One but if not incredibly compelling, a very lively and engaging had a difficult time putting down. Would you please encapsulate the life of your grandfather briefly . Because he seems to have compressed four four owe five s into one lifetime. Guest he did pick in fact, to book a memoir called my several lives. The only problem with it, it was, the New York Times declared he was a great man and he it was a dull book turkey didnt me secrets. My grandfather had an extraordinary career because he served the country in three wars essentially, too hot and one cold. He helped make the first weapon of mass destruction poison gas for the chemical war service during world war i. He then became president of harvard and was a leading educator but then because of his wartime experience and because he was a brilliant chemist by training, he ended up being recruited by roosevelt to be one of scientific journals of world war ii. He was in charge again of all chemical weapons but that included a new weapon, the bomb. He ended up overseeing the Manhattan Project laboratory at los alamos where they built the first atomic bomb. Then he became one of the key architects of our Cold War Nuclear policy. He had advised roosevelt of course during the war and then it became a key advisor to treatment and eisenhower all during the cold war on our Nuclear Weapons policy, how to control Nuclear Weapons, how to confront the russian threat. He later became ambassador to germany during the height of the cold war when it was believed the third war might be fought right there on the lines of east germany because of the soviet aggression. Because of his antiwartime experience he became convinced the only way for democracy to survive, the best way to beat our enemies and be a strong country, was to have a great School System where we showed that democracy was better than dictatorship, and that we would have sufficiently brilliant people, talented people in government, in science, and the way to do that was to have the sat which he helped implement to produce what he felt were the kind of leaders, the kind of technically advanced people that we would need in positions of power if we were going to be a great nation in the hightech world that he foresaw approaching in the 50s in the 60s. He had an extraordinary impact on american life. Host he really did and im glad you brought in the sat and the focus on meritocracy because i think many people dont realize what a Critical Role he had in shaping the future direction of our country in that regard. Guest many people is often referred to as the father of the american meritocracy. Really this whole notion that everybody should have access to a college education, that that access should be determined entirely by merit, not by birth, not by family, not by geography. That really came about through his early work at harvard and applying the military intelligence test to the sat and try to use the sat as the tool really to open up college to everybody based on merit to make it a system as fair as possible. The sat has become very controversial now and has its many critics but originally the idea was fairness, openness, to traits my grandfather thought were absolutely key to the american democracy, the idea of a free and open society with social mobility. He thought that was key to try and strengthen and preserve that quality in our country. He felt that was the best way to combat fascism and communism. He was a real cold warrior, and he saw the sat as a tool to do that. So it is a a very important pat of his legacy which is almost forgotten now. Host how much of that do think came out of his own background in terms of his boyhood in boston, the experience he had at Roxbury Latin, the very privileged opportunity he had to go to harvard and his own experience . Guest it came entirely from his childhood. He was from dorchester, which is, you know, in those days was a workingclass suburb, a new workingclass suburb of boston. It was often called the commuter suburb because workingclass people moved out there because land was cheap and plentiful, and they took the new railroads and then trolley cars into boston to work. The old brahman governing class, the old ruling class of boston very much look down on dorchester as kind of the outer wilderness of uncultivated, uncultured behemoth that was growing up around their precious old city. He was a scholarship boy. He had been very lucky after going to local Public Schools to get into Roxbury Latin, which was a partially private but also public funded school, a very, very good school. And he won a scholarship at 16 to harvard, and so he was a scholarship boy very much from the wrong side of the tracks in those days at harvard, which was very much a school of rich mans sons. And he really felt it. When he entered harvard, you know, in 1914, it was such the school of rich mens sons rick is graduating class of 1914 had boys that he come to school with service and butlers and he lived in vast apartments, and they had large stipends and had residences with fireplaces in swimming pools and their own tailoring facilities and laundry services. Scholarship boys like him lived in and he did really houses very dilapidated on the outskirts of the campus. He had no heat. He had no running water, and he didnt even have electricity the first few months he was in the running house. He used to bathe in the gymnasium. So it was a much harder life for the scholarship boys, and he never forgot that experience and the fact the boys like him couldnt get into any of the better fraternities. Many of his friends had parttime jobs where they worked long