ATOMIC QUEST

by Arthur Holly Compton ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

As a man whose scientific work led him to the position of director of the Metallurgical Laboratory of the Manhattan Project, Dr. Compton has an important record to add to the annals of the beginning of the Atomic Age, for his was a personal and intimate connection with it. Basically, his book is a testimony of hope in a new era for mankind that can be created by a Christian use of atomic energy, but in expressing this he presents the history of atomic research and development as he saw it in this country. Though his association with nuclear studies Degan in youth, more direct contact came in 1941 when a chat with Ernest O. Lawrence of the University of California revealed the possibilities of making a bomb and indicated the need for government and military action. The course of events which followed is by now familiar- including as it does the historic day at Chicago when Fermi set off the first self-sustaining chain reaction; the increasingly involved negotiations with Washington; the decision to start the Manhattan project and the actual problems of making the bomb itself. There is a new and spiritual note. Deeply concerned with humanity's chances for an increasingly freer, better society made possible through the proper use of atomic energy, Dr. Compton speaks of war and its causes, of the reasons the bomb was dropped on Japan and, in warning of the inevitable consequences of full scale war, clearly points to the need for universal human understanding. For the market created by such books as Laura Fermi's Atoms in the Family this should provide additional and more technical points of interest.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Oxford

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1956

Categories: NONFICTION