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Laurence did not entirely concur with this prediction, even though it came from Einstein. He has the scientist's habit of storing odd bits of information until they mesh, and by 1939 a pattern had begun to form. Routinely covering a scientific meeting at Columbia University that year, he carefully noted the heavy concentration of nuclear physicists and repeated allusions to "chain reaction," a phrase that meant little to him at the time. But by the following May, a story of his gave Times readers an advance look at the awesome energy packed into an isotope of uranium called U-235.
His grasp of the subject was so comprehensive, in fact, that the War Department drafted him in 1945 for a special mission with the secret Manhattan Project. It was Laurence's duty to write the story of the development of the Abomb, against the day when the Government could release it.
Flown to Tinian on Aug. 5, 1945, to ride over Hiroshima with the crew of the Enola Gay, Laurence was bumped off the plane by Curtis LeMay, had to console himself by talking the copilot into keeping a log. Laurence's 3,000-word story had clearance, but a military censor on Tinian made him boil it down to 500 words—and for some reason the dispatch was then shortstopped on Guam. It never got out at all. The first newspaper accounts of the Hiroshima bomb consisted of stories prewritten by Laurence and others weeks before.
The prospect of retirement does not particularly please Bill Laurence. He plans to add a few more titles to his list of three published books, and he will take a position next year as consultant to the New York Science Museum at the New York World's Fair. But when he steps out of Times harness next week, he will leave the paper's science department far stronger than he found it. Six Timesmen now patrol the beat, all of whom had the chance to watch a pro in action, and all of whom surely gained by the experience.