hours to try and pay for the books in the meals. He was luckier than that. His father by the time he went to college was making a pretty good income, and so his father provide him with money for books and meals, but he never forgot the huge divide between the haves and havenots. And it marked him for life. It very much form the core of his educational philosophy. Host he seems to have had a strong sense of self and a very strong sense of purpose from a very young age. I remember reading in your book that his parents wanting to go to milton academy, a private high school, and he rejected the idea and you wanted to go instead to Roxbury Latin because he knew it had a good science and chemistry program. Thats pretty extraordinary for a boy about age. Guest absolutely extraordinary. He knew at a very, very young age that he wanted science, tt he showed real aptitude for it. He was already tinkering with batteries and electricity and all the kind of new apparatus. Theres a story about being a very the bullet and doorbells were introduced, brandnew technology and often broke and he would go to his neighbors and rejigger the battery and the electricity that triggered the mechanism, and that gave him such a huge thrill, the sense he could fix something it work and that he played with all kinds of apparatus after that, took things apart and put them back together. He built his own microscope. He built a lot of experimental equipment. So he knew by the time he was very young that this is what he wanted to do. It was a time when science was changing Bulletin Board at enormous speed. It was quite an exciting field at that time. Host he also seems to have been quite driven because i recall he not only with to harvard at 16 but he went as a sophomore because hed already completed enough advanced work in high school to entered as a sophomore. I i think he completed harvard n three years, did he not . Guest really about two and a half exactly turkey entered pretty much as, well, well ino his sophomore credentials. So the thing is that specialization was very common in those days. You trained, you went to harvard, particularly if youre from a scholarship background. You really went in not for a general education but to train for a profession. So he had two older sisters. The fabulous not particularly will alter key had a sense he sense he was driven to succeed any profession, that for a boy like him he would have to make his own way. He was very ambitious. And he wanted to get it as quickly as possible, get onto the graduate program in chemistry and start training for his profession. So yes, he moved very quickly, as he said, about a very no track at harvard, taking as much chemistry and site as he could and then Little Things like english and history as he could get away with at that time in his life. Host he reminded of the subject of your first book, tuxedo park, as similar experience at yale and going on to harvard law school. You seem to have picked up to driven people. Guest well, you know, its interesting but its not uncommon. If you read the biographies of truly exceptional men, it is that often the case that they knew very, very young, maybe its a coincidence of brilliance and lock lock that they find a vocation breadline and theyre very focused and driven individuals. And so you see that very often with scientists, mathematicians and politicians as well, a course that is set at a very tender age. Host you begin your book with a very powerful scenario. I think it is Christmas Eve 1945. Your grandfather is in the kremlin with the Foreign Ministers of the nuclear power, the allies. You have stalin, molotov, the former minister from russia. County when you begin the scene with that particular time in history. Well, it was an extraordinary moment to history. The war had just ended. Rush had been our ally. But we had exploded the most powerful weapon ever made by a man. We had dropped to a atomic bombs of different designs on hiroshima and nagasaki to bring the pacific war to a quick and decisive end. We have not told our allies that we had this weapon. The british the course new because they have helped us make it, but it came as something of a surprise to the russians. Not as much as a surprise we thought we later found out because of espionage. But nevertheless, wed use this weapon and the russians were quite disgruntled that in all the wartime, postwar conferences that were being held to sort of divide up the spoils of war, geographically, to redraw the boundaries, the russians were being very difficult. We had thought of course that with this weapon we would be really in the dominant position in the postwar negotiations. Truman at her secretary of state byrnes were convinced we were in the catbird seat. But the russians would never acknowledged the father they never made reference to it, and in the first conferences they kind of ridicule it. They kind of made fun of this ostentatious bulge in our pocket, molotov kept making jokes about it. American policymakers were astounded. Here we were the most powerful country in the world. We were the most victorious nation. We had this huge weapon, and the russians refuse to take it seriously. So negotiations had not proceeded as we had anticipated, and a desperate effort to negotiate with the russians. A special conference over christmas in moscow, yet taken a long the leading expert, james e kona to try to talk to the russian scientists. And the hope was the russians would acknowledge the bomb, was this decisive weapon and agree to some kind of nuclear controls, agreed to International Committee to control the future of all Nuclear Weapons. This