September. As for tonights first thing is check again to make sure your cell phones are on silent or off so that doesnt disrupt or time here. Well have an hourlong event, half the time presentation from our speaker, and then half the time for questions. We have a microphone over here. If you wouldnt mind directing your question to that mic. We are recording, cspan is here, and it helps us catch your question on the recording. And then afterwards well have a signing. Well form a line going down the aisle. And signing will happen right up fr ont here. The books are for purchase behind the register if you havent gotten one already. Then once were all finished, before we form the signing line, if you would fold your chairs and set them against the elves, that would be helpleful. Now mates pressure to sew Michael Hiltzik, and hisook, big science. This is a story of man who ushered in a new era in science, moving away from the quoteunquote small science of individuals in labs through Million Dollar projects such as the cyclotron that lawrence won a nobel prize for in 1959, or billion dollar project today such as a collider. Some projects have led science in direction of looking to governments and big, private wealth for advancement. This shifts and now is con ticketed, mate way for developments that were very large for their time. Some might say there were some that were even tragic, big science is a timery read as we reflect on the dropping of the atomic bomb in japan. That decision is still debated today, whether or not it was nose ends end the war. And in mr. Hiltziks book we read about controversy as well with the new scientific elite wading through the political fallout that followed world war ii. Mr. Hiltzik began his journalism career in buffalo, new york, went on there to write extensively for Los Angeles Times and won the Pulitzer Prize for the articles he wrote on corruption and bribes in the music industry. A couple of his previous books include colossus, hoover dam and the making of the american century, and the new deal, a modern history. So, please help me in welcoming Michael Hiltzik to politics and prose. [applause] thanks to all of you for joing me tonight to take maybe an hours respite from president ial politics to talk about science and big science and its achievements and limitations, and as candace eluded to, this is an especially pertinent subject tonight, i think, because we find ourselves sandwiched between these two rather tragic anniversaries. As im sure you have been reading, yesterday, august 6th , was the 70th 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing bombing bombing of hiroshima. Sunday is the neaves of the bombing of nagasaki. I want to approach these events in a different way, for they were so fundmentally connected with the work of Ernest Orlando lawrence, the physicist at the center of the book, and the paradigm of Scientific Research he pioneered. And well see how his work launched a new phase in the relationship between scientists and society because of how it led to scientists placing in humankinds hands the tools of it own destruction. So, lets begin we talking about the man himself, who was Ernest Lawrence. Well, the short answer is that during his lifetime, from 1901 to 1958, he was the most famous americanborn scientist in the country. In 1937, he appeared on the cover of time magazine, that allpurpose valition of International Celebrity back dung the prehistoric era we took of today as the age of print. And the 1939, as a professor at berkeley he received the nobel prize in physics, the first scientist from an American Public university to win the prize, and if you have been on the Berkeley Campus you might understand there are parking spots edition designated nl. This is a perk that Nobel Laureates at berkeley get, and in california thats worth a lot. All this for the son of a norwegian American Family born in the small town of canton, south dakota so he came from they heartland and grew up with the 20 them century. The source of his renown was his inspired invention, the cyclotron. A device tt could bombard the atomic nucleus with energies that his fellow physicists could only dream of the name of elucidating the mysterys the subatomic world. But his overarching legacy was a few way of doing science. We call it big science. Capital intensive, Multidisciplinary Research in which teams of tens or hundreds or thousands of researchers worked together, with funding from foundations, governments, and industry. Big science is all around us today. Highlevel Research Funded by the nih and National Science foundation which received nearly 40 billion a year in government appropriations. That big science. The effort to put man on the moon to send probes into the farthest reaches of he solar system, thats big science. The human genome project was a 3 billion exercise in big science that helped to launch not only new fields of study but also new industries. Solving climate change, we wont be able to do that without big science. The large head dron collider is the epit me today of a big science device. Its the latest generation of the first cyclotron that Ernest Lawrence invent more than eight decades ago. His first cyclotron cost less than 1 didnt in material and fit in the pam palm of its hand. Its off spring occupies a tunnel 17miles in circumfriend, buried in on swiss and french countryside and costing 7 billion. You can see the evolution of this paradigm that started in his lab in berkeley. The central theme of my book and i hope of our conversation this evening once we open the floor to all of you to ask questions, and to discuss, is that big science raises as many questions about human coineds thirst for knowledge as it answers. One of the most important aspects of this method of research that were still grappling with, 70 years on, is that it did give scientists and society access to forces of truly