Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex

by Michael Hiltzik

From a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Los Angeles Times contributor, the untold story of how science went big,built the bombs that helped win World War II, and became dependent on government and industry and the forgotten genius who started it all, Ernest Lawrence.

Since the 1930s, the scale of scientific endeavors has grown exponentially. Machines have become larger, ambitions bolder. The first particle accelerator cost less than one hundred dollars and could be held in its creator's palm, while its descendant, the Large Hadron Collider, cost ten billion dollars and is seventeen miles in circumference. Scientists have invented nuclear weapons, put a man on the moon, and examined nature at the subatomic scale all through Big Science, the industrial-scale research paid for by governments and corporations that have driven the great scientific projects of our time.

The birth of Big Science can be traced to Berkeley, California, nearly nine decades ago, when a resourceful young scientist with a talent for physics and an even greater talent for promotion pondered his new invention and declared, "I'm going to be famous!" Ernest Orlando Lawrence's cyclotron would revolutionize nuclear physics, but that was only the beginning of its impact. It would change our understanding of the basic building blocks of nature. It would help win World War II. Its influence would be felt in academia and international politics. It was the beginning of Big Science.

This is the incredible story of how one invention changed the world and of the man principally responsible for it all. Michael Hiltzik tells the riveting full story here for the first time.

Genres: History, Science, Biography, Nonfiction, Politics, Audiobook, Business

528 pages, Hardcover

First published July 7, 2015

Reviews

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it certainly took me long enough to get through (about three months!), this book was a wonderful read that I'd highly recommend to anyone with overlapping interests in history, politics, militarism, science, the Cold War, investigative journalism, and/or great biography. No science background is necessary, but it helps to have some historical understanding of what led to mechanization of warfare in the 20th C. It's particularly good to keep Oppenheimer in mind throughout your reading, as you'll find yourself mulling over unintended consequences, regret, and post-objective fears in the scientific community. Strong recommend.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Note: I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads.)

Primarily a biography of Ernest Lawrence; a Nobel-laureate physicist who invented the cyclotron and was a key figure in America's development of atomic bombs during World War 2. While Hiltzik does provide some information on the science behind Lawrence's work, his primary focus is on Lawrence's skills as an organizer and fund-raiser. His thesis is that, before Lawrence, scientific research consisted mostly of a lone scientist, perhaps supported by an assistant or two, working on a modest budget in a modest laboratory with small-scale equipment. Lawrence's career placed him at the forefront of a shift in that model, where he founded the first research lab (the "Rad Lab" in Berkeley) with a massive staff, supported by massive government checks, using large equipment costing millions of dollars.

It's an interesting story; most accounts I've seen of the development of the atomic bomb focus on the research facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico, so this account presents an interesting alternate viewpoint. I have to say that I found it impossible to be entirely sympathetic towards Lawrence. After the war, while many of his physicist colleagues became strong advocates for reining in the advance of nuclear weaponry, Lawrence was a gung-ho advocate of building bigger and bigger bombs (not to mention smaller bombs, for use as submarine missile warheads). He was also entirely too willing to play along with the red-baiting of the time period, and fired some of his subordinates at his lab for "leftist sympathies".

I can't really recommend this book to readers who don't have a particular interest in the history of science (particularly the history of scientific institutions). It's a bit dry, and even I- who am interested in the subject matter- found the book tedious at times (most especially when Hiltzik goes into the details of how Lawrence went about cajoling various organizations and eccentric millionaires for funding). But, if you do have an interest in the subject, it's worth your while.

[Rosemary Standeven · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a teenager I was fascinated by nuclear physics and read everything I could find on the subject. My dream was to work in the Cavendish laboratory like my fellow New Zealand countryman, Ernest Rutherford. Then I met 6th form school physics, and hated it. End of dream. I have read very little about nuclear physics over the last 40 years, and was very keen to read this book and rekindle my interest. The book is primarily a biography of Ernest Lawrence, Nobel Prize laureate and inventor of the cyclotron. I could not remember having ever heard of him before, but surely I must have, as he was linked to just about everything to do with nuclear physics from the 1930s onwards including the Manhattan project and the creation of the atomic bombs.
The book begins with the contrast between the old-style physics exemplified by the Cavendish laboratory, where each physicist worked on his own projects with the minimum of equipment and very little money, to the new physics of Lawrence in Berkley with “teamwork that combined the disparate knowledge and skills of physicists, chemists, biologists, physicians, and engineers into a new paradigm of science”, and where the equipment started to become an end in itself. Little Science versus Big Science, elegance and frugality versus monumental machines and seemingly limitless funding.
The book is very well written and flows as an absorbing story about a remarkable man, as well as being a history of nuclear physics and the way that the modern world of Big Science came into being. You do not need a science background to understand what is happening, although a little knowledge about the origins of nuclear physics and some of the scientists involved would certainly enhance your reading.
Lawrence wasn’t just a world-class scientist, he was an adept fundraiser, an inspiring leader of people and involved in political decisions at the highest level – even though he claimed to have no interest in politics, and actively dissuaded his co-workers from such. Lawrence worked with, and was admired by, many of the most prominent physicists in the world. He believed passionately in sharing his knowledge, and encouraged research across the globe.
He invented tools and procedures that changed science forever, but he also had his faults. As soon as he got funding for the development of one project, he was already thinking about, and campaigning for, the next bigger, more costly project. This continual change of focus, and the reluctance of any of his devoted co-workers to challenge him, meant that many ground-breaking discoveries that should have been made in the “Rad Lab” went unnoticed, and relied on other, more systematic physicists, for detection.
Lawrence did not deal well with those who disagreed with him. As time passed he became increasingly right wing and intolerant, to the dismay of his former friends and colleagues. His never-ending pursuit of financial support caused him to adopt the opinions of his sponsors: “The government’s immense financial sway over research funding gave its interests—including its political interests—immense weight. Thus did the economics of Big Science create a double-edged sword. Under the circumstances, scientists’ fealty to military and political orthodoxy trumped their honest scientific judgment.”
It was not just science that changed in the 20th century, but also the way in which scientists approached their work. With the atomic bomb came a new moral dimension to scientific invention. The interaction between Lawrence and Oppenheimer shows this very clearly.
August 6th – next week as I write this– is the 70th anniversary of the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. This book goes into a lot of detail about how the bomb came about, and its military, political and human consequences, which I found really fascinating. We all know what happened – this story tells you how. And it was nowhere near as straightforward as I thought.
I would have loved to have read this book when I was younger, but it is no less engaging reading it today. I am really pleased to have learnt about Ernest Lawrence, and my interest in nuclear physics is definitely rekindled. I can recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone interested in history, science and/or the human condition.
I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest revie

