About scientific technological endeavors. [inaudible conversations] good evening, everyone. Were going to get started. My name is candace. I work with the events here at politics and prose. We have a lot of events coming up. I encourage you grab a calendar on the way out tonight. Sign up for the email list as well as look automobile for events in online for events in september. Tonight, first thing you check again to make sure your cell phones are on silent or off so that doesnt distract our time here. What well do is have about an hourlong event, half the time presentation from our speaker and then half the time for questions. We have a microphone over here. If you wouldnt mind directing your question to that mic, we are recording. Cspan is here, and it helps us to catch your question on the recording. So, makes for a more full recording. And then afterwards well have a signing withll form a line going down this aisle and signing will happen right up front here. The books are for purchase behind the register if you havent gotten one already. Once we are finished, before we start the line, if you could fold up your chairs and set them against the shelfs that would be helpful. Enough its my pleasure to introduce Michael Hiltzik his book pick science earnest lawrence and the invention that launched the military industry complex. I the story of man who moved away from the small scenes of individuals and their labs on low budgets to Million Dollar projects such as the cyclotron that lawrence won a nobel prize for in 19390. Billion dollar projects we see today, such as the collider. Such projects have led science into the direction of looking to government and big private wealth for advancement. This shift in the way science was and now is conducted made way for a triumphant development that were very large for their time. Some might say there were some that were even tragic. Big signs is a timely read as this week we reflect on the dropping of the atomic bomb on hiroshima and nagasaki. That decision made is still one debated today, whether or not it was necessary to end the war, and in mr. Hiltziks book we read about controversy as well, with the new scientific elite wading through the political fallout that followed world war ii. Mr. Hiltzik began his journalism career in buffalo, new york, and went on from there to wry extensively for the los angeles times. He won the pulitzer prizin 1999 for the ors he wrote on corruption and bribes in the music industry. A couple of his previous books include colossus, hoover dam and the making of the american understands, and the new deal, modern history. So please help me in welcoming Michael Hiltzik to politics and prose ex [applause] well, thank you, candace, for that gracious introduction, and thanks to politics and prose for hosting me here tonight. Its great to be here at yet another great independent book store. And thanks to all of you for joining me tonight to take maybe an hours respite from president ial politics to talk about science and big science and its achievements and limitations, and as can cancan das alluded to this is a pertinent subject tonight because we find ourselves sandwiched between two tragic anniversaries. August 6th was the 70th 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of hiroshima, and sunday is the an anniversary of the bomb offering nagasaki. I want to approach these events in a different way. They were so fundamentally connected with the work of Ernest Lawrence, the physicist at the center of the book, and to the paradigm of Scientific Research that he pioneered. And well see how his work launched a new phase in the relationship between scientists and society because of how it led to scienceists placing in human beingkinds hands the tools of its own destruction. So let begin we talking about the man himself who was Ernest Lawrence. Well, the short answer is that during his lifetime, from 1901 to 1958, he was the most famous americanborn scientist in the country. In 1937, he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine that all purpose validation of International Celebrity back to the era we think of as the age of print. And in 1939, as a prefer at berk professor at berkeley he received the nobel prize in physics, and if you have been on the Berkeley Campus you might notice here and there there are parking spots designated n. L. This is a perk that Nobel Laureates get and in california thats worth a lot. All this for the son of a norwegian american family, born in the small town of canton, south dakota. So you could say he came from the heartland and he grew up with the 20th century. The source of all his renown was his inspired invention, the psychiatrytron, a device that could woman bard the atomic nucleus with energy that his fellow physicists could only dream of the name of elucidating the mysteries of the atom yankee world. His legacy was a new way of doing science. We call is big science. Capital intensive, Multidisciplinary Research in which teams of tens or hundreds or even thousands of researchers Work Together with funding from foundations, government, and industry. Big science is all around us today. High level reself furnishedded be the ni and the National Science foundation, which receives nearly 40 billion a year in government appropriations. Thats big science. The effort to put man on the moon, to send probes into the farthest reaches of the solar system, thats big science. The human genome project was a 3 billion exercise in big science that helped to launch not only new fields of study but also new industries. Solving climate change, we wont be able to do that without big