destructive power, forces that we found very hard, to the wi hope not impossible to control. One of the first physicists to warn of the implications of then sea change in the way we do research was lawrences own colleague on the Manhattan Project, james franc, german physicist, also a nobel laureate, who, two months before the first atomic bomb depp detonated over japan, observed the age was already past in which, as he put it, scientists could disclaim direct responsibility for the use to which mankind has put their disinterested discoveries. The reason, frank said issue thats what big science brought about was fraught with infinitely greater dangers than were all the inventions of the past put together. But we need to talk about not merely what we bring to big scienc but the resources we devote to the quest. He how to wake the monumental high parole file efforts to put a human being on mars or discover the nest particle against the necessity of fighting cancer or paying for drugs against hepatitis or mountain pel clear multiple sclerosis sees. So all of this factors into what makes lauren such an increasing personality and that bring dib issue trying personality, and that brings us to the invention that made his name. It was 1929. He had recently joined the university of berkeley and is in jibbings was at a crossroads. The older generation, scientist like Ernest Rutherford and marie currie had been probing the atom county nucleus with the tools nature gave them. Waves from radio active Minerals Like radium, husbanded by the thimbleful. Thatten racing figured another the structure of the atom, discovered xrays and radio activity but had done about as much as they could with natures gifts and to go further, science would need probes of much higher energies to delve deeper into the nucleus with more precision and these could only be achieved by applying human ingenuity. It was rutherford who threw down the challenge for the new geration, calling for an apparatus that could deliver a projectile of ten million electron volts, yet be safely accommodated in a medium sized room. Well, scientist all of the world took up the challenge but discovered when you load an operates with 10 millionvolts, what happens is you blow up the apparatus. Think of trying to fire a mortar shell out of a cannon made of cardboard, so laboratories filled up with shards of splinter glass. One group of intrepid germ yap researches strung a cable between two alpine peaks to capture lightning and did but in the process one of this was blasted off the mountain to his death and that ended that. So one night in berkeley, e. Nest lawrence had a brainstorm. What if you dont put the voltage on to the apparatus itself but build it inincrementally on the projectile. If you start with a proton, with 100volts, give is a 100volt jolt. Now is has energy of 200volts and another jolt and its 300 and so on and so on. Now, ainear accelerator designed to keep delivering jolts by a sequence of synchroniz electrode wld have to be a mile in length to achieve the desired energies. Certainly not fitting into rutherfords comfortably sized room. So here comes the second part of lawrences brainstorm. He knows that a charged particle traversing a Magnetic Field will follow a curved path. So apply a Magnetic Field to your proton and you can bend it into a spiral, allowing it to get repeated jolts from just a singlelectrode. And thats the essence of the cyclotron boiled down to its simplest terms, but after enough revolutionouts have a particle that can carry a million volts, 10 men, ion a hundred million or a blion and all you have to do is aim it at a target and let it go. The possibilities are limitless and all could fit into a medium sized room. At least the first cyclotrons could. Well, lawrence knows he is on to something. Very next day he is seen bounding across the Berkeley Campus, button holing friends and colleagues to declare, im going to be famous. And so he was. And the next decade, his invention proved to be a spectacularly useful and flexible machine. The team he assembled in beeley discovered scores of new isotopes, carbon 14, which we know of as the key to carbon dating was discovered through the cyclotron. Other isotopes became the foundation of the new science of nuclear medicine, the sources of new cures, and new therapeutic processes we still use today. And then came the new elements, heavier then uranium, elements which had never been seen in their natural state, element 93, named neptunium, and then element 49, named of what was thought be the next planet in the solar system, pluto, called plutonium. And every discovery opened, and lawrence responded by designing new cyclotrons, each one big examiner more powerful and much more expensive than the last. And soon every university that aspired to the first rank of Research Institutions wted its own cyclotron and lawrence was happy to oblige, sding his associates into the world to show themow to do it, freely sharin his own designs, all in the name of expanding what became known as lawrences cyclotron empire. But it wasnt onlyis real scientific accomplishments that made him famous but hi personality. So perfect for a country striving to emerge from the shadow of european scientific tradition. He was useful and engaging so very different from the popular image of the mad scientist, locked away in his lab, wild haired and foreign and a little bit strange. Ernest lawence was sober, businesslike, very down to earth, midwestern, went about the threepiece suits. The new republics bed for visit evidence and described hem us a a amazing lie easy to talk and completely american as apple pie. And then as i said i 1939, lawrence won the nobel prize for the cyclotron. But he demonstrated more than inspired scientific techniques. He showed great managerial technique. He showed that when you needed to raise millions of dollars to build your machine, you