Los Alamos Colloquium, 1946
A group of physicists at a 1946 Los Alamos colloquium (an academic seminar usually led by a different lecturer and on a different topic at each meeting). In the front row are Norris Bradbury, John Manley, Enrico Fermi and Kellogg (L-R). Oppenheimer is in the second row on the left; Richard Feynman is seated on Oppenheimer's left. After the atomic bombings of Japan, many scientists at Los Alamos rebelled against the notion of creating a weapon thousands of times more powerful than the first atomic bombs. For these scientists, the question was partly technical, partly moral. First, the weapon design was still quite uncertain and unworkable; second, they argued that such a weapon could only be used against large civilian populations and could thus only be used as a weapon of genocide. Many scientists urged that the United States should not develop such weapons and set an example towards the Soviet Union. On the other hand, promoters of the weapon, argued that such a development was inevitable, and to deny such protection to the people of the United States especially when the Soviet Union was likely to create such a weapon themselves was itself an immoral and unwise act.
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