The Journals of Ayn Rand (65 page)

Scene of Einstein leaving Germany. (I would like to have the date and authentic details from Einstein.)

1936.
John X, seventeen, is entering college. He has given in to his father and given up his ambition of becoming a scientist. As a result, he is a listless, frustrated, embittered youth, cynical, without fire or faith, without much interest in anything—like most of the youth of that time. His father, very pleased, accompanies him when he enrolls at the University of California to study whatever it is his father has selected for him. Actually, the father is not interested in any education, but wants him to become a great college athlete. (“The brawn is mightier than the brain.”) As they walk down a hall of the University, they see—through a half-open door—a man at a blackboard in a modest office. The man has his back to us and is writing incomprehensible formulas on the blackboard. From a friend or a minor college official accompanying them, they learn that the man is working on some mysterious studies of the mesotron and cosmic rays. “There!” says the father, “do you want to end up like that?” The boy shakes his head. As they pass the door, we see the sign on it: “J. R. Oppenheimer.”

1939.
John X is struggling through college—miserably. The brilliant boy has become a worthless student. He cannot do well the things he hates. He has flunked many examinations and doesn’t care. He is drinking, running around to parties, driving recklessly—without any real joy. When somebody mentions to him the unusual scientific discoveries being made in the world and shows him a scientific magazine—he flings it aside angrily. He is beginning to hate the subject of science, because it is tied to his renunciation of his one real desire.

We go to Germany—to the laboratory of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner. We see the experiment in which uranium atoms are split for the first time. Hahn and Meitner are puzzled by it—they do not understand the significance of their own experiment—the presence of the element barium. They attribute it to some impurity in the material or some mistake on their part.

Lise Meitner is forced to leave Germany. On the train going to the frontier, she is snubbed and pushed around by arrogant Nazi brown-shirts; the Nazi State has damned her on three counts: the old are useless, women are useless, Jews are useless. She sits alone in a comer of the train, her mind intent on the inexplicable experiment; she makes calculations on a piece of paper. A solution occurs to her suddenly; it is a stunning solution—but she must keep quiet about it. At the frontier, Nazis search her luggage: they take from her an old camera, a typewriter, and other such physical objects; nothing of value to the State, they declare, can be taken out of Germany. We see a close-up of Lise Meitner—the broad forehead, the intelligent eyes. What she is taking out is in her mind.

In Denmark, Lise Meitner explains her solution—that the uranium atom was actually split in half—to Dr. Otto Frisch, another refugee scientist. Together, they communicate the discovery to Niels Bohr. Realizing its tremendous importance, Bohr sails for the United States.

Bohr informs Einstein, Fermi, and other scientists in the United States. The experiment is repeated at Columbia—and [there is] a tremendous release of energy, as predicted by Einstein’s formula.

January, 1939.
Bohr and Fermi attend a conference on theoretical physics in Washington. Their report creates a sensation among the scientists. Fermi suggests to some of his colleagues the possibility of a military application of the new discovery.

March, 1939.
Fermi and Pegram approach representatives of the Navy Department with the suggestion of an atomic bomb.

October, 1939.
Fermi and his friends enlist the help of Einstein and Alexander Sachs to approach Roosevelt. Sachs obtains an interview with Roosevelt, reads excerpts from Einstein’s letter. Roosevelt forms first “Advisory Committee on Uranium.”

November, 1939.
The committee reports; Roosevelt approves first purchase of materials—for $6,000.

Summer of 1940
(after the fall of France). Einstein gets first news from the underground that Germany is doing some work on atomic research. Sachs urges more effort—by contacts with Roosevelt. The “National Defense Research Committee” is formed, with Dr. Vannevar Bush in charge. Bush makes contracts for uranium research with many University laboratories. He finds Labine and has him reopen his mines, closed by the war, to get uranium ore.

Parallel scenes in Germany, showing the Nazi method: slave labor operating the uranium mines in Czechoslovakia. A department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin is ordered to work on atomic research; the top scientists are kicked out and a good Nazi put in charge.

Spring, 1941.
University laboratories report progress—the possibility of isolating U-235 and of producing plutonium.

November, 1941
(just before Pearl Harbor). The government approves $300,000 in contracts. Dr. Conant is put in charge, under Dr. Bush. An American mission (Pegram and Harold Urey) is sent to England to confer with British scientists.