had to have the genius of an entrepreneur, a ringmaster, a ceo. You had to raise money from University President s, foundation boards, industrial executives and government officials by serving their own goals without compromising your own too much. For scientist this was a new religion and Ernest Lawrence was its profit. The 1939 nobel prizes were the last to be awarded until the war clouds over europe began to dissipate four years later. So now we come to the central event in lawrences career. The Manhattan Project would validate the big science paradigm. The atomic bomb could not have been invented bay solitary fit cyst using handmade equipment. Required an investment of billions of dollars, armies of scientists and technicians, laboratories built on an industrial scale. The Manhattan Project was the first great Big Science Program and it proved how powerful an approach this could be while hinting at how hard its results might be to control. Now, many youve no doubt know at least the outlines of the making of the atomic bomb. The efforting with albert einsteins letter to Franklin Roosevelt in august 1939, actually written by the hungarian physicist leo and signed by einstein, observing the recent discovery of Nuclear Fission implied that bombs could be constructed from fissionable rain uranium and warning nazi germ my might also be working on the problem and that fear brought physicists together to make sure we would get the bomb first. Lawrence and big science would play a paramount role in that effort. The cyclotron was an essential component in the research leading to the bomb. Lawrence converted his newest cyclotron, a behemoth, still being build in a ravine above the Berkeley Campus, into a device to enrich natural uranium to bomb grade by concentratings isotope, uranium 235. Then he design and supervises the construction of the industrial plant to manufacture the enriched product in a rural district in tennessee known as oak ridge. And that plant would produce every atom of the uranium for the bomb dropped on hiroshima. He gave a long associate priority time on the berkeley cyclotrons to isolate plutonium which was the core of the bomb that destroyed nothing saki, and when the head of the Manhattan Project came around looking for someone to head up the actual design of the bomb, at the lab that became los alamos,ern neace lawrence nominated his friend, jay report oppenheimer and got him the job. But now we must turn to the moral dimension of this work. Not only lawrences role but big sciences role in war. Something that still the subject of debate today, 70 years later, as you can tell i think just by reading the papers in the last week. The study of history, you know, is an exercise in looking at events through the eyes of them pea who lived. The but also applying the perspective of the decades sometimes a century. This exercise is especially complicated with Nuclear Weapons because were so familiar with their consequences. We know the toll in lives from the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki. The thousands, a toll the builders of the bombs could only guess at and probably underestimated the figures. We know of the horrific, longterm suffering of the civilian survivors of the cities unlike anything experienced by any other survivors of warfare in history. And we know the cloud that civilization has lived under for 70 years because of the decision made in the 1940s to unleash the destructive capacity of the atomic nucleus. And we know natz eu sunday actually never did have a working Atomic Bomb Program. The scientists who stayed behind in germ germany got the physics wrong and determined it could not be built and didnt try. But the allies didnt know that until of the war was over. Now, dont mean that we shouldnt judge the scientists of the Manhattan Project at all. Only that we should temper our judgment but why they thought they knew. They thought they were building a weapon that could shorten the war and maybe even save lives. They thought they were in a race with a homicidal maniac, bent on world domination. They were focused on the emergency of the immediate present. Germanys surrender in 1945 changed the calculus but not the momentum of this effort. Unlike germany, japan was not widely feared as a potential nuclear threat, and its regime was not seen as fixed on world domination, maybe regional domination. But by then, the bombs were nearly complete, the impulse to use them was very strong. In fact the planes were already ready on the island, point at japan. The final debate among scientists and military and political leaders before hiroshima was over whether dropping the bombs on unsuspting japanese was truly necessary or whether a demonstration over a desert or an unpopulate pacific atoll could christopher a sufficiently compelling message to the japanese regime. The record tells us that the last holdout against dropping the bombs was lawrence himself, but that eventually he, too acknowledged the risk of a dud was too great and that a demonstration that didnt demonstrate anything would be worse than no demonstration at all. Historians have debated ever since. In fact we still debate today whether the bombing of japan was truly necessary to secure surrender, but there can be no question really that most of the people directly involved in the decision accepted the assumption that it was. Ma of the big scientists who developed the atom bomb would eventually reconsider their role. Some, like cronk, had begun thinking even before the first bomb dropped, about how to manage the political and social implications of the technology they had helped to invent. Many would work to promote the cause of International Control over nuclear technology, recognizing that what big science had unleashed could be managed safely only through a new conception of geopolitics and a new style of diplomacy. Many others would work to