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November 1949: President Truman asked AEC members for written opinions on whether or not to go ahead with an all-out effort to build a superbomb. He found two for, two against and one astraddle.
November and December 1949 and January 1950: The fight raged on while a special Truman committee—Johnson, Lilienthal and Secretary of State Acheson—failed to act.
January 1950: Klaus Fuchs confessed that he had long been a spy for the Russians.
Jan. 31, 1950: A few days later, Truman's committee met. Tensely, they discussed the chance that the Russians, briefed by Fuchs, might have a start in thermonuclear development. Acheson and Johnson voted to recommend full speed ahead. Lilienthal voted against. That afternoon President Truman announced his decision to go ahead with the H-bomb.
July 1952: After another hot Washington struggle, a special laboratory for Teller was established at Livermore, Calif.
November 1952: Mike, a cumbersome hydrogen device, was exploded at Elugelab Island in the Pacific.
Aug. 20, 1953: The first Russian H-bomb was exploded.
March 1, 1954: The first droppable U.S. H-bomb was exploded.
The Father of the Bomb. In the months after the President's order, there is evidence of further delay. After Truman's order, Oppenheimer never publicly opposed the H-bomb. But other scientists did. Twelve top physicists signed a statement that said: "We believe that no nation has the right to use such a bomb, no matter how righteous its cause." It is a fact that Teller had great difficulty recruiting scientists in the year after the President's order.
The book presents Teller as the father of the hydrogen bomb. He broke the almost solid front of scientists who were opposing an all-out effort in the fall of 1949; in 1951 he had the "flash of genius" without which the bomb could not have been made.
But he did not make the droppable H-bomb. The book credits his Livermore laboratory with sparking Los Alamos by "competition," but the "more mature" group of scientists at Los Alamos made the bomb—finally.
The Attack. Among those who have attacked the book since publication are former AEC Chairman Gordon Dean and many leading atomic scientists, including Enrico Fermi and Hans Bethe. The comment of Dr. I. I. Rabi, present chairman of the AEC's General Advisory Committee, is a sample: "A sophomoric science-fiction tale, to be taken seriously only by a psychiatrist."