[J.S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad look at how "big science" came about (as opposed to "small science," or scientists working on their own on a small scale) and Ernest O. Lawrence's role in it, which coincided with the development of the military-industrial complex. Initially I found the book very interesting but it began to drag once it got to the WW2 years. It also highlights just how political "science" can be, and the vast differences of opinion that exist (in contrast to the generally accepted public view of "Science" as infallible and agreed upon). It doesn't quite ascend to the level of a biography of Lawrence, but he's certainly the main figure here.

Unfortunately, it feels like Hiltzik's own politics crept more and more into the book as it went along. Figures in the history portrayed as obvious "villains" turned out to be much more multi-faceted when I googled them to get less-biased information. Certainly interesting but not as enjoyable as another of his books, Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century. I think I'd rather recommend Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age or Pandora's Keepers: Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb as better accounts as it relates to Cold War period. Mostly this one just didn't feel very balanced. 3.5 stars

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I graduated from UC Berkeley and the names of Lawrence and Sproul are on buildings on the campus. When I was in school my professors had been trained or had worked with Ernest O. Lawrence (1901-1958) and Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967). I found the book fascinating as it provided in-depth information about people and places I saw daily and knew only general information. I was most interested in learning about the early years of one of my former professors, which was mentioned in the book, Glenn T. Seaborg.

Hiltzik follows Lawrence’s career from a graduate student at Yale to winning the Nobel Prize in 1939 through his work in World War II on the Manhattan Project. Hiltzik builds a case showing how Lawrence’s works created the sprawling system of Government funded research laboratories we now know as the military industrial complex. In 1961 the chemical element Lawrencium was named in his honor.

The author goes into detail about how Lawrence conceived and built his first Cyclotron, or circular particle accelerator that used enormous magnets to hurl fragments of matter at one another at superfast speed. Hiltzik tells of his building the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory and his development of the hydrogen bomb. I knew about Lawrence’s work on the uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, but I was surprised to learn about his work on developing the radar tube and the Lawrence Tube used to create color television.

Hiltzik discusses how other fields became interest in Lawrence’s work such as the University’s Medical School for use to treat cancer. Hiltzik shows how the government’s canceling of the super conducting super collider in 1993 allowed Europe to take the lead in physics research.

The book is well written and meticulously researched. I found it an absolutely fascinating read. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Bob Saouer did an excellent job narrating the book.

[Craig Fiebig · Rating 3 out of 5]

While titled as a discussion of big science this book focuses most of its attention on the development of nuclear weapons. This is fine but other authors (Rhodes, et al) cover this topic sufficiently. The coverage of recent developments in big science revolve around the failures of funding stemming from an inability to articulate a clear value proposition from the advocates. Readers conversant with the Manhattan Project can probably skip this one.

[Jim Angstadt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big Science
Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military-Industrial Complex
by Michael Hiltzik

Informative, interesting, sometimes provocative, sometimes mildly annoying.

There are two stories here: Ernest Lawrence and big science. The stories overlap. For most of the book I thought it should have been titled "Ernest". Toward the end, it veered "off track", back to it's real name. Annoying, but nothing to stop a real reader.

One century ago, one man, and many others, created a revolution in how physics and science was done. Big science means big money, big staffing, big government, and a great scientist/manager/salesman/visionary, or two. Before that, science was done in a lab on a bench top. That morphed into Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore Labs, and a lot more. That activity helped us win WWII. But it led almost immediately to an arms race, nuclear weapons, and an uncertain future.

Was that a good thing?

[Bobbie]

I read this just in time to watch the episode of lost where they stumble upon a hydrogen bomb so I could go, "ah, yes, of course. the plutonium core. I know what that is." and I really appreciated that.

you can probably read almost any other book to find out what a plutonium core is but I read this one, and I thought it was pretty good.

[Will Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important history of the rise of national labs, my workplace, and tale of the dangers of ignoring the interactions of politics and science.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, readable, and written with verve! A must read for any historian of American science!