science. The large collider which discovered the elusive subatomic particle is the epitomy of a big science device. The latest generation of the first cyclotron that Ernest Lawrence invented more than eight decades ago. His first cyclotron cost less than 100 in material and fit in the palm of his hand. Its off spring today occupies a tunnel 17miles in circumference, buried under the french and swiss countrysides and built at a cost of 9 billion. So you can see something, the evolution of this paradigm that started in his lab in berkeley. But the central theme of my book, and i hope of our conversation this evening, once we open the floor to all of you, to ask questions and discuss, is that big science raises as many questions about humankinds thirst for knowledge as it answers. One of the most important aspects of this method of research that were still grappling with, 70 years on, is that it did give scientists and society access to forces of truly tree dee instructive power, forces we found very hard, though we hope not impossible to control. One of the first physicists to warn of the implications of the sea change in the way we do research was lawrences own colleague on the Manhattan Project, james frank, a german physicist, also a nobel laureate, who two months before the first atomic bomb detonated over japan on served the age was already past in which he put it scientists could disclaim responsibility of the use mankind hat put their disinterested recoveries. The reason frank said is what big science brought about was fraught with infinitely greater dangers than were all the i vengeses of the past put together. But we need to talk about not what we do with the knowledge big science brings us but the resources we devote to that quest. Ernest lawrences legacy challenges us to think about how to weigh the monumental high profile efforts that it might take to put a human being on mars or to discover the next fundamental particle against the necessity of fighting cancer or paying for drugs against hepatitis or multiple clear row sis for every sufferer. So, all this together factors into what makes lawrence such an intriguing personality for us today. And that brings us back to the inning description that made his name. It was 1929. He just recently joined the faculty of the university of kaz aft berkeley and physic was at a crossroads. The departing generation, the older generation, scientist like earnest rutherford and marie currie had been appropriating the atomic nucleus with the tools that nature gave them. The emissions of alpha and beta waves from radium, with those tools, that generation had figured out the structure of the atom, discovered xrays xrays d radioactivity but they had done as much as they could with natures good, and to go further they in other words science would need probes of Higher Energy to delve deeper into the nucleus with more precision and these could only be achieved by applying human ingenuity. Rutherford threw down the challenge for the new generation, calling for an apparatus that could deliver a projectile of 10 million electron volts, yet be safely accommodated in a medium size room. Well, scientists all over the world took up the challenge. But they discovered that when you load an apparatus with ten million volts, what happens is you blow up the apparatus. Think of trying to fire a mortar shell out of a cannon made of cardboard. So laboratories filled up with shards of splintered glass. One group of intrepid germ yap research strung a cable between two alpine peaks to capture lightning and they did, but in the process one of them wassed off the mountain to his death and that ended that. So, one night in berkeley, Ernest Lawrence had a brainstorm. What if you dont put the voltage on to the apparatus itself but build it up incrementally on the projectile. If you start with a proton, say, with 100volts, for the purpose of illustration, you give it 100volt jolt, now its got energy of two 2volts. Another jolt and its 300 and so on and so on. Now, a Linear Accelerator designed to keep delivering overall sink i crowe niced electrode wood have to be a mile in length to achieve the desired energies. Certainly not fitting into rutherfords comfortably sized room. So here comps the second part of lawrences brainstorm. He knows a charged particle traversing a Magnetic Field will follow a curved path. So apply a Magnetic Field to your proton and you can bend it into a spiral, allowing it to get repeated jolts from just a single electrode and thats the essence of the cyclotron boiled down to its simplest terms but after a enough revolutions you have a particle that can carry a million volts, 10 million, even 100 million, even a billion, and then all you have to do is aim it at a target and let it go. The possibilities are limitless and it all could fit into a medium sized room. At least the first cyclotrons could. Well, lawrence knows he is on to something. Very next day he seemed bounding across the Berkeley Campus, button hole holing friends and colleagues to declare, im going to be famous, and so he was. The next decade, his invention proved itself to be a spectacularly useful and flexible machine. The team he assembled in berkeley discovered scores of new isotopes, carbon 14, which is the key to carbon dating, was discovered through the cyclotron. Other isotopes created by cyclotron bombardment became the foundation of the new science of nucleares meds sip, sources souf new cures and now therapeutic processes we use today. And then came the new elements, heavier than, element 93, and element 94 named after what was thought to be the next planet in the