After cocktails and dinner, he stood by a small blackboard, chalk in hand, and lectured his host and McCloy on the intricacies of the atom. As a visual aid, he drew little stick figures to represent electrons, neutrons and protons chasing one another about and generally carrying on in unpredictable ways. “Our bewildered questions seemed to distress him,” Acheson later wrote. “At last he put down the chalk in gentle despair, saying, ‘It’s hopeless! I really think you two believe neutrons and electrons are little men!’