[Mal Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout the twentieth century, the city of Berkeley has been a breeding ground of invention. Even before World War I, there was August Vollmer, who served as police chief from 1909 to 1931 and was widely regarded for transforming police work from thuggery to a modern profession. Over the years since then, the city has been host to an outsized number of notable people who have made world-class contributions to science, industry, journalism, the arts, the military, and innumerable other fields. But none achieved impact as great as Ernest O. Lawrence, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who invented the cyclotron — the centerpiece of his scientific work and the building-block of Berkeley physics — and played a critical (albeit questionable) role in developing the atomic and thermonuclear bombs.

Today, Lawrence is best remembered locally because three institutions bear his name: Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore Lab, and the Lawrence Hall of Science. As a long-time resident of the city, I wondered idly from time to time why any individual would be memorialized so extravagantly. Now, having read Michael Hiltzik’s eye-opening biography of Lawrence, Big Science, I fully understand.

Lawrence was much, much more than a brilliant physicist who won the first Nobel Prize in the history of the University of California, Berkeley. He was a science administrator whose invention of the cyclotron and towering managerial talents shaped virtually single-handedly what today we know as Big Science — the collaborative work of often enormous teams of scientists, frequently across national borders, to pave new paths in understanding our lives and the universe we live in. Working in close collaboration with Robert Gordon Sproul (President of the University of California from 1930 to 1958), Lawrence helped build UC Berkeley into a world-renowned center of learning through his drive, charisma, towering scientific reputation, and prodigious fundraising skills. (Funding for Lawrence’s laboratory often exceeded the combined total of the funds received for all other research at UC Berkeley.) It was also Lawrence who proposed his colleague and then-friend, J. Robert Oppenheimer, to manage what became known as Los Alamos, where the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki were designed and built. He also drove the development of the facility in Tennessee that produced the U-235 fueling the Hiroshima bomb. And, more than anyone else, we have Ernest Lawrence, Edward Teller, and Lewis Strauss to thank for the H-bomb (known in their day as the “super”).

Hiltzik concludes that Lawrence “presided over a transformation of American science as profound as any change inspired purely by scientific discovery: the launch of peacetime government patronage.” However, before the Manhattan Project began to pour millions into Berkeley, Lawrence succeeded in fundraising in a broader context, assembling consortia of donors from the foundation world and academia as well as government. It’s difficult not to think of Lawrence as one of the greatest fundraisers ever.

In a real sense, the stature of UC Berkeley today can be traced back to the collaboration of Ernest Lawrence and Gordon Sproul. More than eight decades after the two men began their careers on campus, “Berkeley” is routinely ranked as the world’s greatest public university and is in contention with a handful of others — notably, Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford — for top honors among all institutions of higher learning.

For all his accomplishments, Lawrence is remembered today as an equivocal figure with a decidedly dark side. Though his seminal role in creating the atomic bomb might be excused as a response to the threat of Adolf Hitler and the military and scientific juggernaut he commanded, Lawrence’s ferocious, no-holds-barred advocacy of the H-bomb is more difficult to understand in the twenty-first century. So are his aggressive enforcement of the University of California loyalty oath and his partnership with Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss in vilifying Robert Oppenheimer. Though Lawrence began his career at UC Berkeley as a New Deal Democrat (though doggedly apolitical), his views in his later years veered sharply rightward, apparently influenced by his mentors, Alfred Loomis (a wealthy businessman who played a pivotal role in physics research) and UC Regent John Francis Neylan, both virulent anti-Communists. Viewed in the light of later events, when we came to understand how dramatically the Communist threat was exaggerated, I find it difficult to understand Lawrence’s shift so far to the Right. Sadly, he was hardly alone in falling prey to knee-jerk anti-Communism. He was a man of his times, after all.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ernest Lawrence may be less known than Robert Oppenheimer, but both had equally important roles in the creation of the Atomic Bomb. In fact, after reading this book, one sees how if not for Lawrence’s pre-war visions the Manhattan Project may not have succeeded.

Lawrence was a brilliant and driven scientist who established the Rad Lab at UC Berkley in the 1930s. He pioneered a device called the cyclotron, a spiral shaped particle accelerator, which set him on his path to fame. With that fame came the growth of his beloved lab and he trained many of the atomic scientists who would serve on the Manhattan Project, including Oppenheimer. Those he trained may have been his students or those he brought to Berkley as instructors or professors to further his projects. Lawrence was also the first to realize the sciences and engineering could work together to further goals, as he was not only unafraid to have non-physicists on his team, but he encouraged it. Besides the many physicists in the Rad Lab, he recruited chemists, engineers, and medical doctors to help with the experiments. Besides manpower to further his projects, Lawrence constantly sought funding from multiple sources to support the costly projects. He also became the first scientific manager as he had many of his students and staff working on his ideas and projects in addition to their own.

When Europe went to war, in the United States there were fears that the Germans had the atomic research background to create the then theoretical atomic bomb. This led to the first plans for conducting this critical research in the States, long before it was involved in the war. Lawrence not only advocated for the research, he lent his Rad Lab to the cause and helped design the facilities at Oak Ridge where the uranium was produced. It was Lawrence who suggested Oppenheimer to be in charge at Los Alamos. He worked tirelessly to further the atomic research. Also detailed in this section were the scientists’ thoughts on the use of the bomb on Japan both before and after the bombs were dropped.

