Maurice M. Shapiro, a member of the team that helped develop the atomic bomb, said the reason the Los Alamos program worked was freedom and knowledge shared by the scientists and engineers.
Shapiro, a professor at the University of Maryland, spoke to a crowd of about 35 Thursday as part of the UNM Chapter of Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society's annual lecture series "Science and Society." Shapiro's lecture, "Life in Box 1663," explained what it was like to be a part of the team that was responsible for the development of the atomic bomb.
Shapiro said he spent the first two years of World War II in a naval establishment in Washington D.C. studying the physics of underwater explosions. The project needed an expert in his field, so he was recruited to Los Alamos. He said it took all the "best brains in the world" to make the atomic bomb work. Many scientists involved in the project also went on to win Nobel Prizes.
"Every scientist recruited was informed of the purpose of the project," he said "Among this company, I didn't just feel insignificant, I felt like a worm."
He added that project leader Robert Oppenheimer was responsible for the smooth cooperation between scientists.
"One cannot talk about what made it tick without talking about Oppy, as we called him," Shapiro said. "He faced the challenge of assembling a team of brilliant scientists and getting them to work together. Oppy was good enough a leader to know that the key to the project was a free interchange of ideas."
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He said that the scientists involved in the project didn't know what to expect when the bomb was finally ready to test.
"The Uranium bomb was never even tested," Shapiro said. "We just barely had enough for that one bomb. But we knew that if the bomb tested in the desert worked it would end the war."
He said that when he witnessed the test at the Trinity Site, he had no idea what to expect. Shapiro added that he made two bets with fellow scientists - one about how many of the bombs it would take to end the war, and another about how powerful the blast would be. He only won one of the bets when he guessed correctly that it would take less than a dozen atomic bombs to end the war.
After the test, he said that he and some of his fellow scientists formed a group called the Association of Los Alamos Scientists to talk about the effectiveness and ramifications of what they were working on.
"We were all concerned about 'what if this damn thing works' and 'what would its effects be on humanity?'" he said.
Shapiro concluded his lecture with an anecdote on why his lecture was titled "Life in Box 1663."
"When we came to the project, we all came to the office at Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico," Shapiro said. "My son was born in Los Alamos, so I bet on his birth certificate it says Box 1663 as his place of birth. All the children born there were born in a box."
Shapiro's lecture was the final of the series that Sigma Xi President H.S. Ahluwalia said has been running since 1990.
"Our purpose is to educate New Mexico about the current problems of science and how it effects our daily lives," Ahluwalia said.