solar system, pluto, was called plutonium. And every discovery opened, and lawrence responded by designing new cyclotrons, even one picker and more powerful and much more expensive than the last. And soon every university that aspired to the first rank of Research Institutions wanted its own cyclotron, and lawrence was happy to oblige, sending his associates into the world to show them how to do it, freely sharing his own designs, all in the name of expanding what became known as lawrences cyclotron empire. But it wasnt only his real scientific accomplish that made him mouse but his personality. So perfect for a country striving to emerge from the shadow of european scientific tradition. He was youthful and engaging, very different from the popular image of the mad scientist, locked away in his lab, wild haired and foreign and at bit strange. Ernest lawrence was sober, businesslike, very down to earth, midwestern, threepeat suit. An editor to went to visit him and came home enthralled by this man the describe as amazingly easy to talk to and as completely american as apple pie. And then as i said in 1939, lawrence won the nobel prize for the cyclotron. But he demonstrated more than inspired scientific techniques. He showed great managerial techniques. When you needed to raise millions of dollars to build your machine, you had to have the genius of an entrepreneur, a ring master, a ceo. You had to raise money from University President s, foundation boards, industrial executives, and government officials, by serving their own goals without compromising your own too much. For scientists this was new religion, and new Orleans Lawrence was its prophet. Well, the 1939 nobel prizes were the last to be awarded until the war clouds over europe began to dissipate four years later. So, now we come to the central event in lawrences career. The Manhattan Project would validate the big science paradigm. The atomic bomb could not have been invented bay solitary physicist using handmade equipment. It required an investment of billions of dollars, armies of scientists and technicians, laboratories built on an industrial scale. The Manhattan Project was the first great Big Science Program and it proved how powerful an approach this could be, while hinting at how hard its results might be to control. Now, many of you no doubt know at least the outlines of the make offering the atomic bomb. The efforts starting with albert einsteins letter to Franklin Roosevelt in august 1939, actually wherein by a hungarian physicist and signed by einstein, observing the recent discovery of Nuclear Fission implied that bombs could be constructed from fissionable uranium and warning that nazi germany might already be working on the problem. And that fear brought government and the community of physicists together to make sure we would get the bomb first. Lawrence and big science would play a paramount role in that effort. The cyclotron was an essential kole opponent in at the research leading to the bomb. Lawrence converted his newest cyclotron, behemoth, still built in a ravine above the Berkeley Campus in a device in which to concentrate fissionable isotope, uranium 235. He designed and supervised the construction of the industrial plant to manufacture the enriched product in a rural district in tennessee known as oak ridge. And that plant would produce every atom of the uranium for the bomb dropped on hiroshima hem gave a priority time on the other cyclotrons to isolate plutonium, the core of the bomb that destroyed nagasaki. And when general leslie groves, the havent of the Manhattan Project, came around looking for someone to head up the actual design of the bomb at the lab that became los alamos, lawrence nominated his close friend, onen home. Er, and got him oppenheimer and got him the job. Now we must turn to the moral dimension of this work, not only laurens role but big sciences role in war. Something that is still the subject of debate today, 70 years later. I think just by reading the papers in this last week. The study of history is an exercise in looking at events through the eyes of the people who lived them but also applying the perspective of the decades, sometime this centuries. This exercise is especially complicated with Nuclear Weapons blahs were so familiar with their consequences. We know the toll in lives from the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki, at least 130,000 people, maybe 150,000, in the very first days, perhaps that many more over time, a toll that the builders of the bomb could only guess at and probably underestimated the figures. We know of the horrific long areterm suffering of the civilian survivors of those cities, unlike anything experienced by any other survivors of warfare in history. And we know the cloud that civilization has lived under for 70 years because of the decision made in the 1940s to unleash the destructive capacity of the atomic nucleus. And we know that the nazis actually never did have a working atomic bomb program. The scientists who stayed behind in germany got the physics of the bomb ongoing concluded it could not be built and didnt try. But the allies didnt learn that until after the war was over. Now, i dont mean by all this that we shouldnt judge the scientist Manhattan Project at all, only that we should temper our judgment but what they thought they knew. They thought they were building a weapon that could shorten the war and maybe even save lives. They thought they were in a race with a homicidal maniac, bent on world domination. They were focused on the emergency of the immediate present. Germanys surrender in 1945 changed the