was crucial because my grandfather and the need for bush, that of the Manhattan Project, and with almost all of the site is the work on the bomb at los alamos in chicago and other laboratories Vannevar Bush felt this was not a secret we could keep, that the technology that went into making the bomb would very quickly proliferate. They couldnt protect it and it would be a matter of time only before not only the russians had it but other enemies, petty dictators could conceivably get a hold of this technology. So there was a great fear that this weapon was so powerful that it could really destroy the world in the wrong hands, become something that terrorists could use. All of this was clearly envisioned by its creators really before the war was over, and they began trying desperately to put in place some kind of International Control so that this weapon could not proliferate. You would not have people stockpiling it, tilting Nuclear Weapons left, right, and center. And so this meeting in moscow Christmas Eve was so crucial because my grandfather and the americans that went were desperately hoping that they could convince stalin and molotov to agree to control the future of this terrible, terrible force. They were very optimistic that it could still be done, but by the time they left moscow, they were less convinced that the russians really wanted to participate in these negotiations. Host and what did they envision might be the form of control that might be able to convince the russians to submit to, or to agree to . Guest the scientists hope was that an exchange of an enormous gesture of goodwill on our part, that would be sharing the secret as it were, the Nuclear Secret of the ball, in exchange for giving this technology to the world in the hopes they could be used as a form of clean power for nations all over the world, nations would come together and form an international organization. They would later try and do this to the u. N. But at this time there were thinking of it as an international organization. The community of likeminded nations that would then have a board that would supervise all nuclear laboratories, policeman as it were, hold inspections, make sure all of these laboratories were just used for power, for peaceful purposes, and in no way towards making more weapons. That was their idealistic hope, and he really believed at that time that it was achievable. But as my grandfather wrote, you know, what other belief could they have accept it so for International Control . Because the weapon now existed. It had been used and it could be replicated. So they had to strive for International Control because that was the only way to avoid a desperately dangerous arms race from developing. And so i begin the book with this Christmas Eve summit at the kremlin, because that is where they had all their hopes pinned on that meeting. Host it also seems to be the cusp between the world war ii in cold war to follow, but very poignant time in our worlds history. Guest yes, and it was really, really our last hope in a way of bringing the russians around to our way of thinking, we thought. We still believe when they set off for that mission at the was a chance that they could convince the russians. And by the time i grandfather returned from that trip, he began to have grave doubts that the russians would come to the negotiating table. Of course, as we now know for sure years later the russians exploded the first atomic bomb in 1949 and the cold war began in earnest, along with the desperate arms race that we are now still struggling with. Host over the long span of history while he may not have accomplished a shortterm objective, the many way he and others were quite precedent because International AtomicEnergy Agency indeed fulfills some, not all, some of those functions you just described a moment ago. Guest yes, though i think, you know, my grandfather again, Vannevar Bush and so many of the scientists they were incredibly prescient, and they foresaw in a meeting with truman, oppenheimer even outlined the possibility of Small Nuclear suitcase bombs in the hands of our enemies. They really understood all too clearly what this weapon and what it falling into the hands of our enemies would mean, that america would really never be safe again, that will be terribly vulnerable and that a Nuclear Conflict of the kind that would involve these weapons would be devastating beyond belief really unthinkable in their mind. So they foresaw this and they really struggled mightily to try and bring russia to the negotiating table. And when the opportunity faded and the Atomic Energy commission was founded, they did feel, particularly my grandfather, terribly fearful that he would not really have the powers needed to keep the arms race from developing at a terrible rate and from the weapon falling into enemy hands. And david very right about that. Host why dont we step back . We now have a sense of what he accomplished during world war ii, but he grew up in the family, if i recall, where his mother was a quaker. And he, in world war i, my recollection is while he was a student at harvard he was not enthused about the prowar efforts that were then beginning to build in the United States, and he went through a rather substantial conversion, perhaps because of the german gassing of the french and belgian troops. Would you describe some of that, how you think that conversion came about . Guest in really many ways i think its the saddest aspect of his life. As weve talked, he loved chemistry. He loved science, and his gret ambition was to become a nobel prizewinning scientist. His mentor