Download or read book Lawrence and His Laboratory written by J. L. Heilbron and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a first-rate contribution to the history of science and--in view of the central importance of physics for modern civilization--to the history of the twentieth century in general."--Spencer R. Weart, Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics

Download or read book Lawrence and His Laboratory written by J. L. Heilbron and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California, was the birthplace of particle accelerators, radioisotopes, and modern big science. This first volume of its history is a saga of physics and finance in the Great Depression, when a new kind of science was born. Here we learn how Ernest Lawrence used local and national technological, economic, and manpower resources to build the cyclotron, which enabled scientists to produce high-voltage particles without high voltages. The cyclotron brought Lawrence forcibly and permanently to the attention of leaders of international physics in Brussels at the Solvay Congress of 1933. Ever since, the Rad Lab has played a prominent part on the world stage. The book tells of the birth of nuclear chemistry and nuclear medicine in the Laboratory, the discoveries of new isotopes and the transuranic elements, the construction of the ultimate cyclotron, Lawrence's Nobel Prize, and the energy, enthusiasm, and enterprise of Laboratory staff. Two more volumes are planned to carry the story through the Second World War, the establishment of the system of national laboratories, and the loss of Berkeley's dominance of high-energy physics.

Download or read book Big Science written by Michael Hiltzik and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heroic time -- South Dakota boy -- "I'm going to be famous" -- Shims and sealing wax -- Oppie -- The deuton affair -- The cyclotron republic -- John Lawrence's mice -- Laureate -- Mr. Loomis -- "Ernest, are you ready?" -- The racetrack -- Oak Ridge -- The road to Trinity -- The postwar bonanza -- Oaths and loyalties -- The shadow of the Super -- Livermore -- The Oppenheimer affair -- The return of small science -- The "clean bomb" -- Element 103.

Download or read book The American Lab written by C. Bruce Tarter and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018-08-01 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behind the scenes of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the quintessential American lab. Nobel laureate Ernest O. Lawrence and renowned physicist Edward Teller founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1952. A new ideas incubator, the Lab was at the heart of nuclear testing and the development of supercomputers, lasers, and other major technological innovations of the second half of the twentieth century. Many of its leaders became prominent figures in the technical and defense establishments, and by the end of the 1960s, Livermore was the peer of Los Alamos National Lab, a relationship that continues today. In The American Lab, former Livermore director C. Bruce Tarter offers unparalleled access to the inner workings of the Lab. Touching on Cold War nuclear science and the technological shift that occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he traces the Lab’s evolution from its founding under University of California management through its transfer to private oversight. Along the way, he highlights important episodes in that journey, from the invention of Polaris, the first submarine-launched ballistic missile, to the Lab’s controversial role in the Star Wars program. He also describes Livermore’s significant responsibilities in stockpile stewardship, the program that ensures the safety and reliability of the US nuclear arsenal. The book portrays the lab’s extensive work on thermonuclear fusion, a potential source of unlimited energy; describes the development of the world’s largest laser fusion installation, the National Ignition Facility; and examines a number of smaller projects, such as the Lab’s participation in founding the Human Genome Project. Finally, it traces the relationship of the Lab to its federal sponsor, the Department of Energy, as it evolved from partnership to compliance with orders, a shift that affected all of the national laboratories. Drawing on oral histories, internal laboratory documents, and the author’s personal experiences from more than fifty years as a Lab employee, The American Lab is an illuminating history of the Lab and its revolutionary work.

Download or read book Lawrence and His Laboratory written by John L. Heilbron and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book From Berkeley to Berlin written by Tom Francis Ramos and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November 1960, bolstered by anti-Communist ideologies, John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev brandished nuclear diplomacy in an attempt to force the United States to abandon Berlin, setting the stage for a major nuclear confrontation over the fate of West Berlin. From Berkeley to Berlin explores how the United States had the wherewithal to stand up to Khrushchev's attempts to expand Soviet influence around the globe. The story begins when a South Dakotan, Ernest Lawrence, the grandson of Norwegian immigrants, created a laboratory on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. The "Rad Lab" attracted some of the finest talent in America to pursue careers in nuclear physics. When it was discovered that Nazi Germany had the means to build an atomic bomb, Lawrence threw all his energy into waking up the American government to act. Ten years later, when Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union became a nuclear power, Lawrence drove his students to take on the challenge to deter a Communist despot's military ambitions. Their journey was not easy: they had to overcome ridicule over three successive failures, which led to calls to see them, and their laboratory, shut down. At the Nobska Conference in 1956, the Rad Lab physicists took up the daunting challenge to provide the Navy with a warhead for Polaris. The success of the Polaris missile, which could be carried by submarines, was a critical step in establishing nuclear deterrent capability and helped Kennedy stare down Khrushchev during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. Six months after the height of the Berlin Crisis, Kennedy thought about how close the country had come to destruction, and he flew out to Berkeley to meet and thank a small group of Rad Lab physicists for helping the country avert a nuclear war.