calculus but not the momentum of this effort. Unlike germany, japan was not widely feared as a potential nuclear threat, and its regime was not seen as fixed on world domination, maybe regional domination. But by then, the bombs were nearly complete, the impulse to use them was very strong, and in fact the planes were already ready on the island, pointed at japan. The final debate among scientists and military and political leaders before hiroshima was over whether dropping the bombs on the unsuspecting japanese was truly necessary or whether a demonstration over a desert or an unpop lated pacific atoll could deliver a sufficiently compelling message to japanese regime. The record tells us that the last holdout against dropping the bombs was lawrence himself, but that venally he, too eventually he, too, acknowledged the risk of a dud was too grate and apple mon straight that didnt demon disrate anything would be worse than no demonstration at all. Historians debated ever since, in fact we still debate today, whether the bombing of japan was truly necessary to secure surrender, but there can be no question really that most of the people directly involved in the decision accepted the assumes that it was. Many of the big scientists who developed the at tom bomb, including oppenheimer, would eventually reconsider their role. Some had began thinking about how to manage the political and social implications of the technology they had helped to invent. Many would work to promote the cause of International Control over nuclear technology, recognizing that what big science had unleashed could be managed safely only through a new conception of geopolitics and a new style of diplomacy. Many others would work to develop Nuclear Power and other peaceful technologies, perhaps in the hopes of expeaating the moral qualms and doubts that hiroshima and nagasaki brought them. Ernest lawrence, as it happenes, was not among them. Intro speck was not his strong inintrospection was not his strong suit and when his friend robert on enhomer declared physicists had come to know sin he responded angrily that nothing about his work caused him to know sin. And that was still true in the 1950s when lawrence became the nations most credible scientific promoter of the Hydrogen Bomb. A weapon that many of his colleagues viewed as nothing but a genocidal device and that even the pentagon acknowledge keyed never be glued a military come pain but campaign but only as a weapon of psychological terror. For many laypersons the prospect of the Hydrogen Bomb fueled fears that big science moved into the mode of, itself can we done it will be done and should be done. Sciences capabilities had begun to exceed the ability of our social and Political Institutions to mansion them. This showed the flaws of lawrences paradigm of big science, which was built on unquestioning conviction that science was capable of meeting the greatest technical challenges as long as scientists were joined together in pursuit of a shared goal, as they had been during the Manhattan Project. He never apologized for his work on the hbomb or the abomb. To him, both programs were necessary for National Security and he never looked back. Indeed, he established a brand new lab at livermore, california, to advance research into their mow nuclear therm more Nuclear Weapons but because he guide in 1958 we dont know what he would have made of the Nuclear World that big science helped to create. His widow, molly, thought he would have been aghast at the extent of Nuclear Proliferation and in the 1980s she was so appalledded a livermores role in the arms racing she petitioned congress to take her husbands name off the lab he founded. Well, congress turned her down and to this day its known as the Lawrence Livermore national laboratory. What we can say, however, is that the history of big science tells us that science itself cant be seen as good or evil. We can only render judgment on what humankind makes of it. Earns nest laurens new paradigm of Scientific Research has given us isotopes and diagnostic techniques that save lives, put men on the moon and allowed us to explore the out irmost planets and peer deeply into the subatomic world. It may provide is yet with weapons against climb change even as its given us the tools to destroy ourselves. Now, just before i open the floor to questions and discussion, id like too leave you with one last topic to debate and thats whether after 70 years we may have reached the political and economic limits of big science. The reason that the large collider is the biggest accelerator in the world is that the United States aboon donted its own parallel project, the super conducting super collider in the 1990s, mostly because its budget had grown so huge. Almost since the inception, the cost of big science has prompted its critics who ask whether it can get too expensive. Whether it leads us to value monumental scientific efforts that bring in more money and moore publicity, more than programs that could have a more direct relevance tower davely lives. Big science has helped make our universities great, but it also has helped to turn our professors intoed a administrators,housekeepand publicist a up for the cause of raising more money to make science even bigger. Today, we could be instruct by the foresight of the prophetic words. One thing i think we can be confident about the human thirst for knowledge is never quenched. If we want and i lust ration of that, just consider the excitement of not only by astronomers but members of the general public about the extraordinary photographs of pluton that came in last weeks for the