In the final few chapters, the development of atomic research after World War II were discussed, with a focus on Lawrence’s projects. This included detailing the many commissions on the related research; the effect of the Red Scare on atomic research; post-war research, including the hydrogen bomb and nuclear missiles; his new Livermore atomic research facility and its competition with Los Alamos; and post-war research funding. Lawrence was often overworked in these years more so than before.

While the main focus of this book was on Lawrence and the Big Science he created, the many other key players were also detailed to varying extents. Included were Oppenheimer, John Lawrence (Ernest’s brother and a medical doctor on the team; he pioneers radiation therapy for cancer treatment), Luis Alvarez, Milton Stanley Livingston, General Leslie Groves, Robert Serber, Don Cooksey, Edwin McMillian, Vannevar Bush, Alfred Loomis, Edward Teller, and many more. While most were scientist on his team, others were scientists elsewhere he worked with on national committees after the war. Also there was a great focus on the science involved. While it was explained well in the text, it would be helpful for readers to have a basic familiarity with physics to fully comprehend it.

Overall, I learned a great deal from Big Science. I never realized the full extent of Lawrence’s role before now. Nor did I realize just how much the pre-war research affected the Manhattan Project or the era that followed. Too many other titles and documentaries make readers/viewers think it all began with World War II.

I was offered the opportunity to review this title by FSB Associates.

[cardulelia carduelis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is, somewhat, an answer to the question of how we went from the age of a few people working on small setups in elementary physics, to the behemoth collaborations that make up the modern frontier: such as the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN.
But it's also a look at scientific personalities in the 40's and 50's: how a willingness to appease government counted for more than consistent, cautious criticism. How far ambition and convenient timing could go to fund the most destructive and preposterous efforts in the name of peace. Because whilst this book spends a great deal of time and effort on the advent of Big Science, its also a total character assassination of Ernest O. Lawrence.

What struck me most, when reading Big Science, was how much Lawrence was willing to give up in the name of getting ahead. He sacrificed good science and staff in his early running of the Rad. Lab, he removed himself from family life during the Manhatten Project, he deserted any hint of morality in his post-war actions, in both the push for the H-bomb and the trial-by-character of Oppenheimer, and, ultimately, he sacrificed his health and life in his drive to stay on top.
Despite that, much of his early spirit in collaborative working is still held strong in the particle physics groups I've worked in at Berkeley and Cern. In both places a good idea or suggestion can come from an individual of any rank or experience, results and data lie in the public domain for anyone to play with and all members are expected to have knowledge of the bigger picture, and not be isolated in their own research. However, the less pleasant aspects of his management style: that staff should be on hand 24 hours a day, that graduate students are expendable, have, thankfully, gone out of fashion.

Hiltzik is a master storyteller as very little of this book dragged - quite a feat given that huge swathes of it are dedicated to various committees on scientific policy making. It's a fun and entertaining read that doesn't shy from delivering in-depth explanations on the actual experiments being performed at the time, whilst also putting them in the context needed for a non-expert to appreciate their significance.
There's also a good 40 pages of chapter-by-chapter references to the material Hiltzik dredged up to put this book together, which is always appreciated.

This is an excellent read for a modern physicist trying to come to terms with how the way science was done has changed in the last 50 years but its also a cautionary tale of the role of ambition in the field and how it can be easily exploited by a trigger-happy government. A lesson which feels more relevant today than it ever did. Required reading for the modern PhD student. A++.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big Science by Michael Hiltzik is a book about both the man and the machine that shaped the course of history in the 20th century. But it is also much, much more. Besides following the career of Nobel Laureate Ernest Orlando Lawrence and his earth-shattering invention, the cyclotron, Michael Hiltzik pulls back the curtain on the true culture of science in the United States shedding light equally on both the good and the bad. Lawrence is the epitome of the highest tier of American Scientists, brilliant, excessively confident, impossibly demanding and indefatigable. Lawrence was the first of his peers to truly understand how to work the US grant system: make big promises, work your unpaid staff of graduate students, post-docs and visiting professors to the bone, deliver on the hardware but not on the science, and then repeat. Lawrence’s legacy lives on throughout the physics community today where high priority is placed on funding the efforts of the large government labs while neglecting the smaller researchers and theorists who generate the true ideas and knowledge that moves science forward. But I digress. Big Science is a good, but not great book covering an very ambitious and historically relevant subject matter. The book is anachronistic for much of the early history of the Berkeley Radiation Lab making it difficult to make sense of Ernest’s greatest successes and blunders. The book also oddly describes both Ernest Lawrence and Ernest Rutherford on a first name basis during critical junctures when there is ambiguity on which man is playing what role. Lastly, the book falls into a wikipedia mode too often in the later chapters, ignoring the people and personalities driving post-WWII science. This being said, the book is fantastic at bringing alive the enthusiasm, passion and drive that great minds bring to bear on their inquiry of the world around them.

[Chris Esposo · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting mixed-history, which includes a professional biography of Ernest Lawrence, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, part history of science and technology in physics, and finally, a study on how technology development is managed in times of war. Lawrence, who was the primary driver in the development of the cyclotron, and who’s namesake lab, Lawrence-Livermore Labs at Cal-Berkeley has played a prominent role in atomic and high-energy physics, as well as the d development of high performance computing, for the past 70 years, is an interesting historical figure, who has sometimes been cast opposite of figures like Oppenheimer because of the stance they took in the early development of nuclear weapons (Lawrence was infamously ‘neutral’ on the morals of aiding the development of the bomb even after it was clear the Third Reich would collapse and did not have a viable competing program). This book sets to add more nuance to his position by casting his actions within the greater history of development in science and technology in the early 20th century. For better or for wrong, Ernest was adamant on making his vision of “industrial-scale” experimental research into a reality, and he accomplished that in spades through his Radiation Laboratory (“Rad Lab”) in Cal, and later consulting/helping to stand up both Los Alamos and Oak Ridge.