at harvard, Theodore William richards was. He began his fatherinlaw. This is the career path he had in mind his mother was a quaker. Many of his relatives, in fact, were quakers. He was really averse to work so much so that when he was at harvard and world war i broke out in 1914 and he was entering graduate school, great many of his classmates and friends became very hot in the war, so were the faculty particularly divided the campus. But ahead of harvard became very prothe war, very prothe allies. They started the early versions of rotc on campus. Students were drooling in uniform. Many of the strands were volunteering for the ambulance corps, and he was horrified. He really saw world war i as these aggressive old empires with plenty of fault on other side battling it out over territory and money. And he did not see it as as a l cause and he did not see a reason for america to get involved. He personally had no desire to get involved, and he took great steps to avoid it. And, in fact, he lost friends over it. Many people did not admire his sort of isolationist pacifist position at that time. But when america finally declared war on germany and the germans were using this new chemical weapon, poison gas, to slaughter the allies, he was on his way to volunteering. He felt he had no choice. Most americans felt they had no choice at that age but volunteer once the country had declared war on germany. And he got stopped on his way to the Recruitment Offices in washington, d. C. By a professor, a very famous chemist, and he stopped on the sidewalk and said you know, dont go off and shoulder a gun. Youre wasting your brains doing that. We need you to help us combat these horrible weapons that are going to slaughter our boys when they get to the front in europe. You are a chemist and we need to develop protections. We need to develop defenses, d we need to develop even worse chemical weapons to keep the germans from killing our boys. So convinced that he would be more effective in that way, he reluctantly did not volunteer for the army. He went into the Chemical Warfare service and was immediately put to work perfecting an american version as it were of poison gas. At the time it was mustard gas which was a weapon of choice at the moment there can be spent a year or more perfecting a formula for mustard gas which immediately went into productio production. And america made vast amounts, making 30 tons a month and shipping it to the front. By the end end of the work wee producing more mustard gas and all of the european nations combined. He became involved in making this horrifying weapons of mass destruction. Once really sort of awful, and i show this, is his terrible misgivings about are very clear in the literacy wrote his fiancee. He called it trying to beat the devil at his own game, passing the inventors of gas. He did not like it. It was dangerous work. It was horrible work but he felt he had no choice. Before the war was over he ended up being promoted and sent to a secret facility to try to invent and even more deadly gas which he had helped come up with with another chemist, and they worked in the secret wartime laboratory and an old automobile plant in willoughby ohio, about 20 miles outside of cleveland. They secretly produced this terrible, powerful new poison gas. I was the this gas ever made. It was designated g 34, but it it was commonly known as lewisite. They finished production of it and they were about to ship it to the front when the war ended and my grandfather was hugely relieved that the worst of weapons would not be used. Much in the same way that Alfred Loomis had his first expense during world war i that then been led to his role in world war ii sinjar grandfather began his Public Service role in this manner. And probably also as i recall reading a book, had a not just a chemistry go but he was responsible for leading many of the men who were helping to bring about these poison gas development. And so perhaps also had his first taste of what it meant to lead a group of people in a common endeavor that would woue served him well as president of harvard and then leading the Manhattan Project. Guest it was very similar. It was a lifechanging experience for these men that have been in sort of rarefied worlds and well educated and on track in their careers, and then world war i completely taken in a different direction and threw them into more time situations, and my grandfather was a innate poison gas laboratory. You have brilliant businesses and scientists brought together making weapons, doing testing, doing research but at huge speed with all kinds of resources made available, discoveries being made left and right, advances in science. This is what wartime does. It accelerates the pace of advances in science. I think when the war is over for both men, the excitement, the sense of what could be achieved having worked with a group of brilliant men as you said in a common cause serving her country, that left a huge impression, and also the real knowledge that technology could rewrite the rules of war, that these weapons could really change how men fought, could bring victory with much greater speed at much less loss of life for the side that had these weapons. So as the storm clouds gathered over europe in the 1930s and america was completely isolationist and no desire to get drawn into yet another european conflict, these men understood that the more we sat on our hands and did not get involved, and the european nations that were threatening the democracies of europe, so germany and italy were perfecting their weapons with advanced aircraft and advanced