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pvuiaiels Vi » 0 stein Saw Ws he, reporvers. a Resets it. ban He not t at here Was a suorce lege _ we sooner of later woul. oft tremen~ r. Coffey i in it as __. "duos significance. He passed lehtiy: lavin 7 : ph * og feos over the technical d ties which f Ss ae 1 By Thomas A Hen ies at ~ Htoshic ‘tieard Gemev. sho anty everybody else had stressed so much, /) porerl 7 . lately escaped from R {a and now Starnge to say this interview with lately esca) Tr ussia now “Behind the atonilc age stands the a ee George Washington's man who admittedly knew nothing |, Mr. Nie a , * gure of bighrowed, pent-minded# Som "writing incomprehensible about it was the first tlme that the Mr. Rass ; violin-playing Albe: instein. equations on the blackboard;-of the ‘splitting of the atom got on the 4 ‘Out of his brein cante-the Feveru- | mathematically Tanai f gather ‘front pages of the New York news- Mr. oh : phiegmatic Dr. war Yr, o papers. time, ; tlonary er eran =e ang, bs vehages, dispu these" ee ee Mr. Cdraon . energy were rchange ' equations with Gamov; of Fr, - About « year later, with the war Mr. Egan . every gram of mass was the same! ico Fermi, Italian refugee who a(full swing and A secrecy restrictions Mr. Hend ,, Walng as 30 many ergs of energy. ree Serretigo had missed the same |imposed. J s r. Hendon He propounded it in « mathemat-. findings; as it has been said, “by [lca’s le - fecal statement which has become one e eves. of a-sheet of tin ‘toll - of the major cornerstones of aclence’ we left the meeting early and; ! agemet—¢ Being the velocity of turned. t - . Hight, or about 186,000 miles a second. fumble. 4.34 Jia bore np Ten ne he a * y - ‘The first time I met Dr. Einstein] next mornhig’-when Dr. ‘Tuve told ‘on_mygnec eM at the winter meeting of the| of working all | night and finally , Mr. Pennington _ ry Mr. Quinn Tamm _ | Mr. Nease merican_ Association Jor the Ad-| achieving the Dssioh pf the tran-{) “-sEhy there a thing new on é cre nééinent of Science.in Pittsburgh,| iym atom at sunrise. aatng D235 tom 2 idee Christmas week, 1934. He was being} ‘Very misty was’the future whieh . questioned about the possibility of | would Tesult from the strange new . bringing about some conversion of discovery on that gray January! mass into energy -by splitting the; afternoon. What I remember best arecenn eg, “ canes even ee Fou rel you “89 ; eady—tha ly - wa} _ nuclei of atoms. was the barely supressed excitement | [it can be done is to get reihartl into, “Yee.” the great physicist sald, thown by some of the greatest | [the form of a gas, uranium fiuoride,! << .“ut jt would not be practical. physicists in the world. ‘They them-[Fand then separate it by. ‘thermal ‘= “It would be like 4 blind man on selves Were as much in the Revatea distillation tubes, You know uranium # dark night hunting ducks - | anybody-—but y realized € 4: fluoride is about the most corros!: . ing a shot gun straight up in the] world would never be quite the F stus in existence. It would require _ air in a country where there were/ same egain—that they, and they [ distillation tubes as big as the Wash- ner periments were in progress at Johns A few, “weeks ago during « meeting [crude and naive, They were neces- ‘opt University 1 in Baiting Jonas I went there one afternoon and | wary few ducks". . alone for the time being, were at [ington monument Mned with gold.” ' Some said then that this ste one of the great turning points of ¢ ~ +17 it waa important enone 1 ment made the attainment of a human hictory. This atmosphere''t suggested,” you might persuade the ; energy seem too easy. wned ot everything ele. Jt | President. to take the gold out of This was & ttle more than Mo y ibe * "--efimisstated some of! Fort Knox”: . i : years before Hiroshima.:_ edet-” - -§ Potter and I cad @ He tutned. paie.: a = seen: a ; “ od, “ he first faint dawn of whe Atomic ffasionslly have argued over our|}_ Soe you age came one dismal, ra. u- § Pecollections. : . . . ‘ee. : ; afternoon ip 1939 in a classroom | The two or three stories I wrote ; i at George Washington University. at the thne now seem unbellevably|F At that time certain crucial ‘el at the liniversity, Willis wrence B representative of what was known got a very cold reception from the of the+aAmerican Physi Society Esarlly quite inaccurate, but Jeirly: ‘of the New York Times ‘asked me ff then. physicist in charge—so much #0 that % to show him that classroom. T hope! 1 was not until about six months! threatened to com ‘ I took him to the right one. He Biater that the mystic symbol U235j/sent dssiah Bo plain to Presi. approached as 0 pilgram might ap-Blappeared in the picture. It wns Wine Haeem in thé | : _ proach a holy place. first mentioned at s meeting a the told f 2 to z0 ane sated wi ° I would like fo make « suggestion American Physical Society “Bat it true” I asked, “tha to President Cloyd Heck. Marvin. fj Bureau of Standards. Looking beck Ien't it about time that an appro- on it now J can see Where I cotn- priate tablet was placed on the wall pletely missed the significance of of that Toom? It was the Pirthplace this rather, obscure announcement. oi the brave new world, For gener- = Lon ssse o po ations to come pilgrams in Washing-F/ ry was at about that ‘time that ton Wil seek it out. I happened to be an a train speed-| “* tter, then on the staf offlin? through Texas with » group of! Bciencé Service, and I happened to[| world famous astronomers and phys-, be the only reporters present at] iicists, They were on their way to the that tate canference on atomic! dedication of the McDonald Obser- _ 4 eon he zie in the West Texas mountains. _ 4 — ph ‘each watory VA 7 / with gold?” glared ¥en rie | Well, you can be dath @ . _ arefusing « distitatbo a \ . is the joint auspices df the re them” was Dr. Arthur Institution of . Washington | Compton, now presid ssh-| 2ZOp 3 ~ | George Washington University ‘ ington Univeralty "Nobel prise win- RD F B } ~ - + I femember the announcement by her, one of the greatest physicists é ON “in. his -bardly vompre- | [2° a pot been IND 78 sett aa ay . “hrenaible English of Tus-communica-| (tt the world. He bee po. bers Peet BXEy, S wi + Heng with Dr, Use nto: Pe | lings and edmited eee ARE PO RMATION CONTAREED * German sical Tal in which? A ion ook svete if - Gita Hahn had ntisinterpreted. his bso cene eae WERE | iC AACLASSIED . atrange findings at the Kalser Wi- s : Srelm Institute at Dahlgren; of the a | efforts of Dr. Merle Ture, now ai- ‘ yector of the Terres to a explain the phe JUL 2 yo ae7 toy. .