The book’s narrative is divided into four historical segments, or quadrants. The first being a summary of Lawrence’s early life and how he came to join the Rad Lab and develop the Cyclotron, as well as champion its use across the globe. There’s a lot of familiarity with the way Lawrence organized his labs, including the flat managerial structure, that empowered the scientist, and not non-technical staff, as well as his encouragement of ‘tea-time’ sessions where new papers would be read in informal luncheons, that makes his lab look more like Google or Facebook than a early 20th century academic institution. The second quadrant focuses on Lawrence and the lab’s contributions during the prewar (WW2) period. Here, Lawrence engaged in significant networking, and played the part of a “champion” or evangelist for his lab and their technologies and methods. It is clear from these writings that the significant “cross-pollination” with various government officials, amateur/’gentlemen’ scientists, and influential philanthropic organizations, the most prominent of the later 2 being Alfred Loomis and the Rockefeller Foundation, helped guide the pre-war US administration craft a likely strategy to pioneer several technologies, including contributing to radar, and of course, the completion of the Manhattan Project.

The third part of the book is all about Lawrence’s wartime activity, specifically his work for the Manhattan Project. Here we see he and the Rad Lab’s influence in the development of both Los Alamos and Oak Ridge Labs, which was the first true industrial-scale lab built from the ground-up to serve that mission and structure in the United States, as well as Lawrence’s hands toward guiding the development of the bomb from feasibility stage to the largest engineering project ever attempted by any nation up to that time.

I appreciated the details that were present in this section of the book, including his contribution towards the feasibility studies on uranium enrichment. Though Lawrence selected a method that was found less desirable in the post-war years, the so-called electromagnetic isotope separation, which was less practical than the gaseous diffusion procedure, it was the enriched uranium generated from this process that ended up in “Fat Man” and “Little Boy”
The final section of the book, on the post-war years, tells the story of Lawrence’s contributions to nuclear policy, and deals with the ethics (and wisdom) of his “principled” neutral stance in aiding the US development of atomic and thermonuclear technology. The main event here is the development of “the Super”, which was the first hydrogen bomb. Here, the book intersects heavily with biographies of Oppenheimer in his later years, as the theme is really focusing on the ethics of science, to paraphrase Oppenheimer, “Physicist now know sin”, and it was the responsibility of scientist to attempt to guide their governments away from the destructive policies of arms-race that increased risk of total annihilation.

There’s some interesting commentary here on the early thinking of nuclear warfare, especially on the possibility to unilaterally stop the arms race (on the US side), as well as the idea of “internationalizing” nuclear weapons control. People who’ve read books like “Raven Rock” or “Command and Control” will find a nice supplement to those topics in this 4th section of the book here which should augment their knowledge of those subjects decently.

Overall, I am satisfied with this book, it has added more color to the role scientists and engineers played during the early and mid 20th century, and serves as a good case study of how scientists should conduct themselves in times of great change. It enlightens the general reader on the life of Ernest Lawrence, an obscure, but greatly impactful figure in the history of science and technology, as well as informs on the nature of the genesis of the military-industrial complex. Finally, it is a great supplement to the history of the strategic arms race, especially at the start of that race, and can help inform modern thinkers how one may seek to incorporate new technology to national policy, especially those that are potentially highly destructive. Highly recommended.

[Delta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting book on WWII and the cold war. As much about politics as science and even more about E. Lawrence than anything else. I can't say this is for everyone, but I think Hiltzik describes the science in a graspable way.

**I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**

[Michael Helm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a history of the evolution of "big science", primarily thru the early history of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and a biography of its founder, Ernest O Lawrence. The author calls "big science" industrial-scale research - I think we could call that a short hand description of research with large teams, lots of expensive equipment, project management, bureaucracy, and other behaviors usually associated with large industrial concerns. The author sees the person of E O Lawrence as the right man at the right time to catalyze and lead this development - he had a combination of technical skills, technical gaps(!), charisma, extroversion, foresight and a good bit of lucky timing that enabled big science to grow naturally.

Despite the reservations the author covers in his epilog, the evidence of our eyes is that this style of science is extremely successful both in terms of results and as a movement: it has spread everywhere, it has spread into other scientific disciplines from nuclear physics/chemistry, altho it is mutating as it enters other disciplines, and it actually has evolved to support rather than supplant older styles of research (single researcher, or small groups), altho not perfectly.

The author makes a really gripping tale out of the development of the early laboratory from Lawrence's first days, where he stumbled around in research areas trying to find something to take hold of, and then finds it. The 1930's chapters take up the first half of the book and are fascinating. This is a part of LBL and the lab experience I knew nothing about - it all takes place in the old facilities on the Berkeley campus, most of which are long gone.

The next third or so of the book covers WWII and the atom bomb program. This part of the look shows how important the Berkeley lab and Lawrence were in the development of this program. In essence Lawrence founded 3 additional national labs, 2 of which still exist, the 3rd mutated and moved into another location, and inspired by example a 4th during this period (there will be others post WWII).

