Robert R. Wilson, the Psyche of A Physicist
Robert R. Wilson, the Psyche of A Physicist
In October 1996, the author traveled to Ithaca to conduct several interviews at Cornell University. There, Kutt Gottfried, a colleague of his father, introduced her to Robert Wilson, the Manhattan Project experimental physicist. In 1995, he had received an award administered by the American Physical Society given specifically for outstanding work linking physics to the arts and humanities. This chapter presents his admiration of Niels Bohr and his role in the creation of the Federation of American Scientists. It tackles his questioning of the continued development of the bomb after the Germans were defeated, his experience of an epiphany at the Trinity bomb test, and his sense of betrayal on learning that the atomic bomb had been used on Hiroshima. Together with his wife, Jane Wilson, he reveals many reflections on the meaning of success and failure when considering the troubling legacy of atomic weapons.
Keywords: Kutt Gottfried, Robert Wilson, Hiroshima, bomb development, Trinity test, atomic weapons, Jane Wilson
California Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
