During the scenes where Arlen is standing in the door of Larry's office, there are two photos on the outer office wall, near where the secretary sits. The photos are visibile when Arlen steps out of the way. I looked at these using 4x magnification once before and couldn't identify them. But in watching the movie again recently, I thought I recognized them. The one on the left appears to be Hans Bethe, and the other one appears to be J. Robert Oppenheimer. I didn't find photos resembling either of these in searching on the web, but I think I've seen them before in books.
Why these two physicists? Bethe received the Nobel physics prize in 1967, and Oppenheimer died in 1967 (as all you followers of this blog already know, ho ho). They were friends and also worked together at Los Alamos during WWII. Bethe died in 2005. He was interviewed, along with numerous other physicists and some common folk, in 1979 for The Day After Trinity, Jon Else's documentary film about Oppenheimer. It was written by David and Janet Peoples, narrated by Paul Freeh, released in 1980, nominated for an Oscar, and is highly recommended by me.
Two things to keep in mind if you watch it: Hiroshima was not destroyed in only "9 seconds" and it wasn't just "Hahn & Strassmann in 1938" who discovered nuclear fission.
Most of the destruction in Hiroshima--the complete devastation seen in photographs--was accomplished by the bomb's shock wave knocking over buildings (killing or trapping many people in the process), then, as John Hersey notes in Hiroshima, "ordinary cooking fires" and live electrical wires caused a conflagration, starting in the rubble of the homes and offices, that consumed the city--and it took a lot longer than nine seconds. Here's the general idea: The fireball of a nuclear explosion is certainly a horror, but the resulting shock wave kills and injures more people than the fireball. That's why "Duck & Cover" is no joke. It also applies if a powerful conventional explosive is detonated near a building with windows enabling you to see the bright flash, which is caused by the air near ground zero becoming incandescent. The flash is a warning that a shock wave is on its way. Just the fact that you see the flash (rather than your immediately being consumed in it) means you may be far enough away to survive--but not if you're lacerated by flying glass. Since there is no time to think about the meaning of the flash, the Duck & Cover drills actually did make sense. And another thing: An asteroid striking Earth would produce an extremely bright flash and huge shock wave also. It's not a bad idea to be prepared, at least mentally.
The study of the uranium nucleus for which Hahn and Strassmann too often receive sole credit was initiated by and led by the female nuclear physicist Lise Meitner, an Austrian Jew who had to flee Germany (she'd worked in Berlin for 30 years) after its annexation of Austria in March 1938, so she deserves most of the credit for the discovery, not least because of the fact that she and her physicist nephew, Otto Frisch, correctly interpreted what was happening to the uranium nucleus in the neutron bombardment experiments Hahn & Strassman continued doing (and wrote to Meitner about) after Meitner illegally left Germany for a refugee's life in Sweden. Meitner's side of the story had not been emphasized until after The Day After Trinity came out. Hahn alone won the Nobelphysics chemistry prize in 1944 for the discovery, but as I wrote in a 1993 unpublished letter to The New Yorker, he saw the smoking gun of fission but the smoke just got in his eyes until Lise Meitner showed that where there was smoke, there was also fire.
Finally, whether those wall photos really are of Bethe and Oppenheimer is something of an undecidable proposition, at least from my perspective right now. But I couldn't resist mentioning the possibility, mainly because of the historical connections of both men to the year 1967.
Two things to keep in mind if you watch it: Hiroshima was not destroyed in only "9 seconds" and it wasn't just "Hahn & Strassmann in 1938" who discovered nuclear fission.
Most of the destruction in Hiroshima--the complete devastation seen in photographs--was accomplished by the bomb's shock wave knocking over buildings (killing or trapping many people in the process), then, as John Hersey notes in Hiroshima, "ordinary cooking fires" and live electrical wires caused a conflagration, starting in the rubble of the homes and offices, that consumed the city--and it took a lot longer than nine seconds. Here's the general idea: The fireball of a nuclear explosion is certainly a horror, but the resulting shock wave kills and injures more people than the fireball. That's why "Duck & Cover" is no joke. It also applies if a powerful conventional explosive is detonated near a building with windows enabling you to see the bright flash, which is caused by the air near ground zero becoming incandescent. The flash is a warning that a shock wave is on its way. Just the fact that you see the flash (rather than your immediately being consumed in it) means you may be far enough away to survive--but not if you're lacerated by flying glass. Since there is no time to think about the meaning of the flash, the Duck & Cover drills actually did make sense. And another thing: An asteroid striking Earth would produce an extremely bright flash and huge shock wave also. It's not a bad idea to be prepared, at least mentally.
The study of the uranium nucleus for which Hahn and Strassmann too often receive sole credit was initiated by and led by the female nuclear physicist Lise Meitner, an Austrian Jew who had to flee Germany (she'd worked in Berlin for 30 years) after its annexation of Austria in March 1938, so she deserves most of the credit for the discovery, not least because of the fact that she and her physicist nephew, Otto Frisch, correctly interpreted what was happening to the uranium nucleus in the neutron bombardment experiments Hahn & Strassman continued doing (and wrote to Meitner about) after Meitner illegally left Germany for a refugee's life in Sweden. Meitner's side of the story had not been emphasized until after The Day After Trinity came out. Hahn alone won the Nobel
Finally, whether those wall photos really are of Bethe and Oppenheimer is something of an undecidable proposition, at least from my perspective right now. But I couldn't resist mentioning the possibility, mainly because of the historical connections of both men to the year 1967.
