The Los Alamos primer
by R. Serber · first published 1992
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"In April 1943, at a new secret laboratory on a mesa in the high New Mexican desert, a crowd of the most brilliant young scientists in America heard five stunning lectures that summed up everything the world knew about how to build an atomic bomb." "The lecturer was Robert Serber, a theoretical physicist and protege of J. Robert Oppenheimer; the laboratory was Los Alamos. Serber's lectures, assembled in note form and mimeographed, became the legendary LA-1, the Los Alamos Primer, the first document passed out to new recruits to the wartime enterprise, classified Secret Limited for twenty years
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If you want a book that is more technical and really gives a sense of what the scope of the project was, I'd highly recommend The Los Alamos Primer by Serber which was the intro lecture given to scientists when they would arrive. Serber did a great job of annotating the lecture to explain in more accessible detail each section. A quick read, and…
on “An engineering history of the Manhattan Project” ↗I recommend Rhodes’ “Making of” and Dark Sun with American Prometheus and the Los Alamos Primer for people seeking a thorough initial introduction to the Manhattan Project and little bit of postscript. Indulging myself a bit here. Essentially all elements of modern society have at least a tangential…
on “Richard Rhodes wrote a classic book about Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb” ↗There is an edited and expanded edition with an introduction Richard Rhodes available in hard copy http://www.amazon.com/Los-Alamos-Primer-Lectures-Atomic/dp/0... For the fusion bomb side, recently a book has been written http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/9269 There was some recent controversy regarding what material…
on “The Los Alamos Primer: The Introductory Course for Scientists at Los Alamos” ↗Richard Rhodes' introduction to Serber's "The Los Alamos Primer" suggests 24: > Despite this leavening of older men (Oppenheimer was thirty-eight), the group's average age was only twenty-four.
on “The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE” ↗