submarines and the best tanks in the case of germany, the best guns, and we had an aging navy and an aging outmoded air force. I think these men very keenly understood the problem well before most of the political leaders in washington because they had been at the cutting edge of science and knew what these developments would mean in the battlefield. Host then he returned to harvard to go back to his initial love, chemistry. But history had a different role in mind for him. Would you care to describe how it is that he went on to great feats in chemistry, well on his path perhaps to a nobel prize, but then was called to serve harvard in a different capacity. Guest well, he wanted to be an academic scientist, but we know after world war i he courted his girlfriend and married his mentors daughter, Theodore William richards was very nobel prizewinning chemist or he was from the other side of the tracks. It was a feat to convince his mentor that he should be allowed to marry this girl who was sort of harvard royalty. We know he was impatient because he told her when he courted her in 1919 in 1920, he told her that he wanted to one, become the greatest organic chemist in america. Two, become president of harvard, and three, achieve a cabinet level position. So he foresaw his future apparently quite clearly. She scribbled those three things down in her diary when she was courting him saying that these were again mans pipe dreams but she was curious to see how much of it he would achieve. And by 40 he achieved the first two. He was a very hardworking chemist. He was brilliant at attacking chemical problems of real significance, and because he was trained both as a physical and organic chemist, he couldve made real headway very quickly in areas such as hemoglobin and super acids, and then his particular triumph was in helped determine the atomic structure of chlorophyll. He was really notched so many awards come he publish so many papers, he did so much significant work. He was really seen as on track to win an nobel himself. But in 1933 the venerable old president of harvard retired and they were seeking a successor. And corporation, the vaunted board of harvard, came to him and said who do you recommend . You are this brilliant scientist on our faculty, you should have some ideas of you think would be a good leader. And what you think we need to do to bring harvard into the new century. And he apparently gave such an exciting, informed, brilliant exposition of harpers problems and the challenges ahead harvard problems. That he became a candidate and sure enough he became a very young 40yearold president of harvard, i i chemist which was seen as fairly radical at the time. And from the wrong side of the tracks. He was the most surprising choice. The newspapers had a field day with it. And so his science career, he thought, was over. As i recall, the book describes harvard having rested on its laurels and perhaps to some degree, although unsure some people would not accept this, lapsed into mediocrity certain extent and his goal is to build a real meritocracy among the faculty, the students and you would elevate poverty what we know harvard to be today. And so again you seem to have tremendous vision for the future in what was needed at the time. Guest you know, it was the oldest, most Prominent University in america. They had this brilliant, brilliant professors and philosophy in literature and history, economics but many of them were retired and several had died and they had lost some of their leading lights. It was becoming somewhat of a college rich mans son vicki made this argument for harvard to regain its lost eminence and to really retain its position as the leading university in america, there were all these upstarts like caltech and west coast universities that were growing the university of chicago and hiring great people and doing great work, that to compete with these new challenges from the west, that harvard needed to really hire and recruit the very best minds and to foster an environment where merit was the most highly prized, not family background. In those days many harvard tutors were sort of wellborn sons that had a private income and sort of tutored, and it was a nice little living for a cambridge boy. He wanted to put an end to that and that only first rate people on the faculty that were tenuretrack so to speak and get rid of all the sort of come he said, incestuous hires in deadwood. Eddie also, smc became president , rather scandalize the university by saying that he did not just what sons of wealthy families, he won to open up the missions of harvard to boys from outside the prep school circuit, from Public Schools to schools from the midwest, boys of different religion, boys of different backgrounds and geographical locations. This was very scandals at the time. But because harvard was the leading university, other universities sat up and took notice and soon followed suit. So this bold educational experiment in creating National Scholarships and then hunting across the country to recruit boys of intelligence from all different walks of life, this revolutionize the american School System and produced this whole notion we had today that if you are a bright boy from any walk of life of any religion, of any background, you should be able to find your way to a good university. You should get scholarship money and be allowed to rise in the american system. And my grandfather was very much responsible for driving that whole notion into the american concept of our democracy and how it should work. Host would it be fair to say he might have led harvard to become