Lawrence slowly goes over to a darker, less pleasant side during this period. He comes under the influence of UC regent Jack Neylan and his right wing and anti-communist security issues. Or so it seems - the author directs our attention to Neylan (and perhaps Alfred Loomis) who shape Lawrence in this period, but it's possible that this right wing view goes back further in his history given the parallel history of his younger brother John Lawrence, who also was quite right wing. Berkeley becomes a very security-obsessed location during this period, and this carries on in the post-war red scare period. Lawrence apparently never liked being crossed very much (however, he would eventually admit mistakes and face reality) and seems to have sometimes confused opposition conveniently with security risk. I don't completely understand this - this deserved more attention and studying. The direct and most famous results of this were the loyalty oath fiasco of the early '50's at Berkeley, and the Oppenheimer security clearance hearing of 1954. Lawrence was in favor of the loyalty oath and opposed to Oppenheimer's continued security clearance for reasons not clear. In this book, the author assigns some of the blame to Oppenheimer's affair with the wife of a friend, but I think in recent articles he's more dismissive of this. Oppenheimer himself could not figure it out, and Lawrence never told (and didn't live long enough to write his own memoire, which he surely would have). The loyalty oath fiasco had the result of driving out a lot of talent from Berkeley and the creation of several rival labs. This is not a failure of big science, it's a success, but it shows a failure on the part of Lawrence the entrepreneur.

[My best guesses about the Oppenheimer - Lawrence falling out are 1) Lawrence hated any lying, & Oppenheimer and his brother lied about painful truths; 2) Lawrence was obsessed with building the H-Bomb and mistook opposition for security risks (at this stage of life he was playing out of his political league and was taken advantage of) ; 3 It's possible Lawrence knew more about Oppenheimer's affiliations than is publicly known to this day ]

In summary this is a great bio-history of the invention of big science and its principle entrepreneur, EOLawrence. It's not the last word on either, and I think a study of other kinds of big science that evolved during this period in tandem with nuclear physics would be good - Bell Labs, say, the aerospace / NASA development, supercomputing. Since industry itself went thru a transformation starting around 1900 that supports this new way of doing science, its influence should be included - Lawrence was mining people affiliated with industry and finance from the late '20's to the pre-Pearl Harbor days of WWII, when he switched over to government support.

[Charles H Berlemann Jr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had gone into this book based on some wonderful reviews from a friend. However, instead of talking all about Ernest Lawrence or even the evolution of science from the lone person playing with test tubes in a home brewed lab like the 1930s era trope and progressing over to industrialized science of large firms and universities leading the way. In the middle of this story is the story of the leader of this evolution of science s Ernest Lawrence. The man who helped to develop a cyclotron that helped to advance nuclear physics and make the bomb possible. However, buried in all of this is extra fluff about other scientists that cross Lawrence path and the later development of the bomb. Some of this information is retread material if you have read The Making of the Atomic Bomb the whole development of Oak Ridge and Lawerence's involvement in solving the problems there are covered in this book. In the middle of this story about the nuclear weapons development program, we lose Lawrence and his Berkley RadLab, the cyclotron development and the idea of where we got modern day big science? The later third of the book loses Lawrence, his family, his relationships into the larger post war super power problems and nuclear spying and such. That I was getting bored, since again this is material that was almost constantly retread in a number of other books about the post war nuclear weapons programs in the US. There were some bright spots such as how Lawrence worked to develop Livermore into a big research center. That Lawrence was almost instrumental in development of the tech that would lead to color TVs. That material would have been interesting and probably still tied in well with the attempted thesis of this book where science went after nuclear physics came alone in hunting for donor dollars and big returns on making nuclear physics do stuff from present color images on a TV screen to help threaten the world many times over. I would recommend this book if only for the first half since it presents an interesting view of a man who was willful, successful in breaking a mold, and developed a really interesting bit technology that helped us solve physics problems that even now are being found answers towards.
I just wish the author had chosen to either talk about Lawrence, or Lawrence and his Cyclotrons or the role of Lawrence in procurement of large government and industrial contracts to finance his science. All of that would have been better and rounded out the book better than the rehash of the development, arguments and science debates about the Atomic and later Thermonuclear weapons developments, all of which were hashed out well by other writers.

[Cara W · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed and readable book about Ernest Lawrence. Ernest Lawrence was intelligent and driven. He and his group at Cal Berkeley. He developed the cyclotron. He became expert at extracting funds and support from any and all research foundations.

Bringing the cyclotron to investigate sub-atomic particles by increasing power to millions of kV. He encouraged other academic institutions to make cyclotrons. He collaborated with non-physicists, which was unusual for academics, at the time.

Oppenheimer was also working at CAL. He was more left-inclined that Lawrence and most of the other physicists and the regents of Berkeley. That later caused the government going against Oppenheimer and destroying his career.

The cyclotron work was done in late 1920's into the '30's. Lawrence received a Nobel in 1938.

As it became evident that a war was brewing, the physicists had determined that working with U could end up with a bomb of extreme power. The scientists wrote that information to the White House, but other politicos didn't emphasize this to FDR. In 1940, some of the scientists went to the White House, got FDR's attention, and he said go develop it. Knowing there were physicists in Germany could also develop an atomic bomb, the US effort went forward full steam ahead.

