Manhattan Project physicit dies

[swjones@lanl.gov (Sherry Jones)]

Manhattan Project physicist,
Robert Serber, dead at 88

Manhattan Project scientist Robert Serber, 88, died
Sunday in New York of complications following
surgery for brain cancer.

Born March 14, 1909, in Philadelphia, Serber earned
a bachelor's degree from Lehigh University in
Bethlehem, Pa., in 1930 and a doctorate in physics at
the University of Wisconsin in 1934. He then moved
to the University of California, Berkeley, to work
with J. Robert Oppenheimer.

An Oppenheimer protégé, Serber was among the first
to be asked by Oppenheimer to work on the
Manhattan Project following Oppenheimer's
selection to head up the effort. Serber, who was then
an associate professor at the University of Illinois,
became Oppenheimer's assistant. He is the author of
"The Los Alamos Primer," a summary of five
lectures he presented in April 1943 to the scientists
who came to Los Alamos to work on the atomic
bomb. The lectures, which summarized all that was
known at the time about designing and building an
atomic bomb, became the first technical document
issued by the Laboratory. The lectures were
classified for 20 years after World War II ended and were published for the
first time in 1992 by the
University of California Press. Serber's first wife, Charlotte, who died in
1967, was Los Alamos' first
librarian.

After the Trinity test showed the atomic bomb would work, Serber was sent
to Tinian Island, in the
Marianas in the South Pacific, where atomic bombs were being prepared, to
provide advice about any
changes that had to be made. He also was part of the first American team to
enter Hiroshima and
Nagasaki after the atomic bombs were dropped. He was in Japan for five
weeks to assess the damage and
to collect debris for tests. Serber and the other scientists measured
radiation levels and recorded the
damage. From shadows that had been burned into walls by the blast, Serber
was able to calculate how
high the bomb had been when it had exploded and how large the fireball had
been. Shortly after his return
to Los Alamos, he left to work at the University of California's Radiation
Laboratory in Berkeley. "The
war was over and the work at Berkeley seemed much more exciting and
compelling," Serber told the
Newsbulletin in a 1993 interview, conducted while he was at the Lab
attending a Nuclear Weapons
Technology seminar series to commemorate the Lab's 50th anniversary. "I
also had no great foresight
about Los Alamos, although I expected it to continue as a weapons laboratory."

Serber joined Columbia University as a professor of physics in 1951. He
became chair of the physics
department in 1975, retired from Columbia in 1978, and later was named a
professor emeritus at the
university.

Serber is survived by his wife, Fiona, and two sons, Zachariah and William.

********************************
Sherry W. Jones
Los Alamos National Laboratory
P. O. Box 1663, MS E524
Los Alamos, NM 87545
Phone (505) 665-2712
Fax: (505) 665-8997
E-Mail: swjones@lanl.gov
********************************

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