the First National if not International University of great repute . Guest i think very much so. I think he really was a global thinker. I think his wartime experience very much shaped his view. He said, adding think its significant, when he became president of harvard in 1933 it was the same time that hitler rose to power. His whole view of education, of the necessity of producing bright boys to fill important jobs, medicine, science, technology, it wasnt simply altruistic or idealistic. He very much at a sense of this was a dangerous world, and for america to be a strong country we need to continue to promote the best brains of this country and get into positions of influence in government, and all the professions. If were going to compete with these dangerous totalitarian nations abroad. And so from the very beginning his whole educational philosophy was to advance the best and the brightest from any walk of life. So the whole notion of diversity in the social mobility, a fair access to college, all the sinks we take for granted now really were shaped by his experience. Host i recall i think was during his presidency at harvard they actually sought to recruit el lowered from berkeley what was then not, was then the university of california and made such a substantial offer to become a professor of physics at harvard that lawrence came very, very close to accepting her i think he traveled to boston two or three times. Finally he decided to stay at berkeley and extracted tremendous concessions from Robert Gordon stroud, the president and the regions pick but he had good taste and it was evident. He had for the best people throughout the world. Guest he did. They became very close friends, and he also, he hired a very obscure White Russian named george from princeton at a very young age. George had come from russia, educated in germany, had a thick accent, but he hired george, he became head of the Chemistry Department at harvard and would become a brilliant, brilliant chemist and very significant contribution to building the detonator of the atomic bomb and he was later advised eisenhower. A brilliant man. He had very good taste. He tried to hire oppenheimer at various stages. Not only did have a good eye for talent but he became very close to a number of the leading physicists and chemists of the country because at harvard he was constantly trying to recruit talent. And he became very friendly with any number of them. It was really in his conversations with these other leading scientist in the 1930s that he and similarly Vannevar Bush who is Vice President of mit doing very much the same thing, they were sort of friendly competitors when youre both at those two cambridge universities. And then Vannevar Bush became president of the Carnegie Institute which of course was and you carnegie is huge endowment to advance American Science andrew carnegie. He withdrew in conversation with all these top scientists that my grandfather became convinced that we were going to get dragged into the war again. These men are became extremely concerned that we were very behind and that the germans who were so brilliant in signs and at some of the greatest laboratories in the world were going to be way, way ahead and this was a very great threat to us. They began agitating for American Science to start to organize and prepare for war. Host and as the storm clouds are building over europe toward world war ii, your grandfather changed from his role as a reluctance to enter world war i, his is reluctancef use to be involved, to take on a very strong advocacy role. Would you describe his role in helping the nation address the question of whether it should become involved in the war . And what his key role was in that . Guest well, because he had this understanding of science and a much greater sense of the threat that science and technology in these new weapons of war posed to our security, he felt that he had to alert the public. He had to educate congress and the American People as to the threat that this post. I mean, america was isolationist. We didnt want to get involved with this latest war in europe, and you know, roosevelt was running for reelection, didnt want to alienate voters who didnt want to send their sons off to war so he wouldnt speak of any kind getting involved with the war, cindy any aid to britain. But by then the nazis had blitzed across europe in one country after another had fallen to the german guns and they were really on the verge of invading england. My grandfather felt really that if england fell, then our democracy was under serious threat, that western civilization itself was in peril. You can have all of these european democracies fall to german nazi rule. So he began making these very famous radio addresses from harvard, using all of his influence as an educator and really what was seen in those days as a wise man, this sort of learned advisor to roosevelt. Roosevelt needed his help and pretty much let my grandfather carry the torch of interventionism. And he made one speech after another basically alerting the country to the danger of advanced technology, the danger of letting totalitarianism take over all of these european nations. That he was not only a threat to freedom in europe but a threat to freedom at home. His goal was to really try to alarm, scare, if you were, the American Public into realizing that we were not protected by this ocean, and that we had to intervene. We couldnt stand by. He became such an influential interventionist that roosevelt eventually would ask him to undertake a very, very Important Scientific Mission to england, which was