Lawrence participated in the building of Oak Ridge. Lawrence was participated in multiple aspects of the Manhattan Project. This caused his health to ultimately fail. He hid the worst of it along the way.

After the war, some of the scientists were for getting the Hydrogen bomb developed. Lawrence drummed up support to build new accelerators and got the land that became LLNL. This was to get a second bomb developing lab (in addition to Los Alamos). The accelerator failed and lost funding, but ultimately the site was developed. Lawrence raised funds for various other projects.

The Oppenheimer affair occurred. Lawrence was tacit in support of Oppenheimer. Other people steamrolled him (Oppenheimer).

While still having his hand in many projects in the US and Europe, Lawrence went home and ended up in the hospital for emergency surgery. He didn't survive.

The fund raising Lawrence did and the national laboratories (initially built for development of the atomic bombs and other defense needs during WWII) resulted in "Big Science" with funds coming from the government, including the military, and other foundations.

[Geoff Habiger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Hiltzik's Big Science is a hugely interesting and fascinating look into the world of physics, and physics' interaction with government and industry, during the first half of the 20th Century. Big Science is mostly a biography about Ernest Lawrence, the inventory of the cyclotron, and also the inventor of the concept of "Big Science" - that scientific advancement needs to have patrons with deep pockets (namely the government and industry) to fund the large scale projects necessary to advance our knowledge of the universe.

Hiltzik does a wonderful job of weaving the story of Ernest Lawrence - who became a leading figure in high energy physics and was director of the UC Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, and the Livermore National Lab (now the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) - with the history of discovery around the mysteries of the atom and particle physics. We see the development of the cyclotron (the first particle accelerators) and how the cyclotron, and the research performed by Lawrence and the many physicists and chemists that he collected at the Rad Lab, led to the development of the first nuclear reactors and the atomic bomb. Hiltzik does a great job of showing Lawrence's passion for the science, and the near mania for national security and nationalism that led to the development of the hydrogen bomb after World War 2. Through it all we get a detailed view of the policies and politics (both national and personal) that shaped the world before, during, and after World War 2 and into the Cold War.

Big Science is a great read for anybody with in interest in science history, US history, and the history of World War 2 as Hiltzik weaves many separate histories and lines of inquiry to show how all of these areas coalesced in the mid-20th Century. I highly recommend this book as an in depth look into the live of Ernest Lawrence, and how his vision for "Big Science" dominated the discipline of physics for over 40 years, and still has an impact to this day.

[John Maher · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this book really caught my eye and had me excited to read it. And while the book is true to its name, I may have overhyped it a bit. It is a fascinating book about a lesser-known invention that helped the United States win World War II (among other things)… but dear lord is it dry at times.

The book accomplishes many things: it describes the invention and lifecycle of the cyclotron (the namesake of the book), it’s a defacto biography of the cyclotron inventor Ernest Lawrence, and details the various effects and influences the cyclotron had on science and the world. I consider myself a pretty big science nerd, but I never really heard of the cyclotron or Lawrence prior to this book.

Oppenheimer and Los Alamos Laboratory get most of the fame associated with the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb, but Lawrence’s cyclotron drove the creation of Oak Ridge in Tennessee that produced the enriched uranium needed for Los Alamos. Obviously that was no simple undertaking and this book explains the logistics, science, and politics that goes into planning and implementing such a massive project. “Science” up until this point was mostly nerds working with test tubes and beakers in laboratories. Lawrence brought “Big Science” out into the world where governments were forking over millions of dollars and building temporary towns to support the needed production and research. This book goes to great lengths to show how the Manhattan Project – and specifically Lawrence’s invention and the Oak Ridge portion of the Manhattan Project – laid the groundwork for future “Big Science” projects such as the CERN and the military industrial complex as a whole.

I read this book awhile ago and am actually a bit surprised how much I remember about it. I also remember how long it took me to read because I got bored with it very easily. That being said, if you’re a fan of science, engineering, or the Manhattan Project, I do recommend this book. I just recommend that you take your time while reading it here and there… or you might get bored to death.

[Ernest Spoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always wondered who the Lawrence of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories was. It was Ernest Lawrence, physicist, inventor, fundraiser-extraordinaire, administrator and prophet of "big science" which lead to the development of nuclear weaponry.

Even though Ernest Lawrence looms large, this book is not so much a biography as a history of the development of "big science," first coined by physicist Alvin M. Weinberg in 1961, from its founding at the University of California, Berkeley to its demise in the post-Vietnam when politicians shied away from funding mammoth research projects for research's sake. Perhaps we are poorer for it.

The last part of the book, The Bombs, is the most fascinating for me. Perhaps that's because the later chapters deal with the division between Manhattan Project colleagues, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, who sought to end the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union before it began and those who dove head first into supporting the development of newer, higher yield, more deathly thermonuclear weapons. Lawrence was definitely in the later group if not, at first reluctant, leader.

Perhaps this if the reason I did not warm up to Lawrence as a human being. For while author Michael Hiltzik constantly references his ebullience and congeniality, knowing that after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Lawrence's studied political neutrality before and during World War II precipitated a rightward tack that lead him support fantastical and impossible ideas as a "clean" thermonuclear bomb.