absolute limits of the solar systems. Findings that are changing understanding of the life art of the planet. So, yes, gave us access to knowledge, but almost everything gained, came at a cost. He gave us more to think about. With that, i thank you for listening and im ready to take on the questions. [applause] i have a couple of questions. Simple and short. Seeing between the fact that lawrence you said in decision to use bomb and most least apologetic and so forth. Maybe it was discovery versus use of the weapon. Well, i think it was an element of it. Lawrence was also the scientists who introduced for the first time at a Government Panel the idea of a demonstration. He was interested in see if that would work. He was basically outvoted and out argumented who sought that a determination was risky. The element of all this that he never apologized for, building the bomb, putting forth programs, making sure that america and the United Kingdom had access before the enemy did and could protect themselves. I think in this case, he basically ended up acknowledging that there was no at earn alternative to dropping the bomb to japan. You thought it was reaching limits and the fcc, sort of political failure as evidence, of that, yet, you could say it was because the reason for it was not not very clearly appreciated by the public. Well, thats a very good point. You can gain a lot of lessons. At the time that it was canceled, the government had spent 2 billion on it. The the prospect of further expenditures looked to be limit less. Smaller government, less spending. There was a problem that the Physics Community itself was two minds about it. Many physicists that thought it was too much a project and would suck up resources and would leave too much of the research unfunded. So there are a lot of complexities there. When you really have faced with expenditures of this magnitude they become a political and you have to make sure you make the cases to the public that niece are necessary expenditures, projects will produce outcomes that really do benefit society and mankind. Thats not always easy to do. Thats the task before scientist that is want to push the programs ahead. Thanks. In contrast to the previous questioner, i think perhaps youre a little too weak in seeing the big science and military complex, waives on concentration of capital, the last big idea until up against the kind of limits that einstein saw in pursuing the speed of light where you can get closer and closer at huge expenditures of effort, capital, power, but you never reach it, and i just wonder whether, you know, in reading about things like new fuelfree engine that was invented by a schoolgirl, we maybe seeing a new paradigm that will destroy big science and start people working in their well labs. You could be right. All i can say that paradigms are often visual in rear view mirror. The end of science has been projected many times in 60s, 70s and 90s. They are concerned that they are going to be a very hard sell. Thus far, despite the fact, we have found ways to fund to project that scientists can come together and support. After all, its with us, product of consortium of European Countries sub funding from the United States, and there are plans to make it bigger aand and extend power. Im not sure that looking at things really we can say that, its definitely finished. But well know more in ten years, i suppose. Getting back to the dropping of the atomic bomb, a strong argument can be made that for the first one it saved Many American lives, as tragic as it was. My question is about the second one, why did it happen so quickly, was it necessary and should the United States have waited and allowed the decisionmaking process to go through . Have you come anything well, you may know that theres an extensive literature on the decision to drop the bomb and the thing that i found in the literature that it doesnt come to a conclusion. I think to really understand you really have to factor Political Goals and also military goals. I mean, certainly there was there was a recognition that the geography was very different. There maybe may have been a desire to get a fuller picture of what the effects would be with this sort of weapon. There might have been concern that the japanese hadnt actually spoken soon enough and that, you know, the second bomb would finally bring them to the table. As im sure you know, theres a school that the japanese were on the virtue to surrender anyway. A lot went into the decision. Theres a lot we dont know. There was a lot of thinking that was done on the ground thats very hard to really appreciate, i think, in hindsight. Hand sight hind height thank you, big organizations supporting. You said the nih, what are the others . Nih, those are the biggest ones that are government funded. Nasa, noa, all of these all of these agencies that put satellites into space and that Fund Important research, scientists, what have you. These are all really involved in big science one way or the other. In this spoke you seem to characterize this siens as this unstoppable freight train. Im concerned, household names, now who runs the lhc . You needed people to make the projects happen. With modern science you dont need in fact, in my book i do address that question. The generation of highprofile scientists xemple you can add many others to that list. Of course, was the in a sense the government supervisor of the man Manhattan Project. They were thick on the ground in 1940s, 1950s. They began to leave the scene on 1970s. He put his personal reputation at stake before congress to get that done. And i think that goes back