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Lot 43
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James Chadwick and the Atomic Bomb
James Chadwick and the Atomic Bomb
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Description:

Chadwick James

James Chadwick and the Atomic Bomb

 

“I think it is quite unnecessary to bring up these matters after 25 years. Enough has been said and written, from different points of view—not altogether reconcilable.”

 

JAMES CHADWICK, Autograph Letter Signed, to Leslie R. Groves Jr., May 6, 1970, Cambridge, England. 2 pp., 8" x 10". With Typed Draft of Leslie R. Groves Jr. to James Chadwick, June 17, 1970. 3 partial pages, up to 8.5" x 9.75". Very good.

 

Excerpts

Chadwick to Groves:

“Last Thursday, 30 April, I had a visit from a Mr Peter Batty. He is a free-lance television producer and it appears that he has been commissioned by Westinghouse (U.S.) to make a documentary film, to be shown on U.S. television, on ‘the story of the making of the atom bomb to mark the 25th anniversary of its completion.’ He also said, and wrote, ‘I am anxious to correct the assumption…that nuclear research during the war was purely an American activity.’”

 

“We had a talk of rather more than 2 hours, in which I answered, not fully but rather guardedly, several questions he put to me; mostly about the time leading to the writing of the MAUD report in July 1941; partly about the unhappy period—unhappy to me and some others—between that time and the autumn of 1943; very little about the Manhattan Project. I said that I had refused several invitations, both here and in the U.S., to take any part in radio or television programs about the atomic bomb, and that it was unlikely that I should change my mind.”

 

“Yesterday I had another letter from Mr Batty in which he again urges me to take part in his film. He also writes ‘I have had a letter this morning from General Groves agreeing to see me in Washington and to take part in my film.’”

 

“What is your candid opinion of this business? I will tell you mine. I think it is quite unnecessary to bring up these matters after 25 years. Enough has been said and written, from different points of view—not altogether reconcilable.”

 

Groves to Chadwick:

“I have seen Mr. Peter Batty. I found him rather typical of all people in the television business.... He came without a camera but was quite insistent that I let him take some film on the next morning. I had another appointment and so told him. He seemed quite put out telling me that he was planning on leaving Washington the next afternoon. He tried to get me to change my plans but I refused. Outside of his excellent English manners up to this point he seemed very much like most of our television promoters. I have generally been cooperative with these people not because I sympathize with their re-hashing of history but because of my desire to keep the history as straight as possible. Our writers and TV people do not hesitate to smear you to the limit if you don’t do your utmost for them, and it makes no difference how unreasonable their demands may be. You have no recourse nor any effective means of pointing out their errors. So I have always received them courteously.”

 

 

Historical Background

Peter Batty (b. 1931) is a British television writer, director, and producer specializing in historical programs. In 1970, Batty produced a fifty-two-minute documentary entitled The Atomic Bomb: The Dawn of the Nuclear Age!  In 1975, he followed up with a second documentary of the same length entitled The Hydrogen Bomb: The Ultimate Weapon of Destruction!

 

 

James Chadwick (1891-1974) was born in England and graduated from the University of Manchester in 1911. He received further education in Germany but was placed in an internment camp during World War I, where he continued his experiments. He received a Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1921. In 1932, he discovered the neutron, for which he won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics. During World War II, Chadwick wrote the report that inspired the U.S. government to develop an atomic bomb. He carried out research as part of the Tube Alloys project to build an atomic bomb. After the Quebec Agreement of August 1943 merged the American and British atomic bomb research, Chadwick led the British team on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and Washington, D.C. After the war, he served as the British scientific adviser to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. From 1948 to 1958, he served as Master of Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge.

 

Leslie R. Groves Jr. (1896-1970) was a United States Army General with the Corps of Engineers who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. Born in New York to a Protestant pastor who became an army chaplain, Groves graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1918 in a course shortened because of World War I. He entered the Corps of Engineers and gained promotions to major by 1940. In 1941, he was charged with overseeing the construction of the Pentagon, the largest office building in the world, with more than five million square feet. Disappointed that he had not received a combat assignment, Groves instead took charge of the Manhattan Project, designed to develop an atomic bomb. He continued nominally to supervise the Pentagon project to avoid suspicion, gained promotion to brigadier general, and began his work in September 1942. The project headquarters was initially in the War Department building in Washington, but in August 1943, moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer selected the site in Los Alamos, New Mexico, for a laboratory, and Groves pushed successfully for Oppenheimer to be placed in charge. Groves was in charge of obtaining critical uranium ores internationally and collecting military intelligence on Axis atomic research. Promoted to major general in March 1944, Groves received the Distinguished Service Medal for his work on the Manhattan Project after the war. In 1947, Groves became chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. He received a promotion to lieutenant general in January 1948, just days before meeting with Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower, who reviewed a long list of complaints against Groves. Assured that he would not become Chief of Engineers, Groves retired in February 1948. From 1948 to 1961, he was a vice president of Sperry Rand, an equipment and electronics firm. After retirement, he served as president of the West Point alumni association and wrote a book on the Manhattan Project, published in 1962.



This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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