The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Feels like a must-read in the current age of blistering AI development pace, as an authoritative account of the birth of the first technology with the potential to exterminate humanity. The parallels draw themselves. It’s definitely easier to buy the Manhattan project scientists’ arguments for impossibility of cooperation and consequent need for racing ahead given that (i) they were at war with a potential competitor, and (ii) the potential competitor was led by Hitler. I find Anthropic leadership’s equivalent arguments for China significantly less convincing.

This made me want to read a biography of Szilard. What a guy! Unparalleled amounts of agency. He really could just do things.

Obvious in retrospect, but I had not realized, even through a Nuclear Physics course, that neutrons had been discovered so much later than electrons and protons.