The Half-Life of Genius Physicist Raemer Schreiber

The news of Europe as it occurs the world is

now awaiting the arrival

in Berlin of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

America must keep out

of this war the President

the Congress should be

supported in their every effort to keep us out.

At 9AM this morning his Majesties Ambassador

in Berlin informed the German

government a state of war would exist between the

two countries as from that hour

Now we are at

war and we are going to make war

and persevere in making war

until the other side

has had enough of it.

My great uncle Raemer Schreiber was born

in 1910, in Yamhill County, Oregon.

He got up and did chores early before school

everyday I know he played with his cousins

he'd go out and build a campfire for lunch and

play for the

afternoon and then return just before dinner.

He attended McMinnville High School

and then on to undergrad at Linfield College

he did Masters work at the University of Oregon

and completed a doctorate in physics at

Purdue University.

He was a teaching assistant they had to have

a summer job

so Uncle Raemer and Aunt Marge would come back

to Oregon

where he worked on my grandfathers farm.

I think it said of Uncle Raemer to

have an amazing

work ethic for the rest of his life.

He had opportunity and a place to come back

too, they put up some vegetables,

that they could take back with them for

the school year

and it was a chance to see family.

My dad and his farming days in

McMinnville were long and tedious and tiring

it was certainly pre- gasoline powered engine

even for the threshing machine

because when he was ten, they were threshing

with a steam powered thresher which had a

belt on it that

looked like it could wrap up a building

he did not like farming, and in fact he

thought he was going to be an electrician

when he was ten

electricity came to the valley

he spent some period of time

wiring the houses

it might have been at Linfield ,

but Im inclined

to think it was more at the University of Oregon

where he got diverted to physics,

and it was a result of a professors intervention

and it was a very fortuitous decision on his

part needless to say.

My mom decided to come for my

graduation then in June of '41

we spent several pleasant weeks together

graduation was the usual thing

she probably only stayed two or three weeks because

pop wasn't in good health at that time.

I think the

physicists that came of age

in the 1930's and early 40's, represented

American society as a whole there were a fair

number including

Scheib, who grew up on farms, some like

Oppenheimer and

Teller came from well to do families so I would

say the physicists

represented American society at the time, you

had a little bit of everything

all kinds of backgrounds all kinds of religions.

Schreiber epitomised physics

and physicist

out of the first era of modernization they were

exploring new territory.

E is equal MC squared showed

that very amount of mass may be

converted into a very large amount of energy.

If Germany was going to build an atomic bomb

Heisenberg was going to be the

Oppenheimer of Germany

Heisenberg collaborating with others

in Germany and Denmark

elucidated the structure of complex atoms and

announced the principle of

indeterminacy of physical measurements.

Heisenberg was an internationally renowned

physicist he came for a

physics conference and I know lectured

around the country

Uncle Raemer took pictures of him and

listened to his lectures this was

a brilliant man who had every possibility

of developing the

bomb before we got it done in America.

One day a knock at the door and there was

Dr Oppenheimer coming to see him

he'd remembered that Raemer had taken

photos in those

lectures at Purdue and he asked if he

still have the negatives?

We'll Percival and I put in that summer

and fall getting the Cyclotron

physically removed into the new laboratory,

expected to take me all the next year

with the help of several graduate students

in doing this.

This was a very important tool in early

nuclear research a lot of people who

got started in the Manhattan Project had

a background in in some topic

related to particle accelerator technology of

the day, Cyclotrons were an important

emerging tool in the study of nuclear

scattering and nuclear reactions

he was really in an ideal place at Purdue

with that Cyclotron, to jump off

the precipice of the new Nuclear physics

as it became important

for national security.

We'll that summer after I did a

couple more things to wind up my thesis

for publication, which I never did quite get

wound up for.

For my dads thesis, my mom typed it,

I know is an act of intense activity

because it was submitted 5 hours before

it was due and I don't know

how many times my mother typed it?

I would guess at the end of the year that

she probably knew as much about what dad did

as dad did because

she had learn how to spell all that stuff.

Schreib was truly unique at Los Alamos

during the war there were 6 or 7

thousand scientists, technicians but there

really were only 2 or 3

people who could actually build an atomic

bomb actually put it together

handle the parts, Schreib was one

of those people,

Outside of Holloway and one other person

these are the only guys

who could really build an atomic bomb Oppenheimer

could conceive it,

Teller could conceive it, Bethe could conceive

it, but those guys

really couldn't build it they couldn't put their

hands on it, they couldnt' assemble it

and so this was the role that Schreib played

both at Trinity and again

with Fatman on Tinian later on.

1938 brought the startling discovery of

fission of the Uranium Nucleus by

Neutron bombardment, leading names in this

research carried on in Germany

were Dr Otto Hahn and Dr Fritz Strassmann.

The discovery of nuclear fission was like

the discovery of fire.

It was the first major form of

energy that does not depend upon ultimately

the sun so it was a turning point for

humankind when that discovery was made

Lise Meitner, working at Copenhagen soon

demonstrated that fission of the

nucleus was accompanied by a release of enormous

amounts of energy.

Time was short the inevitable entry of the

United States was accepted one reason

for the decision to concentrate forces against

the Germans was recognition

that German scientists could produce weapons

of great devastation.

through the cunard ladies and

gentlemen we interrupt this broadcast to bring you

an important bulletin from United Press flash

Washington the White House

announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

stay tuned to WOR for

further developments...

On December 7th, 1941 there

was Pearl Harbor

we'll we weren't sure what to do, research came

to a grinding halt as what was there for a

nuclear physicist to do?

Oppenheimer and a number of others were

recruiting extensively across the

United States would raid universities for graduate

talent if Oppenheimer couldn't

convince say a mentor directly he would call on

James Conant at Harvard