized US moving too slowly developing the atomic bomb
1938: Lisa Meitner and Otto Hahn
1939: Leo Szilard, Hungarian refugee; convinced Einstein to write FDR
Met Lab: name meant to confuse the lab's mission
Compton needed Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer commuted between Berkeley and Chicago
after Pearl Harbor, Lawrence also doing double duty; along with UC-Berkeley, he was at radar lab at MIT
June, 1942: Conte Hall, UC-Berkeley; Oppenheimer gathered and met with top US physicists from across the country
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