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About this Exhibit [back to top]

We thank Robert Crease, Barton Hacker, Martin Sherwin, Robert Seidel, and Catherine Westfall for reviewing the exhibit text.

• See Lawrence and Livingston's original 1932 paper.
• Learn about Irene and Frédéric Joliot-Curie in our Web exhibit on Marie Curie.
• Read about Einstein and the atomic bomb in our own web exhibit.
• Learn about Heisenberg and German fission research in our own web exhibit.
• The Atomic Archive explores the complex history surrounding the invention of the atomic bomb.

We also have more physics history exhibits!

Want to know more about Ernest O. Lawrence, cyclotrons, and Big Science? Visit other links!

• Who Was Ernest O. Lawrence?
• Berkeley's article on Lawrence
• Breaking Through: A Century of Physics at Berkeley: 1868-1968
• Information on Lawrence's receipt of the Nobel Prize
• Lawrence's biography
• Article on Lawrence and his Laboratory based on 1981 article by J. L. Heilbron, Robert W. Seidel, and Bruce R. Wheaton.
• Early history of the lab as told by Glenn Seaborg
• A history of lawrencium and information on lawrencium.
• See more pictures at the Berkeley Laboratory
• Digital library for nuclear issues
• More Cold War scholarship at the Cold War International History Project
• Many links on the atomic bomb can be found at Yahoo (under arts & humanities, history, by the time period, 20th century, military history, world war II, atomic bomb.)
• View the testimony of Oppenheimer at hearings
• Information on nuclear weapons and nuclear war
• A short history of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Further Information on Ernest Lawrence's Life and Times

Lawrence's personal papers are archived at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. A list of Lawrence's scientific publications follows the memorial essay written by Luis Alvarez published in the National Academy of Science's Biographical Memoirs, 41 (1970), 251-294. Some recommended readings include:

• Bernstein, Barton J. "Four physicists and the bomb: The early years." Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 18:2 (1988), 231-263.
• Childs, Herbert. An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence. New York, 1968.
• Davis, Nuel Pharr. Lawrence and Oppenheimer. New York, 1968.
• Heilbron, J.L. and Robert W. Seidel. Lawrence and his Laboratory: A History of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. vol. 1. Berkeley, 1989.
• Herken, Gregg. "The University of California, the federal weapons labs, and the founding of the atomic West." In Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay, eds., The Atomic West. Seattle, 1998. p.119-135.
• Herken, Gregg. Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: 2002.
• Hewlett, Richard G. and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr. A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 1. The New World, 1939-1946. University Park, PA, 1962.
• Hewlett, Richard G. and Francis Duncan. A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 2. Atomic Shield, 1947-1952. University Park, PA, 1969.
• Hewlett, Richard G. and Jack M. Holl. Atoms for Peace and War, 1953-1961:Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission. Berkeley, 1989.
• Kevles, Daniel J. The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America. Cambridge, Mass., 1987.
• Livingston, M. Stanley. Particle Accelerators: A Brief History. Cambridge, 1969.
• Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York, 1986.
• Rhodes, Richard. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. New York, 1995.
• Seidel, Robert W. "Accelerating science: The postwar transformation of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory." Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 13:2 (1983), 375-400.
• Seidel, Robert W. "The origins of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory." In Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, eds. Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research. Stanford, 1992. p. 21-45.
• Süsskind, Charles. "Ernest Orlando Lawrence." In C.C. Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 8. New York, 1973.
• Westwick, Peter J. "Abraded from several corners: Medical physics and biophysics at Berkeley." Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 27:1 (1996), 131-162.
• Westwick, Peter J. The National Labs: Science in an American System, 1947-1974. Cambridge, 2002