to what i said just a few minutes ago, which is that when you are talking programs of this magnitude, they do become political. Issues become political. It does help to have individuals to have respect to make the case. I dont know who i would point to today, we could only hope in the name of science that people would merge over time. This gentleman has a question here. He probably doesnt have a microphone. [inaudible conversations] why do you have any idea why the called the early bombs atomic bombs. They are all Nuclear Bombs in the same way . Youre asking why the atomic bomb is called atomic bombs if theyre all nuclear. Yes, they are all Nuclear Bombs because they exploit energy within the with nucleas. [inaudible conversations] right. He spent a long career in physics. All i can say that this is the way the public became to know them, and this is this is the name weve given them on a technical level, yes, it is accurate, and all we can do as writers and scientists is try to make sure that people understand when we do use these terms. So im a small scientist. Im a social scientist in the healthcare field, which i think today is the new military industrial complex. You look at the award that was just made a couple of days ago from the department of defense and about 35 other companies of a multibillion dollar project to institute a record in the dod facilities and the scientists are going to go into that. Scientist that maybe foreign to some people in the room, but the science who usability, the science, these are all areas of todays big science. And the war effort was was the great deal of war related science. No one really had that kind of war fever in this country since the second world war. What weve had is the growing healthcare orientation thats taking to get here today. The modern scientists are focusing not only how long can you live but how well can you live. Do you have any thoughts on that . Well, i think if i read you correctly, the point i would make is that the idea of bringing together science and technology and industry is something that really was born in the need to find funding for project for large projects. And it did start another paradigm of pattening and certainly what we see very much in tech. We dont have time to delve in pros and cons. But i think youre right, we do see it very strongly in health care and science. Im interested in your thoughts on how big science has affected our university, educational system, both positive and negative. As i alluded to in the close of my talk, theres reason to be concern about the impact that big science, some of the aspects of big science has had. I would point out that the man who coined the term was a distinguished physicists who at the time was the director of the lab that lawrence had founded, 1961. He raised some of the questions. We are going to replace thinking with money, and that the universities were going to be very vulnerable to this sort of trend. He foresaw the evolution of professors and the need to take on projects that were amenable to publ publicity was not going to work well with the academy. I think we have seen that process continue. When lawrence invented he came to great pressure to pattent the machine. He reserved prelicenses for preacademic users. But that really was the beginning of a long trend. He was very concerned about the trend toward patenting discoveries should belong to the public. But we certainly have seen that, i think weve seen because of the entry of a big finance into the university and big science, we have seen cases where discoveries are kept from people, its much more secrecy, theres much more commercial protection and a trend thats bothersome and one that eisenhower pointed in his speech in 1961. Throughout the history of science driven scientists and discoveries and often start the technological use military to nonmilitary uses. Its much more lethal and expensive. Are there other differences that differentate the long flow of history . This is a concern that eisenhower pointed out. You end up often or the risk that you are going to end up with something that serves their goals but not for Public Interest and he was very concerned about that. And i think, that is when you have scientific projects that require big patrons, when they are industrial patrons, they are going to be inclined to focus on projects that they think has commercial advantage to themselves and their core businesses. And i think one of the concerns that we should have is the shift funding of expensive Big Science Programs from government toward industry. Government is going to be incline to fund basic science. We need that. We need to have Sciences Working at a level where they are going to follow their knows nose to make our lives better and safer and simplier and healthier. If you look at the figures, you will see that industry is taking on a much larger share, certainly since the 1970s. A much larger share of Americas Research overall, and this is going to end up in a focus that i think is not going to do us any good at all. Okay. Well thank you all for coming. [applause] thank you for the questions. This is a reminder. Theyre behind the register. [inaudible conversations] youre watch book tv on cspan2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. Book tv at the 17 annual harlem book fair. One of the authors talking about his book. I want to know where saluta virginia is . 40 miles in virginia. Why does it matter to you . It provided me with the foundation that i ended up with. Its the place that made me me. All of the people who kind of
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