Download or read book Nuclear Rites written by Hugh Gusterson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An extremely important work. . . . It demonstrates the power that ethnographic analysis can have when directed at an examination of our own society's central nervous system."—Faye Ginsburg, author of Contested Lives "Essential reading for anyone trying to understand what Cold War science was in all its cultural aspects and what this same science now in transformation might yet be."—George E. Marcus, co-editor of The Traffic in Culture

Download or read book The Plague Year written by Lawrence Wright and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to surprise us about even those episodes we … thought we knew well … [With] lively exchanges about spike proteins and nonpharmaceutical interventions and disease waves, Wright’s storytelling dexterity makes all this come alive.” —The New York Times Book Review From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the U.S. Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of Covid-19 in authoritative, galvanizing detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. Wright takes us inside the CDC, where a first round of faulty test kits lost America precious time . . . inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with confounding and drastically costly skepticism . . . into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from the town of Little Africa, South Carolina . . . into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs . . . into Broadway’s darkened theaters and Austin’s struggling music venues . . . inside the human body, diving deep into the science of how the virus and vaccines function—with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaccination movement. And in this full accounting, Wright makes clear that the medical professionals around the country who’ve risked their lives to fight the virus reveal and embody an America in all its vulnerability, courage, and potential. In turns steely-eyed, sympathetic, infuriated, unexpectedly comical, and always precise, Lawrence Wright is a formidable guide, slicing through the dense fog of misinformation to give us a 360-degree portrait of the catastrophe we thought we knew.

Download or read book CUCKOO S EGG written by Clifford Stoll and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2012-05-23 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the Internet became widely known as a global tool for terrorists, one perceptive U.S. citizen recognized its ominous potential. Armed with clear evidence of computer espionage, he began a highly personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatened national security. But would the authorities back him up? Cliff Stoll's dramatic firsthand account is "a computer-age detective story, instantly fascinating [and] astonishingly gripping" (Smithsonian). Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter"—a mysterious invader who managed to break into U.S. computer systems and steal sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own: spying on the spy. It was a dangerous game of deception, broken codes, satellites, and missile bases—a one-man sting operation that finally gained the attention of the CIA . . . and ultimately trapped an international spy ring fueled by cash, cocaine, and the KGB.

Download or read book Restricted Data written by Alex Wellerstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-04-09 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--

Download or read book Neptune s Laboratory written by Antony Adler and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eyewitness to profound change affecting marine environments on the Newfoundland coast, Antony Adler argues that the history of our relationship with the ocean lies as much in what we imagine as in what we discover. We have long been fascinated with the oceans, seeking “to pierce the profundity” of their depths. In studying the history of marine science, we also learn about ourselves. Neptune’s Laboratory explores the ways in which scientists, politicians, and the public have invoked ocean environments in imagining the fate of humanity and of the planet—conjuring ideal-world fantasies alongside fears of our species’ weakness and ultimate demise. Oceans gained new prominence in the public imagination in the early nineteenth century as scientists plumbed the depths and marine fisheries were industrialized. Concerns that fish stocks could be exhausted soon emerged. In Europe these fears gave rise to internationalist aspirations, as scientists sought to conduct research on an oceanwide scale and nations worked together to protect their fisheries. The internationalist program for marine research waned during World War I, only to be revived in the interwar period and again in the 1960s. During the Cold War, oceans were variously recast as battlefields, post-apocalyptic living spaces, and utopian frontiers. The ocean today has become a site of continuous observation and experiment, as probes ride the ocean currents and autonomous and remotely operated vehicles peer into the abyss. Embracing our fears, fantasies, and scientific investigations, Antony Adler tells the story of our relationship with the seas.

Download or read book Sled Driver written by Brian Shul and published by Lickle Pub Incorporated. This book was released on 1991 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No aircraft ever captured the curiosity & fascination of the public like the SR-71 Blackbird. Nicknamed "The Sled" by those few who flew it, the aircraft was shrouded in secrecy from its inception. Entering the U.S. Air Force inventory in 1966, the SR-71 was the fastest, highest flying jet aircraft in the world. Now for the first time, a Blackbird pilot shares his unique experience of what it was like to fly this legend of aviation history. Through the words & photographs of retired Major Brian Shul, we enter the world of the "Sled Driver." Major Shul gives us insight on all phases of flying, including the humbling experience of simulator training, the physiological stresses of wearing a space suit for long hours, & the intensity & magic of flying 80,000 feet above the Earth's surface at 2000 miles per hour. SLED DRIVER takes the reader through riveting accounts of the rigors of initial training, the gamut of emotions experienced while flying over hostile territory, & the sheer joy of displaying the jet at some of the world's largest airshows. Illustrated with rare photographs, seen here for the first time, SLED DRIVER captures the mystique & magnificence of this most unique of all aircraft.

