Music with a Nuclear Flavor`

["H.B. Knowles" <hbknowls@ix.netcom.com>]

Fellow Radsafers:

I have been waiting for some days for someone to mention the earliest(and
maybe greatest) of the nuclear songs, as written by Art Roberts, a
professor from (I think) Cornell, in the period between 1942 and 1950- a
most interesting period in the nuclear age. The late, great Luie Alvarez
had a record of these songs, which he played at group parties. I now find
that one of them ("Round and round and round go the deutererons")
attributed to Tom Lehrer. Nonsense. It is one of perhaps eight that were on
that record. 

They were not as witty as Tome Lehrer's songs, and the entertainment value
was somewhat reduced by Art Roberts' vocal skills (he sang the selections
on the cited record) but they were an interesting record of a special
period. One was "Take Away Your Million Dollars" (a physicist refusing
large sums of money for big accelerator constructiion, a wholly imaginary
occurrence). I believe that some of the lyrics of these songs were
reproduced in the humorous book "A Random Walk through Science" which came
out in the early 1970s. Or ask any old-timer from the nuclear physics days.

Sincerely,
H.B. Knowles, PhD, Physics Consulting
4030 Hillcrest Rd, El Sobrante, CA 94803
Phone\Fax (510)758-5449
hbknowls@ix.netcom.com