[Nathan Willard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this audiobook at the Library book sale and thought it looked interesting, though I didn't quite appreciate that it was a biography of Ernest Lawrence (of Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley fame). I read some reviews by knowledgeable acquaintances who found it a little problematic from an historical perspective (though better than an early hagiography of Lawrence), but as a lay reader, I appreciated understanding better how a number of physicist names I'd heard (Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller, among others) fit within the emergence of nuclear physics in the mid-twentieth century.

I particularly enjoyed reading about the early exploits in experimental physics, and the elementary mistakes made by people too eager to perfect their toys to focus on their experiments in the 1930s. The telling of a particularly embarrassing moment early on in the Berkeley lab days also caused me, for the first time, to really understand why immigrant scientists were so important in the 30s and 40s--American science instruction, Hiltzik argues, really was subpar. I think I'd known that from reading about Lawrence's Yale days, but didn't really understand it without the stories in this book.

It's long. I don't know that I would have stuck with it as a print book. As it was, I was able to have it around on audiobook to listen to when podcasts were getting tired, and so attacked it in digestable chunks.

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one. I didn't realize that the invention of the Cyclotron did so many other things. This is basically about the invention of the Particle Accelerator. The beginning of the book talks about the Large Hadron Collider and how it found the Higgs Boson. Then it goes into the meat and potatoes of the story, which is how Ernest O. Lawrence came to develop Particle Accelerators. If there was one thing Lawrence was really good at, it was selling an idea to an outside party. To have been able to build such devices even back during the Great Depression was a Herculean task in terms of money.

Along the way, we are introduced to other people that had their start at the University of California - Berkeley, many of them Nobel Laureates. As the years go by, Lawrence becomes more and more obsessed with Politics and other things not related to Particle Accelerators, especially in terms of the Atomic Bomb and the H-Bomb. His worst moments, though, were probably with how he treated Oppenheimer during the Red Scare. The book also mentions the development of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the naming of Element 103.

Overall, this book was really well done and quite enjoyable.

[Andrew Lobo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Big Science was everything I could possibly want out of a work of nonfiction and the best book I read in 2022. The story of the cyclotron--and with it, the advances it brought to science, the resulting race for the atomic bomb, and the new paradigm of "big science"--is a dramatic one, and it is masterfully told. The principal characters are the physicists you likely already know by their works, like Rutherford, Bohr, Chadwick, Fermi, Teller, and Oppenheimer, but this book infuses each with personality and life. Oppenheimer isn't just the architect of the bomb at Los Alamos, but instead is the sensitive polymath wracked with guilt over his creation. Rutherford isn't just the discoverer of the nucleus, but instead the avatar of "small science" who disdains the slapdash work of the Rad Lab. Teller is shown as "mercurial and messianic." And Ernest Lawrence's arc --from South Dakota tinkerer who wants politics out of the lab to the confidant of presidents and the shaper of Cold War policy--is Shakespearean. The best nonfiction reads like fiction while teaching you how the world works and Big Science emphatically checks both boxes.

[Jeff Greason · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book functions on two levels — as a biography of Ernst Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron, and as commentary on the evolution of the scientific enterprise towards one of large projects and government funding — the ‘Big Science’ of the title.

As a biography it is well done, enjoyable, interesting, and illuminating. Worth the purchase.

As a commentary on ‘Big Science’ I found it less impressive. I got the book because of my interest in this issue — in how the WW2-cold war research infrastructure seems to have lost something of the idea and theory phase, and found itself unable to regain what it lost.

I give the book credit for tracing some of the threads of how it got this way, but the authors opinions as as prominent there as any new facts, and the important question of what we might do about it was left unexplored.

[Guthrie C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This intense history of experimental physicist, cyclotron creator, Nobel laureate and Livermore Lab namesake Ernest Lawrence focuses on his achievements in scientific management that drove his lab’s discoveries. It is a fascinating look at an entrepreneurial scientist and the real job of funding, glad-handing and executing in the name of science. For WW2 and Cold War buffs, there’s several chapters devoted to the race for the bomb and after. There’s also an overarching depiction of the sociology of scientists as a group (discipline vs discipline) and individual personalities. I recommend this book for any fan of science history.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full Disclosure: Goodreads Giveaway Recipient

I am a science teacher, and was fascinated by a more in depth description of how the innards of the atom were determined....and surprised by how much earlier many sub-atomic particles were found, as in standard college classes they weren't really discussed even decades after their discoveries..... probably saved for more upper level courses.

The 'politics' of science was not surprising, but the inside glimpse really drove it home.

Having just read Michener's Space (historical fiction) it was interesting to read of parallel research that would eventually be combined with the rocket research that went into the atomic bombs.

[David Raji · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important read for anyone venturing down this sort of career path so as to engender conscious thought about meta-science questions. Should we do all the experiments that we theoretically can? I find these types of problems very important to think about, especially with the rise of technologies like facial recognition and data collection. As scientists, moral responsibility should not be forgotten.

Anyway, enough rambling. A solid read, with a few missteps here and there; mostly just too much focus on repetitive details of narrative (Lawrence fundraises, then does some more).

[David R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hiltzik presents an engaging profile of the most important of the 20th Century's physicists with an eye to his legacy : the cyclotron. It's easy to dislike this image of Ernest Lawrence and I think Hiltzik is essentially a critic, but I am more concerned about the beast Lawrence unleashed and the "arms race" of physical science, now reaching into the billions of dollars for single projects. There is much to consider in this book.