enormous significance really in the course of the war and in history itself you could argue. Host how did he come to become one of roosevelts tukey Science Advisors along with Vannevar Bush . Did it build from the history you were just describing over the other aspects that brought in into the very close tight everyone with the brothers and others who left this major effort for the country . Guest as i said that all been in conversation, these scientists, Vannevar Bush, my grandfather, the competence, carl and arthur, the head of bell laboratories, these were very smart man that were in constant conversation. They sat on many boards together and as the war grew more and more series in europe they became more concerned, more convinced that we would have to become involved and more afraid that we were very far behind. But one particular Scientific Development would be the catalyst for driving these men as it were into these leadership positions, and that was the discovery of two german scientists discovered visions in 1939 sessions. It was not classified yet so the discovery was heralded all over europe and within weeks replicated by american scientists. What physicist very quickly realized was this could theoretically lead to a growing Chain Reaction and that if obstacles could be overcome this growing Chain Reaction would produce an enormous release of energy and that this release of energy would be pound for pound, like 1 million times greater than any known explosive. This obviously had implications for the war in europe and refugee scientists in particular who had fled the countries and that family in concentration camps, amit and wartorn countries, they were immediately alarmed that if the germans got this weapon that would be it, the germans would be victorious. A hungarian physicist was terribly frightened. He felt that the president of the United States had to be warned. So he appealed to his close friend, Albert Einstein was older but by far and away the most famous scientist alive, to write a letter warning the american president that very powerful weapon, fission weapon could be built. And einstein ended up signing the draft of the letter to roosevelt warning him that new powerful bombs could be built, and that america should start aa Research Program to look into it. This program was started, and a lead ultimately to the formation in 1940 of the National Defense research council. Roosevelt essentially asking Vannevar Bush and james conant to start organizing science, and Scientific Research for war. It was really, still sort of a classified scientific endeavor and a relatively small endeavor, but he took the first steps that were taken. A year later it would be vastly expanded into the os rd, and then it would really be starting to find research and scientific experiments for Weapons Development on a much larger scale. Of course we now know that the word meaning many Manhattan Project laboratories that grew up out of the osrd. There was a huge Radar Laboratory which was at mit and then there was of course the famous los alamos bomb laboratory which oppenheimer would direct in new mexico. Host if you allow me i would like to elevate lisa meitner to the group with auto. She was one of the discoverers, codiscoverers of fission it up and given the credit that it think was a do when others received the nobel prize. Guest absolutely. She absolutely helped verify that the findings were true and she is a one in fact, that alerted the others. They traveled to america and arriving in america, held a press conference within days of arriving to announce that the rhenium adam had been split. So she played a very key role in more ways than one. Host so then the institution i have a leadership role in, National Academy of sciences was in the building rep on constitution avenue was the home for many of these discussions as you know, your grandfather was later a contender for president of the academy. But it links all of these people met at the academy and a guest at a chicago because people were coming from both coasts, as i understand it. Edward kelly and others in these codes, glenn seaborg and lawrence from the west meeting in chicago, right . Guest right. Andrea batista fibers were all all very small in those days. It was a Small Community. Most universities barely had physics departments and this was a very new field. So these men all knew each other. They all went to conferences and lectures. They all try to recruit one another. So this was a Small Community of men that were very well aware of one another as they are beginning to organize these various Research Teams and start to ask universities to start donating their laboratories for research for war. We are still not in the war at this time, even in the 1940 in 1941, but these are fairly convinced that we will have to join the war. And so they are working secretly in wartime laboratories on university campuses, developing radar and looking into chemical weapons and different kinds of research that will be applicable to wartime technology. Host how did he managed to be both a present of harvard, a leading sites advised to fdr, the principal person overseeing the Manhattan Project, and still retain relationships with his family and his colleagues . Guest i think, i think the latter gave. He was never home. He at this point, by the time, osd are was fun related in june 1941, he is basically spending five days a week in washington. He comes back to harvard on some weekends. He avoided a first rate provost to really run the university in his absence. He tells a great story, part of wartime savings, trying to reduce the number