More of Berkeley/UC History

Lawrence

We recently posted an item about the 70^th anniversary of the first atomic bomb explosion in New Mexico and its connection to UC-Berkeley through Prof. J. Robert Oppenheimer and others in the Berkeley physics dept. The post provided links to a BBC series on the Manhattan Project which Oppenheimer co-directed.*

One of the other significant Berkeley figures from that era was Ernest Lawrence. As it happens, a book about Lawrence and “Big Science” by LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik has just appeared. [Lawrence is one of the early characters appearing in the BBC series.]

Reviews of the Hiltzik book from the LA Times and the NY Times appear today as excerpts in LAObserved at:

Oppenheimer and Lawrence in the 1930s

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2015/07/hiltzik_book_on_big_scien.php  

The book sounds quite interesting. As noted in our earlier post, the history of UC’s involvement with the Department of Energy labs goes back to the Berkeley link to the Manhattan Project. Lab review is part of the Regents' agenda at this week's meetings.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2015/07/berkeleyuc-history.html

Part 1 of the BBC series below. Links to the subsequent part are in the prior post.