December, 1941
(after Pearl Harbor). Roosevelt tells Dr. Bush to go ahead, he will provide any funds needed. It is decided that British scientists will join in the work in the United States. The project now becomes secret.

1942. John X goes to war—he is assigned to military intelligence and sent to Europe.

Summer, 1942.
The Manhattan Project is formed and Gen. Groves is put in charge. (Scenes of Gen. Groves’ nomination for the post as he described them to us.)

Prof. Lawrence solves problem of the electromagnetic method of separating U-235. (I believe this is the experiment described by Beatty, with the pinpoint of light and Gen. Groves called to observe it. If chronologically correct, we use this scene here.)

December, 1942.
Fermi succeeds in producing a [nuclear fission] chain reaction in a basement of the University of Chicago.

Parallel scenes:
Vain attempts by German scientists to produce a chain reaction. (They made thirteen attempts—without success.)

1943. Gen Groves, in his role of “salesman,” arranges the first industrial contracts to build Oak Ridge. Construction begins on February 2, 1943.

Parallel scenes:
The Germans in charge of the heavy water plant in Norway. We show the methods of terror, expropriation and slave labor. Even though this plant was based on the discovery of an American (Urey) and built by Norwegian industrialists, the Nazis believe they can run it successfully through sheer force. Their attitude is, in effect: “You fools do the work, then we’ll take it over by force, because force is all that counts.”

February 28, 1943.
The Norwegian plant is blown up—under the leadership of two Norwegian scientists, formerly of this plant.

(If this is technically and historically possible, I would like to have John X connected with this explosion and wounded in subsequent action.)

Spring of 1943.
John X, who has been wounded in action and sent back to the United States, recovers and is summoned to the office of his chief. Under the impact of his war experiences, the boy is now a wreck spiritually; he is embittered, disillusioned and firmly convinced that his father was right: nothing matters in the world but brute force. His chief informs him that he will be entrusted with an assignment of extraordinary responsibility: he is to serve as bodyguard to one of the most valuable men on earth. “Who?” asks the boy. “A professor of physics,” is the answer. The boy feels contempt for his assignment—he thinks he is being thrown into the discard because of his wound. Scientists, he remarks bitterly, live in ivory towers; of what importance are they? “You’ll find out,” says the chief.

That evening, John X meets the man he is to guard—Dr. Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer has been placed in charge of the planned Los Alamos laboratory. Together, he and the boy drive to Los Alamos—over the desert and the mud roads—to the future site where there is nothing but an old school-building now. The attitude of the scientist and the bodyguard is one of hidden mutual antagonism. The scientist resents the necessity of being watched. The boy is skeptical about the scientist’s work and importance.

It is from this that the drama of their relationship will come: the gradual understanding—the boy’s growing admiration for the scientist—the boy’s final regeneration and return to spiritual values, as he sees them exemplified in the work at Los Alamos.

The exact sequence of incidents we’ll use to illustrate the next two years (1943-1945) cannot be decided upon until all the research material is in. I should like to use as many real incidents as possible—and invent episodes only where no factual information is available, to illustrate the general trend and progress of the work.

Some key spots, which we have and will use, are:

Incidents illustrating the activities of Oppenheimer and Groves: Oppenheimer persuading scientists to come and work at Los Alamos, overcoming their objections to “the project’s bad name”; Groves “selling” industrialists on undertaking dangerous and almost impossible contracts.

Parallel scenes:
In Denmark, the Nazis try to persuade Bohr to work for them. He refuses. Why should they need him? Didn’t they say that an individual is of no importance, only the race matters? They threaten him. He asks them contemptuously: “How are you going to force a mind? How are you going to tear out of it an idea not yet born? You have destroyed millions of human brains. Can you make one single brain work? You wish me to produce for you something you can’t produce—yet you consider yourselves the masters of the world. Isn’t there, perhaps, an error in your theories? One single crucial error?” The Nazis are stopped—they cannot kill him, he is too valuable.
[Note the similarity to the scene in
Atlas Shrugged
when Galt is tortured.]
They threaten to torture his son. The underground arranges the escape of Bohr and his son—first by boat to Sweden, then by plane to England. Here we have the incident of Bohr’s head being too large for an oxygen mask—and the great scientist arriving in England barely alive.