Download or read book The Secrets of Alchemy written by Lawrence Principe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alchemy, the Noble Art, conjures up scenes of mysterious, dimly lit laboratories populated with bearded old men stirring cauldrons. Though the history of alchemy is intricately linked to the history of chemistry, alchemy has nonetheless often been dismissed as the realm of myth and magic, or fraud and pseudoscience. And while its themes and ideas persist in some expected and unexpected places, from the Philosopher's (or Sorcerer's) Stone of Harry Potter to the self-help mantra of transformation, there has not been a serious, accessible, and up-to-date look at the complete history and influence of alchemy until now.

Download or read book The Physics of Climate Change written by Lawrence M. Krauss and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Brilliant and fundamental, this is the necessary book about our prime global emergency. Here you’ll find the facts, the processes, the physics of our complex and changing climate, but delivered with eloquence and urgency. Lawrence Krauss writes with a clarity that transcends mere politics. Prose and poetry were never better bedfellows.” —Ian McEwan, Booker Prize-winning author of Solar and Machines Like Me "The ideal book for understanding the science of global warming..at once elegant, rigorous, and timely." — Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Sixth Extinction “A brief, brilliant, and charming summary of what physicists know about climate change and how they learned it.” —Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate in Physics, Metcalf Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Boston University “The distinguished scientist Lawrence Krauss turns his penetrating gaze on the most pressing existential threat facing our world: climate change. It is brimming with information lucidly analysed. Such hope as there is lies in science, and a physicist of Dr. Krauss’s imaginative versatility is unusually qualified to offer it.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The Blind Watchmaker and Science in the Soul “Lucid and gripping, this study of the most severe challenge humans have ever faced leads the reader from the basic physics of climate change to recognition of the damage that humans have already caused and on to the prospects that lie ahead if we do not change course soon.” —Noam Chomsky, Laureate Professor, University of Arizona, author of Internationalism or Extinction? “Lawrence Krauss tells the story of climate change with erudition, urgency, and passion. It is our great good luck that one of our most brilliant scientists is also such a gifted writer. This book will change the way we think about the future.” —Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of Good Boy and She’s Not There “Everything on climate change that I’ve seen is either dumbed down and bossy or written for other climate scientists. I’ve been looking for a book that can let me, a layperson, understand the science. This book does just what I was looking for. It is important.” —Penn Jillette, Magician, author of Presto! and God, No! “The renowned physicist Lawrence Krauss makes the science behind one of the most important issues of our time accessible to all.” —Richard C. J. Somerville, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego “Lawrence Krauss is a fine physicist, a talented writer, and a scientist deeply engaged with public affairs. His book deserves wide readership. The book’s eloquent exposition of the science and the threats should enlighten all readers and motivate them to an urgent concern about our planet’s future.” —Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, former president of the Royal Society, author of On the Future: Prospects for Humanity

Download or read book The National Labs written by Peter J. Westwick and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The national laboratories have occupied a central place in the landscape of American science for more than fifty years. Deeply researched and lucidly written, The National Labs is the first book to trace the confluence of diverse interests that created and sustained this extensive enterprise. Westwick takes us from the origins of the labs in the Manhattan Project to their role in building the hydrogen bomb, nuclear power reactors, and high-energy accelerators, to their subsequent entry into such fields as computers, meteorology, space science, molecular biology, environmental science, and alternative energy sources.

Download or read book Pavlov s Physiology Factory written by Daniel P. Todes and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian physiologist and Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov is most famous for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex and the classic experiment in which he trained a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell. In this study, Daniel P. Todes explores Pavlov's early work in digestive physiology through the structures and practices of his landmark laboratory - the physiology department of the Imperial Institute for Experimental Medicine.

Download or read book Tuxedo Park written by Jennet Conant and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller! The untold story of the eccentric Wall Street tycoon and the circle of scientific geniuses who helped build the atomic bomb and defeat the Nazis—changing the course of history. Legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the twentieth century—Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, and others—at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York, in the late 1930s. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb. Jennet Conant, the granddaughter of James Bryant Conant, one of the leading scientific advisers of World War II, enjoyed unprecedented access to Loomis’ papers, as well as to people intimately involved in his life and work. She pierces through Loomis’ obsessive secrecy and illuminates his role in assuring the Allied victory.