of courses taught. They decided that a good economic move would be to admit radcliffe women. There were so many boys were joining up into the army, class size had gotten so small that have did not we will let the women in an radcliffe will pay us and we wont have teachers teaching both subjects at baclofen harvard, which essentially radical decision to sort of make harvard coed and which is really the last thing my grandfather had wanted. He later said. He was so busy reading secret force that when paul buck had io give this piece of paper to make this really enormous change, he said my grandfather signed it without even looking up and he wasnt entirely sure he knew what he had signed. So you get the feeling from the anecdote of how busy he was. Hes looking at these classified reports on the early uranium fission research that was being done on all kinds of weapons research. They were trying to figure out all kinds of rules in terms of the conscription of the draft, whether, trying to keep scientists out of the draft. If they could get me to wartime laboratories. He had so many hats he was wearing, but, unfortunately, and sort of rather sadly, he really sacrificed his personal life entirely for his wartime responsibilities. And many, many, many of his generation did. Host talk to us a little bit about the toll it took on his family. This this is a family that you w up in. And i hope this is not to point it for you but its indicative of what people do when they make sacrifices for the nation. Guest yes. And he was not alone. From the beginning to the end, really his involvement in the Manhattan Project and the secret bob work was more than five years. There were five years he was never home, that he was on the train all the time from washington to chicago to los alamos new mexico. Train travel was slow. It took days to get there. He would stay a week or two on the road visiting oak ridge, hanford, these very distant wartime laboratories. Then he would be back to washington. So he was never home. He had two teenage boys. I think its difficult enough to imagine being the son of the president of harvard and growing up in the president mentioned on harvard university. I dont think the boys ever felt bright enough, ever felt they measured up. But then at a very crucial time in their life pretty much from the time there were 11 or 12 on he was gone, completely gone on the road with these wartime responsibilities that he could not talk about. He honored that will of complete wartime secrecy where he never mentioned what he was doing or where he had been. So i think he became a very grim, chile authoritarian figure to them, and it took a terrible toll on them and in both i think probably in a desire to prove themselves and partly it was the time, ran off to work at very young ages. My uncle was in the navy, officer officer Training Program at michigan and became a naval officer. And he was in a submarine that was very, very badly attacked by the japanese, and he came back from world war ii having had a complete nervous breakdown at the end of that last submarine attack. And he would never be entirely whole again. My father volunteered and join the merchant marines at 17, but you know, there are very young boys to go off to war and they had a very difficult childhood with really no father, and the father they had was very cold, remote figure. So they were very scarred for the rest of their lives. Host dgc this growing up as a child . Guest yes. You know, i grew up in the 1960s, so in the way i grew up in another wartime era, a very different wartime era growing up in cambridge in harvard backyard. Ever protest and we can pick theres almost no class at Harvard Square that all the windows had been broken by protesters chucking rocks. It was all plywood when i was a kid, and there were antiwar demonstrations everywhere. And my grandfather as someone who had built the bomb and had overseeing the production of napalm was the vietnam war weapon of choice, and it had been created at Harvard Laboratory during world war ii, he was seen as a war criminal. And my father who is very, very angry and rebellious, had revolted against his authoritarian father by becoming extremely leftwing, almost radical in his political views, which tell me as we watched the evening news and saw these vietnamese villages being incinerated. He would say to me, your grandfather made these weapons. He was a mass murderer. So i very much group of understanding that war divided families, that they were vastly different views of the role that these men played in developing these weapons. My grandfather was enormously famous, revered figure i was very much aware that he was a celebrity and been on the cover of Time Magazine four times, and was viewed as many people saw him as a hero for having entered the war in the pacific. At the same time in vietnam, many young people saw him as the villain. So this really was something i live with my whole life from a very young age. Host youre not only an exceptional writer, but you are a wonderful conversationalist. Its been a wonderful opportunity to spend time with you. I regret that we must bring the conversation to a close because i feel like we could go on for at least another hour. Thank you so very much for joining us today. Guest thank you. Host my pleasure. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service americas cabletelevision companies and is brought to today by your cable or satellite provider. Heres a a look at some boos being published this week. Its my pleasure and honor and the chair of this conferences planning committee. Thank you, mimi, for all your