Robert Serber (March 14, 1909 – June 1, 1997) was an American theoretical physicist who contributed to multiple branches of physics and who served as a bridge between theorists and experimentalists. His mother died when he was 13 and his father married Frances Leof in shortly after. He graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia in 1926 and matriculated at Lehigh University, intending to become a mechanical engineer, like one of his uncles. below which its internal pressure could make it explode. They also showed that the Sun could not possess such a neutron core and its source energy must be elsewhere. (Hans Bethe and Charles Critchfield demonstrated that nuclear fusion was that source of energy.) This paper was prompted by the work of Lev Davidovich Landau, in what was essentially an exercise in nuclear physics and gravitation. This was one of the papers that established the foundation for the general-relativistic theory of stellar structure.

Serber created the code-names for all three design projects, the "Little Boy" (uranium gun), "Thin Man" (plutonium gun), and "Fat Man" (plutonium implosion), according to his reminiscences (1998). The names were based on their design shapes; the "Thin Man" would be a very long device, and the name came from the Dashiell Hammett detective novel and series of movies of the same name; the "Fat Man" bomb would be round and fat and was named after Sydney Greenstreet's character in The Maltese Falcon (from Hammett's novel). "Little Boy" would come last and be named only to contrast to the "Thin Man" bomb. This differs from the unsupported, abandoned theory that "Fat Man" was named after Churchill and "Thin Man" after Roosevelt.

right|thumb|325px|Serber on [[Tinian in 1945, just before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]]After receiving an identification card noting that his civilian noncombatant duties were commensurate in profile to the Army of the United States rank of colonel (an administrative designation only ostensibly valid if he were captured as a prisoner of war under the 1929 Geneva Convention, although he was frequently afforded salutations and other perquisites of the rank in practice by military personnel while traveling), Serber was to go on Big Stink, the camera plane for the Nagasaki mission, as a technical advisor; however, it left without him when group operations officer Major James I. Hopkins ordered him off the plane because he had forgotten his parachute, reportedly after the B-29 had already taxied onto the runway. Since Serber was the only crew member who knew how to operate the high-speed camera, Hopkins had to be instructed by radio from Tinian on its use. Serber was with the first American team to enter Hiroshima and Nagasaki to assess the results of the atomic bombing of the two cities.

Post-war work and personal life

Although Oppenheimer sought an appointment for Serber in the Berkeley physics department following the end of the war, this was soon forestalled, possibly because of the anti-Semitism of department chair Raymond Thayer Birge. There was some speculation that Serber was a member of the Communist Party. Oppenheimer said it was possible he was member, but did not know, whereas the FBI concluded that "no definite evidence is known" for his membership. Although he had been cleared of any potential wrongdoing at a subsequent hearing that year, he was denied a prerequisite security clearance for a Japanese physics conference in 1952, precipitating his refusal to join a Teller-chaired Department of Defense advisory group.

While he reluctantly signed the loyalty oath stipulated by the Levering Act for Berkeley personnel in 1950, growing antagonism between Oppenheimer and the more conservative Lawrence eventually spurred his departure. In 1951, he became a professor of physics at Columbia University at the behest of Manhattan Project colleague I. I. Rabi. He regularly visited the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York, and was one of the most influential theorists there. He became the chairman of the Department of Physics at Columbia University in 1975 and retired three years later.

Serber appears in the Oscar-nominated documentary The Day After Trinity (1980). He was portrayed by Peter Whiteman in the 1980 BBC series Oppenheimer and by Michael Angarano in Christopher Nolan's 2023 film Oppenheimer.

References

Further reading

  • Original 1943 "LA-1", declassified in 1965, plus commentary and historical introduction.
  • 1994 Audio Interview with Robert Serber by Richard Rhodes Voices of the Manhattan Project
  • 1982 Audio Interview with Robert Serber by Martin Sherwin Voices of the Manhattan Project
  • Annotated bibliography for Robert Serber from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
  • Naming of Fat Man & Thin Man after Churchill, Roosevelt?
  • Oral History interview transcript with Robert Serber 26 November 1996, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
  • Oral History interview transcript with Robert Serber 10 February 1967, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
  • Eyewitness Account of the Trinity Test